Re: [Marxism] Why Watergate still matters

["Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

While agreeing entirely with Walter on Watergate, it's worth pointing to
what the talk of Watergate in the wider society generally obscures.

In that context, comparisons of the current spate of lying to Watergate and
the current military misadventure to Vietnam often avoids the more
recent--and, I think, even more relevant--crimes of Iran-Contra, linked to
remarkable misadventures in the Central America and the Mideast.

The media and the Democrats gave Reagan a pass for an overtly criminal
subversion of the law and the constitution that ran far deeper than what
Nixon was pioneering.  Consider the stuff the Reaganites did or tried to do
in the 1980s.  They began pursuing policies that made no sense even within
the framework of the Cold War delusion.  They created alliances that made no
sense from any perspective, simultaneously backing--and opposing--both sides
in the Iran-Iraq War, and pursuing a policy on terrorism that would seem
consistent only to a country with a kind of national attention deficit
problem.  Government in the 1980s did not simply bulldoze and bully media
but actively seduced its taste for commercialized celebrity into the
coverage of politics.  Most characteristically, the Reagan administration
fetish for privatization also fostered the use of privatize companies to
pursue a foreign policy.  The Cold War had first raised the prospect of
setting aside constitutional procedures and civil liberties by reason of
state, but the Reagan years separated this trend from its Cold War
assumptions.

I suspect that, in the wider society, making comparison to the 1960s, Nixon
and Vietnam are a way of still avoiding the 1980s, Reagan etc.  Indeed,
given the rank complicity of the media and Democrats in the latter, it
should be no surprise.

Solidarity!
Mark L.





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