Watergate, Russiagate, and Honesty as an American Virtue

Watergate, Russiagate, and Honesty as an American Virtue

When I first learned about Watergate, I was not particularly scandalized. I thought spying on the opposition was par for the course and that Nixon happened to be particularly hated by the left and paid the price. Growing up in Eastern Europe under communism had made me somewhat cynical about politics and life in general. I had been warned since early childhood to be extremely cautious about what I said to anyone. This was especially true for telephonic communications, since wiretapping private conversations was a daily occurrence, often with dire consequences.

Yet, when I arrived in America in the mid-1990s, I was surprised at how strongly my friends from both sides of the ideological spectrum condemned Watergate as well as any deception on the part of public figures. I admired the level of honesty, integrity, and high moral standards expected of politicians and people in general. I have since wholeheartedly embraced the American way of life and value system. This newly found purpose and optimism gradually cured my nihilistic juvenile doubts.

“Wisdom is melancholy,” wrote the legendary Karel Čapek in a story titled “Agathon, or Concerning Wisdom.” I used to believe, like many Europeans, that one had to be skeptical and melancholic to understand life truly and profoundly. Cheerfulness and faith in public virtue had seemed to me awfully naive, given all the suffering and oppression in the world. I used to share the common European disdain for happy-ending Hollywood films, in which the protagonist overcomes impossible obstacles with courage and determination and ultimately prevails.

Then it dawned on me that America’s success is largely due to values and character. It is much preferable to believe in justice, heroes, and happy-ending stories than to wax lyrical about the intellectual depth of a depressive avant-garde film that no one can truly comprehend let alone bear to watch till the end.

Fast-forward to the present day, when Watergate has been replaced by Russiagate. Victor Davis Hanson elaborates:

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just released a trove of apparently once-classified documents — with promises of much more to follow.

The new material describes the role of the Obama administration’s intelligence and investigatory directors … in undermining the 2016 Trump presidential campaign. In addition, their efforts extended to sabotaging the 2016-2017 presidential transition and, by extension, the first three years of the Trump presidency.

…

Contrary to a four-year Democrat Party narrative that “18 intelligence agencies” had long claimed Russian collusion, the top directors apprised Obama that their expert colleagues had found no such evidence of Trump-Putin collusion.

Yet outgoing President Obama allegedly directed them to ignore such an assessment. Instead, they began spreading narratives that President-elect Trump had been colluding with the Russians.

Leaks followed. Media hysteria crested. And soon Mueller and his left-wing “dream team” of lawyers targeted President Trump.

…

Obama, Brennan, Clapper, Comey and others will likely never face legal consequences for the damage they’ve done to our institutions and foreign policy. But that does not mean they should be exempt from an ongoing and disinterested effort to find and finally expose the whole truth.

The above allegations dwarf Watergate in their magnitude and gravity. Yet numerous Democrat supporters automatically dismiss the Russiagate reports and refuse a priori to even consider the possibility that any of the allegations may be true. Has the American soul changed so much in the span of some 50 years that people no longer care about a disinterested pursuit of the truth? I surely hope not.

I believe what has changed is the level of outright deception that major media sources have engaged in to promote an aggressive anti-American narrative. The core audiences of these outlets still trust them due to their unjustly earned prestige and successful propaganda tactics.

As early as 1710, Jonathan Swift discussed the phenomenon of political lying:

No wonder if an infant so miraculous in its birth [namely, political lying] should be destined for great adventures; and accordingly, we see it hath been the guardian spirit of a prevailing party for almost twenty years. It can conquer kingdoms without fighting…. It gives and resumes employments; can sink a mountain to a molehill and raise a molehill to a mountain; hath presided for many years at committees of elections; can … make a saint of an atheist, and a patriot of a profligate; can furnish foreign ministers with intelligence and raise or let fall the credit of the nation.

“Falsehood flies,” concludes Swift, “and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.”

The antidote to persistent political lies is to keep following the evidence and exposing the truth, as many of the new American media are doing, before it becomes too late to tell fact from fiction. Trust in the legacy media has reached an all-time low. Hopefully they can’t cry wolf for too much longer.

As the popular adage goes, “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” The truth has finally put on its shoes, and it’s time for it to travel around the world.

Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.

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