Nixon is smiling

Note: This article was written in Sept. 2016 and updated Nov. 2, 2016.

No one knows if Nixon is in heaven. We don’t even know, for sure, if there is a heaven.  But let’s assume for a moment that there is a heaven and that Nixon is there.  If this were true, Nixon must be having a little chuckle.  In fact, now after Abedin’s emails, he must be dancing.

Donald Trump is claiming this scandal is just like Watergate.  The Democrats are saying, “Oh no, Watergate was much bigger.  It shook the very foundations of our democracy.”  But Eddie demurs.  They’re pretty much the same.

In fact, Nixon’s original crime was much more minor: Nixon’s staff broke into the Democratic Headquarters and stole a few papers (compare this “crime” to the war in Vietnam, with all the “crimes” committed there, just as “crimes” have been committed in all wars).  And Hillary Clinton misused much confidential information.  But the main crime in both of their cases was the same: the cover-up, the lies.

At the beginning of her career, Hillary Clinton, was a staff member on the Watergate committee in the House of Representatives. She was a part of the 60’s generation, a bright, hard working, Yale law school graduate who wanted to “change the world.”  Her first project in the world revolution was to get rid of one evil:  Richard Nixon.  A main motivation of getting rid of this war mongering, conservative, immoral person was to see it as a step towards ending the Vietnam war.

And she succeeded!  With her dedication and hard work, her and her fellow Nixon-haters kicked the bum out of office and saw him whisked away in a helicoptor.  And how did they do it?  They caught him in a lie!

What happened?

A group of Nixon staffers broke into an office of the Democratic party in the Watergate offices and stole some documents — hardly a big crime relative to the war in Vietnam and the long list of crimes committed by politicians and citizens.  But Nixon lied about it!  He covered up information in the investigations into the crime.

And now Hillary has been got caught in a few lies — minor lies, considering all the lies in everyday politics, including the lies of Donald Trump — but lies nonetheless.  She said there as no classified information in her emails.  She said Benghazi was caused by an amateur video.  And she said there was no “pay for play” in relation to Bill Clinton giving speeches (where he earned millions of dollars) and favors given by the State Department to those donors.  (The Clintons earned over $100 million since 2000.)

And now Hanna Abedin has been caught with her hand in the cookie jar.  In fact, Abedin seems like Nixon — and the monkey in Africa.  This monkey reached into a monkey trap and grabbed an apple.  Then he couldn’t get his hand out.  He could have slipped out if he let go of the apple, but he couldn’t; he wanted the apple too bad.  In the same way, Nixon couldn’t let go of his damning secret tapes and destroy them, and Abedin couldn’t let go of her drove of stored emails, and destroy the computer.

Granted these are all minor political lies, and American politics are filled with them, but sometimes political capital can be made out of them, just like Hillary did with Nixon.

Now Hillary is being denigrated in the same way that she denigrated Nixon.  Her opponents see her as a liar and a crooked person.  (Nixon once famously said, “I am not a crook.”)  Some of her opponents even want her sent to jail, just like the Democrats wanted Nixon sent to jail.

Hillary seems to be a decent, hard working, honest person, trying to do what she thinks is the best for people (but still a practical politician).  But perhaps Nixon was a decent person also.  And perhaps Mitt Romney is a decent person as well.  And maybe even Donald Trump is basically a decent person.  But look at how these Republicans (and their supporters) are treated as “the scum of the earth” by Progressives, or to be more precise, they are treated as “deplorable people.”

Certainly, if Nixon is in heaven, he must be smiling — if not dancing.