Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Nixon, Noam Chomsky, Etc.

— all this and more is yours on DU.

"'The trail of Richard Nixon, if it happens, will amount to a de facto trial of the American Dream. . . . The real question is why we are forced to impeach a president elected by the largest margin in the history of presidential elections . . . . The necessity of actually bringing Nixon to trial, in order to understand our reality in the same way the Nuremberg trials forced Germany to confront itself . . . .' Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Washington: The Boys in the Bag, 1974, The Great Shark Hunt.

"The old fashioned American way of dealing with problems like Richard Nixon was to sweep them under the rug. Kick him out of office in disgrace, arrange a pardon so that his actual crimes — and especially the identities of his coconspirators in high places, such as the business community — could never be revealed. Ensure that the mechanisms that he used to steal power are left in place so that the same methods can be used again, as Noam Chomsky so presciently noted in 1973:

“'But the conditions that permitted the rise of McCarthy and Nixon endure. Fortunately for us and for the world, McCarthy was a mere thug and Nixon's mafia overstepped the bounds of acceptable trickery and deceit with such obtuseness and blundering vulgarity that they were called to account by powerful forces that had not [yet] been demolished or absorbed. But sooner or later, under the threat of political or economic crisis, some comparable figure may succeed in creating a mass political base, bringing together socioeconomic forces with the power and the finesse to carry out plans such as those that were conceived in the Oval Office. Only perhaps he will choose his domestic enemies more judiciously and prepare the ground more thoroughly.' Noam Chomsky, 'Watergate: A Skeptical View,' The New York Review of Books, September 20, 1973.'"