Take a Step Back

It would seem that most of what has recently been posted is hotheaded dreck, or bordering on sociopathic. So, here's a reasoned question (and it will not deal with how long the flag has to be half-down--in Illinois, it is apparent that the answer is "forever"...or until the next state holiday):

Gerald Ford, in dying, has sealed the record on Watergate. He never did apologize for shutting off the investigation and effectively ending what could only have been a beneficial inquest into the activities of officials at the highest levels of power in America. In other words, the public could only have benefitted from something like a truth and reconciliation committee--at any rate, public opinion of the government in 1973/74 could hardly have gone down.

But Ford, misguided idjit that he was, decided (isn't it a bad sign when a President unilaterally decides to be the decider?) to "heal" the nation, all on his own...nevermind that Vietnam shit...by pardoning his predecessor (whose memory, incidentally, Bush II has almost redeemed).

Of course, could we even make the offhand statement that Nixon has almost become respectable again if in fact there HAD been a full and thorough investigation into Watergate? Well, no. Because, I have to believe, Americans would be quite shocked to learn what governments do in the dark of night and then hide away from posterity.

Just as with Watergate, Bush II has tried mightily to seal off his own activities and those of his minions from future examination. He wants history to remember him fondly, but he needs to completely erase his actual actions in order for that fiction to obtain. I can't help but feel that we are letting him get away with this, after already allowing him too much, because we never changed the culture by hanging Nixon, that bastard, up by his entrails and spitting on the corpse, a la Mussolini.

And, isn't that permissive, or perhaps plain apathetic, culture something we can lay at the feet of the late Gerald Ford?