Reply #15: I doubt we'll get it right this time either. [View All]

[Mechatanketra]

America "became complacent" almost instantaneously after Nixon resigned; one should know the people were doomed to be fooled again, when Ford wasn't impeached (if not drawn and quartered) for pardoning the man who appointed him, on the presumption that he'd clearly "bought in" to the conspiracy.

The basic problem is this: outright criminality in the White House is essentially an Outside Context Problem for Joe Sixpack. America has no immuno-response to politicians who are prepared to defy the law and use the powers of their office to protect themselves, because we're raised on a "heroic script immunity" image of American history that just assumes The System Works, and for that matter, that there is a system to work.

You can see this symptom at work among Democratic officials: time and time again, Republicans get caught doing something unconscionably grotesque, and the Dems make statements "calling on" them to make things right. Fine: and when the GOP says "No", what do you do? You'd think by now, the pattern would have sunk in, and Dems would just skip to pointing out that the GOP never does the right thing by itself, because they're not actually out to serve citizens. But apparently, the Democratic politicians themselves can't bring themselves to swallow that their opposition -- the people they themselves, by definition, are ostensibly trying to put out of a job -- just aren't sincerely trying to do that job; they can't cross the line in their minds between the GOP being bad at governing and the GOP just being bad. So always, always with the benefit of the doubt ... until it kills us.