Letters to the Editor
kenkapkk
Published Letters: 131 Editor's Choice: 13
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No
[Read the article: Nixon knows best]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Granted the man was a disturbed, truly diagnosed paranoid. Granted his woundedness.
No.
The man shredded others viciously on the way to the top. Nixon was the inventor in the modern era of the smear and the grandfather-godfther to Atwater-Rove-Delay. Nixon further refined this subversion of values with his blatant appeal to racism via the "Southern Srategey", refining Orwellian speak into the political dialogue.
Nixon destroyed everyone who had a sane policy regarding Communism on his way to power, then turned around and built detante in the backs of those he had destroyed.
Nixon lied as badly to the American people about his War as Bush did to his. In the most Machiavelian manner, he took cynical advantage of one of the most wrenching moments in American history to manipulate his way into power. His "secret plan" to end Vietnam was a disguised escalation. He falsified flight records for three years to hide this truth of his expansion to Congress. Nixon cost thousands of American and Vietnamese lives in his attempt to deceive the country and win the war.
Nixon subverted completely the Democratic process, principally by destroying his most prominent rival through criminal deception. That he did not go as far as Bush in wreaking the Constitution was not for lack of effort. His lawyer argued before the Supreme Court that Congress had no right to block him other than impeachment. If Nixon had had the docile press and control of COngress that Bush had, he would have outstripped his "godson". Only the tempering of a functioning democracy and the historical lucky break (or Divine Intervention) of a judge with impeccable backbone stopped his aatempted coup d'etat. Bush is the absolute direct heir to the attempt to resurrect the final "completion" of the Nixon dream via Nixon's former aide, Dick Cheney. There is no difference.
His pardon inspired a lack of accountability for high crimes that has toxically affected our system today.
As Bush, Nixon had not only no understanding of the Republic, he had contempt for it.
His "saving grace" that he was a savvy intellectual who understood well the international and domestic playing field as opposed to a delusional idiot does not offer him redemption for the vastness of his criminal nature and behaviors, which are legendary.
If one wishes to view Nixon (and Bush) as the shadow expressions of the American collective consciousness that sold itself to power, materialism, wealth and fear at any cost, with a ruthlessness beyond comprehension, the real Tony Soprano archetype, then there is a measure of compassion for a man (both men)who could only do what they did with not only the consent of the country, but often its fervant enthusiasm.
From this perspective, Nixon-Bush are our terrible reflections, similar to the mirror in Bergman's "Wild Strawberries that the aging professor cannot bear to look at.
But don't give me this "his accomplishments measure against his crimes". The man was a monster, the monster in us, unfortumately still alive and well. Ask Allende and the thousands of Vietnamese, among others, he murdered without compunction.
No.