Post #4051715

2026-07-24 02:09 UTC

It's like everyone forgot that the Washington Post barely scratched the surface of Nixon's corruption. Nixon can almost be said to have invented a "Deep State", although of course he's not the first human leader who''s ever ruled through secret conspiracy. For a tiny interval the people of the United States were made acquainted with the strange spectacle of a supposedly democratic and law-abiding President collecting various mercenaries and court jesters and academic cranks into orbit about himself. Nixon ruled like a crimelord and it's spellbound the popular imagination of the United States. (cont'd)

Replies (1)

@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-07-24 02:13

We have been marketed into a popular acceptance that there's something necessary and even noble about mob rule, as long as the mobster is charismatic and smart enough. It's chiefly in fiction where such things are possible, because real-life gang leaders tend not to be as stately and aristocratic as Coppola's gangsters, or as witty and intense as Scorsese's (even if Scorsese's trying for more social realism.) There's other ways that the U.S. pop culture has been programmed into accepting strongman leadership as the standard, but ganglords are the really popular idols. Both liberals and conservatives love their memes cribbed from Scorsese or Coppola or "The Sopranos". (cont'd)

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