Madman Theory (Nixonland Has Fallen, One.)

I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got. ~Richard Milhous Nixon

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I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't lose any voters, okay? ~Donald Trump

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The Ship was cheered, the harbor cleared, Merrily did we drop.

Below the Kirk, below the hill, below the lighthouse-top. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

So, while I was sleeping this afternoon, this happened. Trump got indicted for the January 6th insurrection. 

It's his third slew of indictments.

And Republican voters love the man. Republican candidates are lining up to defend him.

It's all the former Republicans that are disgusted.

You know, the people like me, the people who grew up in the long shadow cast by Richard Nixon and Watergate and who were determined that kind of shit should never happen again. 

Well, as it turns out, the Republican "Political Class" always had a faction that had other ideas. They didn't want to avoid another Watergate...they wanted revenge for the first one. Even though it was Republicans made Nixon quit.

Which is really weird, considering that when Nixon resigned from office, Kevin McCarthy was like, nine years old. Seems like the old grudge over Watergate should have expired by now?

But make no goddamned mistake about it, if anything the leftover Watergate grudges will be replaced by a multitude of grudges over the whole Trump thing. 

Nixonland has fallen.

It's all Trump, all the time, now. Hell, it's gotten worse since he lost the 2020 election!

Shit, since Trump, I've heard Republicans call Nixon a "Leftist."

In fact, I'd be willing to bet money that if Trump denied he did anything wrong or said "I am not a crook" that would probably be the one thing that would cost him support.

The current Republican base doesn't want the "Just the tip" criminality, lies, and secrecy of Nixon. They want brash, loud, tacky gold-plated open criminality now. 

The motherfuckers want people to get shot in the middle of the street!

The Cruelty is the point.

I call it the Madman Theory, Bob. I want the North Vietnamese to believe I've reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We'll just slip the word to them that, "for God's sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can't restrain him when he's angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button" and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace. ~Richard Milhous Nixon

And in the words of author and former Naval War College professor Tom Nichols; the love of the MAGA-base for Trump is, very often, simply the mindless attachment of the wrestling fan to a particularly ridiculous heel.

You go ahead and think about that one for a second, I'll wait.

Nixon may have been a vile, pinch-faced asshole, but at least he could and would articulate a policy position, and could and would reach for the stars or work for the greater good of the country or for peace with countries like China and the Soviet Union.

Because Americans at the time simply wouldn't tolerate anything less! 

I'm not sure I wanna say we were a better people 50, or even 40 or 30 years ago but it sure looks that way! 

Now, current Republicans (including, more recently, Trump) want to bomb and invade Mexico and the mob still roars!

All these years later and I've still not met a Trump Supporter who could or (more likely) would tell me why they like him. 

Yet, I still seem to Rep for "people who know shit" and "Polite society" as far as these chucklefucks are usually concerned. I'm serious, and I've been asking these kinds of questions since all this bullshit started in 2015!

In all seriousness, I'm...well, me, and I'm not exactly That Guy, much less an expert on anything or some kind of professed liberal. I'm a pragmatist and former Republican who's a current Democratic voter because I hate fascism and see it as a threat not only to America but to myself and most of the people that I know or care about.

I still scan as a (small-c) conservative to most young people, but I firmly believe in small-L, small-D liberal democracy. I'm an American, I know a lot about the seamy underside of American Christianity, among other things. You don't want any other kind of system in this country. No one with a brain in their head in the world does! The New Apostolic Reformation could make the Waffen-SS look like fucking amateurs if they got part, much less all, of this country. I'm 100% serious. It's a death cult!

(And those are the people who hope Trump will give them the keys to the Kingdom, or who are waiting in the wings if he goes down.)

Anyway, I ask, and their answer is almost always just some vapid bullshit like "I just like the shit he says."

We can crush this bullshit now, we can lock up Trump and his co-conspirators, maybe even have some of these criminals hanged in a public square, or in 50 or 70 or 100 years we can look forward to a post like this Saint Javelin post here on the social media of the time...and likely it to will be amid war and devastation.

Nixonland has fallen.

Donald Trump exorcised the ghost of Ronald Reagan on Fifth Avenue and no one cared.

It ain't my Grandma's Republican Party no more.

Modern Republicanism looks at Josef Stalin, Mao, Putin, Saddam Hussein etc. and sees something to aspire to. Hell, Nixon got thrown out a long damn time ago!

He too, was just a totem for these fucking people's hate.

Republicans have gone so far from Ronald Reagan's "Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!" speech that they see the creeping march of Russian criminal oligarchy across the world and they cannot wait to become a part of the Machine themselves. 

This shit will eventually metastasize into a new East Bloc, and their goal is to split America and turn us into the East and West Germany of the 21st century with a wall running down the middle. 

And they think they're going to force this bullshit on the rest of us with nothing more than sheer shitty machismo until freedom itself is just a goddamn memory?!

I'm sure that's what the Russians thought, going into Ukraine too, and it didn't work out that way.

And thank Jesus for that.

These people can, and will, get worse.

Слава Україна!

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan

Last Post

If the current polls are reliable... Nixon will be re-elected by a huge majority of Americans who feel he is not only more honest and more trustworthy than George McGovern, but also more likely to end the war in Vietnam. The polls also indicate that Nixon will get a comfortable majority of the Youth Vote. And that he might carry all fifty states... This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose... Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President? ~Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing on the Campaign Trail.