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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
The rdrama codebase has something like polls, but they're probably disabled here atm. You can always use sites like strawpoll.
If you want ... another eight hour podcast about how nixon did nothing wrong, kantbot did an episode on it. Haven't listened to it!
The Nixon clip claims that ... it's suspicious that people loved nixon, then he "committed crimes", then people disliked him, that nixon's disliking the "deep state" implies they took him out, that nixon ... knew who shot JFK, and that the CIA was involved, and lots of other stuff. This belongs on abovetopsecret, not themotte. The bland claims (woodward having a security clearance) are verifiable, the less bland claims less so!
It's sickening and shocking that Tucker would endorse this, and shows the moral bankruptcy of the republi... not really, it's par for the course for TV news, there've been rumors about secret society assassination plots for thousands of years (a few of which were true), but that doesn't make it not dumb.
If one hopes to do something with political knowledge - whether that be stop the supposed all-powerful conspiracy that rules the world, or merely avoid its malicious influence, little details like "is this all made up" are very important. Historians, researchers, even new york times writers fact-check stories of moderate import, because when one's ideas matter beyond thinking 'whoa, the elites sure are mean', it matters!
No, the bland claims are that Woodward's background, Felt's background and all that make it look like institutional set-up to get rid of a president who wasn't willing to play ball and thought he could actually be in power.
It's really cute that even very smart people like you seem to think we must take what the news media has been anchoring in your brain since infancy; that there are no conspiracies, you live in an 'accountable' democratic society.
Shows the power of deeply embedded priors! All power is conspiracy - that's roughly what Italian elite theorists like Pareto & Mosca said, I believe.
If you want to understand where I'm coming from, perhaps watch this cca 45 minute presentation by a half-Welsh/half-Iranian feral Shakespeare scholar.. It's somewhat refined, less prolix Moldbug. More antisemitic (Iranian, duh), but not unreasonably so.
I listened a bit to her, she really didn't seem like the type. No, she was talking about sordid 'little' conspiracies - Us DoD, CIA, homosexuals, etc. Drugs, murder, blackmail, etc.
She isn't a galaxy-brained schizo like e.g. Russian nationalist Galkovsky about who Ilforte should perhaps write sometimes, because he has extremely entertaining theories and quips.
E.g. Galkovsky claims that the USSR was a British intelligence project, part of their war with America.
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