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**A quick poll.. do we have a poll mechanism ? ** We should.
**Were you aware **that Woodward of Watergate fame was, before his journalistic career an officer in the Navy, one trusted enough to handle nuclear codes?
Were you aware 'Deep Throat' of Watergate was deputy director of FBI, someone who had many reasons to hate Nixon ?
I was aware of the latter, but not of the former. I thought he was just a young journalist, not a young journalist fresh off from fed-land with a top secret clearance.
There's this incredible segment by Tucker Carlson that basically lays out a theory Nixon was not as big a crook as we think, and that he was set up because he tried to keep the government subordinate to its notional head.
To sum it up, the claim is that Watergate was a palace coup, where the secret services overthrew the US government, and have kept it under control ever since through influence operations.
It does look persuasive to me. Too persuasive, if you were pulling a coup of this sort, would you make one of the protagonists a retired naval officer with that kind of background ? Ok, I'm done expressing my confusion and astonishment with what I've learned today. If this isn't content fit for themotte, please let me know!
Supplementary viewing: Interview with 'Kay Griggs' , talking about deep state influence ops and what the military gets up to in secret. Was allegedly filmed during her divorce as a 'dead man' measure. Her husband was involved with it and drank / talked too much to her.
It's eight hours, I mean, anyone wants a rabbit hole to fall down through. I feel like I should watch it at some point, though there's probably an analysis somewhere.
It seems to be fairly tame conspiracy stuff: some classic secret societies, homosexuals, political murder, drug running, saudis, etc. However, the nice lady talking about is, if she says who she is, in a position where she may have actually learned something. If she made it up, it's a great performance, if she hasn't, it's not very surprising.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4fdS5cdtPOA
I know this is the motte and that I'm the weird outlier here being the middle-aged republican but I'm genuinely kind of surprised and baffled to see people discussing what I thought was the mainstream normie consensus as though it were some sort of obscure/forbidden knowledge.
Was anyone here genuinely unfamiliar with the theory that Watergate was a palace coup?
I have my issues with Oliver Stone (given his claimed background he should know an exit wound from an entry wound) but I don't think anyone would accuse him of being biased towards republicans, and even he was acknowledging this possibility back in 95.
Did anyone here seriously believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone? I'm not talking about some hypothetical second shooter on the grassy knoll here, I'm asking whether anyone here actually thought the erstwhile "lone assassin" getting assassinated by the mob the day he got arrested was "just a coincidence" rather than part of a plan.
Well, I was until I heard of Felt's background, and I had no fucking idea about Woodward's navy career.
But then, I'm not a Republican so this was never a much debated nor research question.
Hmm. I remember being convinced once that he couldn't possibly have been preparing to kill Kennedy bc of the specific circumstances of the attack - basically that he blundered into it.
That doesn't rule out him getting rubbed out because someone thought Oswald might be part of an op and wanted to make sure no one would talk, however.
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Yes. I have literally never heard that theory before this thread.
I suppose so. I haven't given it any real thought, but what I learned in school was basically that he was acting alone and I never had reason to question that.
Nixon was simultaneously quite popular, winning over 60% of the popular vote in the 72 election, and wildly disliked by what we would now call the PMC and "Deep State". See Pauline Kael's infamous observation in the New Yorker. The perception of Nixon amongst a lot of modern Republicans is that he didn't actually do anything that men like Like FDR and LBJ hadn't already gotten away with, or that men like Bush Clinton and Obama later would. Thus there is an impression that he was essentially thrown under the bus by a Washington DC establishment that was eager to be rid of him. Poor bastard wasn't paranoid, he wasn't paranoid enough.
Regarding the assassination of JFK: there are two popular conspiracy theories that seem to be broadly left and right coded. The first is the multiple gunmen/"Grassy Knoll" theory that seems to be more popular amongst the left. In general I think that this theory is fed largely by a lack of familiarity with GSWs amongst the general population, and a desire amongst many on the left to blame Kennedy's death on enemies to "the right" rather than acknowledge that it was a marxist radical who ultimately pulled the trigger.
The second theory, which to me seems to be the popular consensus, is that the Mob (or somebody acting through them) had JKF killed. This is based on the assumption that Oswald's death at the hands of a nightclub owner with ties to the Chicago Mob was someone "tying up loose ends". That Ruby would die of lung cancer less than 5 years later further reinforces this impression, the assumption being that he was chosen for the Oswald job specifically because he wasn't long for this world and thus there was little risk of him spilling the beans.
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I was aware of the "Watergate as a palace coup" theory, but this is only because I have done indepth and extensive reading of various conspiracy theory claims. I mean, not being an American is an additional complicating factor, but even the local conspiracy theorists often spend their days poring over American theories (Americanization...) and I don't remember this being discussed.
It's only a year of two ago that I learned of this particular theory - the only theories I had seen before it had been related to Watergate break-in being about trying to obtain call-girl information to implicate the Dems or general theories about Nixon being an even bigger crook than conventional wisdom would allow, but I think the first time I learned of this theory was actually perusing Oglesby's Yankee and Cowboy War, which was a fairly recent thing for me.
Not being an American would certainly be a complicating factor, I probably should've been a bit more specific in my question.
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