"(expletive deleted) Of course, I am not dumb and I will never forget when I heard about this (adjective deleted) forced entry and bugging. I thought, what in the hell is this? What is the matter with these people? Are they crazy? I thought they were nuts! A prank! But it wasn't! It wasn't very funny."

-- Richard Nixon

33 years is a third of a century. A lifespan for many in the Third World. A longer period of time than many of this blog's readers have been on this earth. Yet that's how many years it's been since the date of a burglary of an office located in the "Watergate" -- a name that still dominates media politics (and so much of political conversation that the word "gate" is still routinely attached as a suffix to all scandals, big and small).

As most of the pontificating geezers know, today is the anniversary of Watergate. At the risk of sounding like a geezer, I'd only like to remind readers that the pontificating (and the posturing, and the moral lecturing and scolding) is so loud that it drowns out those who might like to look at the facts, which are still by no means historically settled.

Watergate was a burglary for which people went to prison, and it also refers to the coverup of that burglary, which brought down Nixon's presidency (and for which more people went to prison). It wasn't about Nixon's irrelevant mutterings caught on tape, and despite the cries of so many people over the decades, no one has ever shown me how an office burglary (or even a coverup of that burglary) ever threatened the Constitution. True, the administration used lawless tactics. These were lawless times, the country was in a big war, and lawless tactics abounded on both sides. As a young Marxist-Leninist, I was no exception, and I was much caught up in the radicalism of the time. Still, I found myself baffled by the utter wimpiness shown by Nixon -- assumed by everyone to be a great fascist waiting to seize total control -- when the chips were down. I asked about this sarcastically in a recent comment,

How come when the Final Showdown came, instead of suspending the Constitution and calling out his White House Storm Troopers, the evil prince of darkness, First Leader, and Absolute Ruler of the World simply resigned and muttered something about "the good of the country"? No attempted coup, no running away to plot in exile, nothing.

Nixon's initial reaction that the burglary made no political sense was absolutely right. If Nixon hadn't done a damned thing, he would have lasted out his second term, and stepped down when the next president was sworn in.

That's how fascism always works.

MORE: Here's a quote from which illustrates the ultimately inevitable nature of fascism:

"I think if Kerry were to win this in a tight race, I think there would be an effort to mount a coup, quite frankly." -- Bill Moyers

But just as Richard Nixon would have, so Bush would have!

And that proves how fascist they all are!