10 thoughts on “The Paranoid Russians”

  2. The Soviets believed that Watergate was a coup attempt by right wingers trying to stop detente. After all, when Khrushchev was forced to resign it wasn’t because he’d broken the law, it was because he’d lost a power struggle. It’s understandable that they’d view U.S. politics through the lens of their own system, and assume that U.S.-Soviet relations were the most important issue in U.S. politics.

  3. Speaking as someone of immigrant heritage “from that part of the world”, you mean to tell me that the Soviets were wrong in their right-wing coup attempt theory?

    1. To the Soviets, Nixon was a good guy — they understood him. Therefore his ouster was the work of bad guys, by definition in their worldview, the “right wing.”

      Knowing how American proggs think helps understand how the Soviets thought.

    2. They figured it was coming from the Pentagon, defense contractors, and anti-detente Democrats like Scoop Jackson.

    3. Mr. Nixon was his own one-man political movement and definitely not part of the Conservative Movement in any way. Wage and price controls and going off the Gold Standard were considered major betrayals.

      The How When and Where of Watergate are well known. They Why is a big mystery. What were Nixon’s Plumbers doing at DNC HQ at the Watergate in the first place? If they were there to get “dirt on the Democrats”, what kind of dirt where they looking for?

      One theory is that the Democratic HQ was an unwitting and innocent front for a “honey pot” operation (i.e., prostitution ring) run by the CIA, and this is what Nixon’s people were drawn to as a way to drop the scandal bomb on the Dems. So the Watergate was kind of like the sheriff’s deputies (Nixon’s plumbers) drawing guns on the Federal agents (CIA, in this case) because the operation is hush-hush and not to be disclosed to the local yokels because they are uncouth, provincial, and possibly corrupt (like the Nixon Plumbers).

      And as the the prostitution operation out of DNC HQ, what was the purpose of that?

  5. The KGB must have been using a lot of vacation time when the Soviets got that idea. Ben Bradleee a stooge for the Right? Gerald Ford a more aggressive than Nixon against the Russkies? Not even Oliver Stone could come up with something like that.

    1. “Ben Bradlee a stooge for the Right?”

      In a word, yes. One characteristic of the Liberal mind is not to see anything more than one chess move ahead. To do more is Right Wing thinking in the Paranoid Style. Bradlee had his own reasons for hating Nixon, so all our putative Right Wing Conspiracy had to do was toss the match into that pool of accelerant.

      Even today, it is Liberal gospel that Nixon was Evil was all there is to know about Watergate, and there is no interest in asking any questions. Kinda like Benghazi.

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