I'll say again: Not prosecuting nixon was among the biggest domestic mistakes this country made in the 20th century. Similarly, the 1872 Amnesty Act, for the 19th. - ThreadSky

wolvendamien.bsky.social • 459 days ago

I'll say again: Not prosecuting nixon was among the biggest domestic mistakes this country made in the 20th century. Similarly, the 1872 Amnesty Act, for the 19th.

Reposted from David Slack

“If the President does it, it’s not illegal.”
— Richard M. Nixon

Comments

anniegirl.bsky.social•459 days ago

The US is so invested in not dealing with presidential crime that it has literally opened the door to the thing it was trying to avoid, a dictator.

wolvendamien.bsky.social•459 days ago

Exactly

nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social•459 days ago

Some institutions start with a standard of avoiding even the appearance of corruption and end with a standard of any amount of corruption being acceptable so long as nobody (who counts) admitting that they see it.

wildgorillaman.bsky.social•459 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/wildgorillaman.bsky.social/post/3kfb32an44g2e

nothingsmonstrd.bsky.social•459 days ago

and the same goes for times when you commit crime, get caught, and then the people who catch you decide it would *look bad* to do anything about it.

anniegirl.bsky.social•459 days ago

Aka as "a young white man with such potential".

prairiegirl.bsky.social•458 days ago

especially for sexual assault. Can't have promising young men's names tarnished for things they do, now can we?

davidforbes.bsky.social•459 days ago

Yes, if the rhetoric about democracy was real. Actual consequences for elites are one of those understatedly radical things that, if seriously carried out, would mean the end of the american political system in any recognizable form. So bitter enemies unite around making sure it never happens.

davidforbes.bsky.social•459 days ago

Pardoning nixon also made it easier to pretend the issue was just him and his cronies, even though watergate had helped reveal exactly how deep the tendrils of the rabid far-right and secret police/spy networks were intertwined. Easier to shove him off to retirement and continue w business as usual.

landisweaver.bsky.social•459 days ago

The way this empowered Trump-like forces does not get nearly enough attention as it should. I hope someone covering the Watergate anniversary this year looks back to see what some current Trump staff were doing & saying then.

joqatana.bsky.social•458 days ago

Most of them were probably in kindergarten. He was 27.

landisweaver.bsky.social•458 days ago

I've heard one of his lawyers was tangentially connected, but I can't recall the details.

joqatana.bsky.social•458 days ago

Look up their ages. Whichever one was an adult in 1973 is the one. I was 17.

landisweaver.bsky.social•458 days ago

It may even have been someone who is no longer alive, recall reading about a lawyer for the Trump family who took a lesson from Watergate that there would not be personal consequences.

joqatana.bsky.social•458 days ago

So not “one of Trump’s staff”

ritamelindared.bsky.social•458 days ago

Roger Stone

landisweaver.bsky.social•458 days ago

Thanks. That's who it was.

joqatana.bsky.social•458 days ago

He was 21. Errand boy for Coulson.

gtmac.bsky.social•459 days ago

Spoilers for s1 of for all mankind,

but even in that liberal wet dream of rewritten alt history, after Ted Kennedy wins in 72, he pardons Nixon too. So many people think it was always required for healing or something

wolvendamien.bsky.social•459 days ago

Pardoning nixon healed nothing. It put wet newspaper and dirty rags over an open wound and left it to fester and seep for the subsequent half a damn century

daveanthony.bsky.social•459 days ago

Same way conceding to Bush solved nothing.

carlnyberg312.bsky.social•459 days ago

The argument that Ford made (which might have been a lie) was that Watergate related requests for information amounted to a denial of service attack that prevented the White House from dealing with other matters.

wolvendamien.bsky.social•459 days ago

Yeah, that's bullshit. When the entire foundations of your system are called into crisis, there are no issues more pressing than addressing and fixing that

carlnyberg312.bsky.social•459 days ago

If Ford asked Congress for a temporary increase in staff to deal with extra requests for info & Congress denied the request... then maybe it was plausible.

But that didn't happen.

cour13r5.bsky.social•459 days ago

(can we please get that on a bumper sticker and/or t-shirt?)

cour13r5.bsky.social•459 days ago

i'm imagining a wolven x voidmerch substore, along these lines

https://voidmerch.threadless.com/designs/tyver-x-voidmerch/masc/t-shirt/extra-soft?variation=front&color=smoke

thinky-thoughts.bsky.social•457 days ago

Ford was selected exactly *because* he was going to do what the party leaders told him to do. Not a bad guy, but not a leader.

homelessrobot.bsky.social•459 days ago

Democracy 1.0 is not really designed to deal with openly corrupt villainous people without a code of honor within a pollical party backing them. Sadly *waves arms at everything* is a result.

gtmac.bsky.social•459 days ago

American style democracy with the officially weak but unofficially very strong political parties is uniquely unequipped to deal with it.

countanton.bsky.social•459 days ago

I’m more and more convinced of that.

tommyg.bsky.social•459 days ago

I have had this argument so many times, with so many different people in so many different spaces, and I completely and without reservation agree with you.

hawaiian-ishkelly.bsky.social•459 days ago

Yes💯

carlnyberg312.bsky.social•459 days ago

Not prosecuting the CIA for killing JFK was a bigger problem.

johnwkelly.bsky.social•458 days ago

Plenty of American presidents who committed war crimes in the 20th century were not prosecuted.Truman dropping nukes (giant war crimes)on 2 cities full of people could be called a massive domestic mistake. Bombing MOVE in Philadelphia was unpunished etc.Nixon was a crook, but aren't they all?

wolvendamien.bsky.social•458 days ago

And all of those were covered up and unknown or not properly contextualized by the general public until YEARS later (and not even now, for most, as in the case of the MOVE bombing). Nixon happened in public view, in real time, and if he had been fully prosecuted and not pardoned, shit'd be different

johnwkelly.bsky.social•458 days ago

Yep!It was a brief window where SOME main stream journalists were allowed to expose the crimes of the executive branch, but they closed that shit up fast, never to be seen again.There's no appetite for holding authority to account, because media lap dogs suck up to power instead of challenging it.

timrust.bsky.social•458 days ago

Let's face it: the US has missed been ruled by a king since the Revolution; you keep electing these guys

massivemagician.bsky.social•459 days ago

Cap

sloveniesta.bsky.social•458 days ago

One of the best episodes of That 70s Show was Red Forman ignoring his cookie cutter question and asking Ford why the hell he pardoned Nixon....

theirregularjoe.bsky.social•459 days ago

Tricky Dick.

sinclairlewis.bsky.social•459 days ago

*nods vigorously in historian*

writerwithcats.bsky.social•459 days ago

Well he shouldn't have been pardoned.

lamentablyawake.bsky.social•459 days ago

We still see the small c conservative impulse of the Democrats/prominent liberals to not rock the boat or risk retaliation exacerbating the problem too.

wolvendamien.bsky.social•459 days ago

Truly. It's a damn mess

sctadsen.bsky.social•458 days ago

Which is all the more infuriating because it's not as if Republicans won't simply find/invent an excuse to justify doing whatever they want regardless.

ottolinemorrell.bsky.social•459 days ago

Yes, and it drives me stark raving mad.

motown.bsky.social•459 days ago

He should have been hung, drawn and quartered.

waynefryback.bsky.social•459 days ago

Who says we still can't? I mean, we know where the body is..

ebenezer-drumlin.bsky.social•458 days ago

At least we learned from it and took Trumps crimes seriously.

wolvendamien.bsky.social•458 days ago

…Hm.

peebeauxsmom.bsky.social•458 days ago

💯 I was 14 at the time and could see that. That's how obvious it was to anyone who was paying attention at the time.

suzybea.bsky.social•459 days ago

This is why some cultures have dug people up and put them on trial anyway.

loukas.bsky.social•459 days ago

Haha, they did that to Oliver Cromwell. Not the Irish doing it, unfortunately, but the royalists.

ottolinemorrell.bsky.social•459 days ago

Thank you for this post. I scream the same things in my head every day. (My daughter is quite tired of hearing it out loud, even though she agrees. )

mrreciprocity.bsky.social•459 days ago

YUP. Fed right into the crimes of Bush, which Obama (and most of Congress) largely ignored, which in turn fed into the abuses of the Trump administration.

mxhrad.bsky.social•459 days ago

don’t forget Reagan

dochaus.bsky.social•459 days ago

Ignored would be bad enough, but they normalized or expanded Bush's awfulness, and then lovingly embraced the man himself second they found a worse boogeyman.

daivereed.bsky.social•458 days ago

The man committed treason during the election and Johnson let him slide. Zero chance for prosecution after that.

mxhrad.bsky.social•459 days ago

Trump being allowed to run again after trying to violently overthrow the election may be a bigger one.

wolvendamien.bsky.social•459 days ago

Well it's the 21st century now, so it's a new tally.

mxhrad.bsky.social•459 days ago

That’s right. Probably all would be less likely if we didn’t let the confederates win in the 1870’s.

davallone.bsky.social•458 days ago

I go back further.

Every Confederate officer above the rank of Colonel had committed treason in broad daylight, for which the punishment was death.

Message sent: commit a big enough crime and they’ll never punish you.

holyshitimfucked.com•459 days ago

Instead we have established a new tradition, Republican presidents can do whatever the fuck they want.

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