FBI Director Fired

[Dill]

(05-10-2017, 11:10 AM)Au165 Wrote: The question is, where do we go from here? The parallels to Watergate were already there early on, they are only getting closer after this. I am not sure the POTUS actually did anything wrong, but as we have found out throughout history, the cover up is normally far worse than the crime. Will be interesting to see the whole thing progress.

One circumstance has changed greatly since the early 70s, however. Democrats and Republicans used to each be a mix of conservatives and liberals. That is no longer the case. Some Republicans will be up in arms about the firing and support the call for an independent investigation, but I think more will block this.

Another circumstance is that the American people back in the early 70s were, as a whole, less partisan and readier to put the country first and trust government authorities. Agencies like the CIA and the FBI, while duplicitous when discussing foreign and domestic activities like surveillance, could not conceivably announce a foreign surveillance that did not exist. Courts were also more trusted. As was Congress, because of its more bi-partisan make up. And all of this despite the Civil Rights struggle and the Vietnam War (though these events did much to undermine trust in government).  

Today a significant proportion of the electorate follows Trump in calling the Russian interference in the election a ruse to undermine Trump's legitimacy. They believe Trump is fighting the Obama deep state and firing Comey is part of that.  We have lost that critical mass of well-informed, balanced people needed to make a liberal democracy work. There are still many people with the ability to discern good reporting from bad, distinguish evidence-based arguments from rhetoric, but their total numbers have dropped right along with high school SAT scores. Informed, evidence based arguments are only another kind of "opinion," and whose to say whose opinion is better? You can choose the news you want and your "facts" are as good as anyone else's.

Unlike Nixon, Trump will resist any call for independent inquiry into Russia ties, which he insists aren't there anyway. The  One might argue that Nixon himself might have gotten away with firing Cox if his tapes had not been released a few days later, but things only got that far because there was bi-partisan pressure to investigate the Watergate break-in to the point of appointing a special prosecutor.

So in contrast to Nixon, Trump may in fact get away with this. The people have elected a Republican president, a Republican Congress, and a Republican Senate. Other distractions, new scandals and revelations, will soon appear to distract from this. Violation of presidential and congressional norms has become the new norm. Russia may also get away with this.

In contrast, Hillary may not. I wonder if the investigation into Hillary's emails may continue now, driven be people looking to "lock her up." Could such an ongoing distraction direct attention away from Trump's actions for months? It would allow the Trump state to control the timing of distracting "revelations."