Notes on Impeachment Scrapbooking
In light of our current, worse-than-Watergate political crisis, I've been contemplating the why of Watergate's unique hold on my fascination.
Current thinking: Watergate is, at its core, about an active investigation on the part of our fourth estate into the underbelly of power: the corrupting power of power (requiring only the inherent corruptness of the character of the office-holder as fuel for the flame), the paranoia, the entitlement, and the urge, at at all costs, to cling to that power. It is a saga about attaining a prize that no one in their right mind would want and doing everything to hold on to it.
(What I wouldn't give for a Robert A. Caro series on Nixon.)
Synthesis, maybe: that fascination is a logical precursor to my fascination of (and horror at) our current situation – Watergate 2.0 / Worse Than Watergate / ApprenticeGate: this is Watergate, amplified: in the place of Nixon's arguable adult-in-the-roomness (an admittedly low bar because clearly, Nixon was anything but, especially as the scandal engulfed him and everyone around him) and lack of access to Twitter at its center, we have instead a septuagenarian social media addict narcissist wannabe authoritarian poor-me autocrat throwing a temper tantrum on the grocery store floor and spewing hate and bullshit every time he steps up to the microphone or to the smartphone.
These, as someone once said, are the days; of horror, of fascination, perhaps – but they certainly are days. Each day like living in dog years.
Think I've mentioned before that I've got a Pinboard tag full of impeachment news clippings and no clue what to do with it. Probably just my hermetic quasi-historian's crisis scrapbook but who knows it could be more.
(Listening): THE HUMAN HEART, by April Larson.
