Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

The comparisons between Señor Trumpanzee and Richard Nixon have been coming in pretty steadily these days. For sure, both men are crooks and both will go down on the same list in history as more than a little crazy, more than a little corrupt, and more, much more than a little bigoted. We see that in Nixon's famous tapes just as we see that in Trumpanzee's tweets and at his lunatic rallies. There are differences in the two men, though. Nixon knew and understood the U.S. legal system. He tried to circumvent it on an hourly basis, but, in the end, he accepted the consequences of his actions and left. Hence, the famous photo that tonight's meme parodies. For all his faults, Nixon had an awareness of the rational. Say whatever you want about Nixon, but under it all, he had a streak of patriotism, too. He considered himself an American. The same cannot be said of Trumpanzee.

Nixon had his own treason. It involved his undermining of the Paris Peace Accords and the resulting additional unnecessary deaths of Americans and Vietnamese that followed. He did it to win the 1968 election and it worked. Trump's treason seems to be unfolding daily and it seems to involve his efforts to win the 2016 election.

However, it's hard to imagine someone as far gone and completely devoid of any sense of rationality or patriotism going on national TV and resigning like Nixon did in August of 1974. I never thought that I could hate a president more than I hated Nixon, but then Trump came along. It just goes to show you should never say never.

There is another similarity between the two men and it is this: As I've said before over the years on this blog, I always felt that the job of the special prosecutors looking into Nixon and his Watergate was to just throw us, the public, a few small bones, leave the worst stuff covered up, and make a deal with him to go away to sunny California with a pardon and live out his days on a taxpayer-funded pension. Let's just say that I will be very pleasantly surprised if anything different happens in the case of Trump.

Letting Nixon off with a get out of jail card was a huge mistake in American history. A crook of a new president named Gerald Ford pardoned him, famously saying that no one wanted to see the president go to jail. Utter bullshit of course but that's what the congressmen, courts, and senators of the day gave us and it has us led directly to the situation we are in today. Every politician operates in the dark thinking that, if Nixon got away with what he did, then he or she can too. It's a farce, of course, and it destroys American morale. I'd like to be wrong but I don't see the Chuck Schumers, Mitch McConnells, and prosecutors of our time being any different than those who gave Nixon his sweet deal in 1974. Washington takes care of its own. Even if, by some miracle, those in charge had the honor and morals to drag Trump and his entire crime family, plus his accomplices such as Paul Ryan and his David Nunes-led treason caucus, out of the White House and Congress and hold righteous modern day Nuremberg trials... Oh the hell with it. Why should we expect those in Washington to do the right and patriotic thing? But if they don't, we can kiss this country goodbye.