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Too many people in the United States worry about themselves by blaming the fascist space in which the United States is. For nearly six years, “Oh, but those emails!” has become a social media shorthand for Americans who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election or voted for a candidate other than Hillary Rodham Clinton or Donald Trump.

With the January 6 hearing underway in the U.S. House of Representatives, the question of how the U.S. moves into the present remains all about Trump and 2016. Experts and ordinary Americans alike are short-sighted (or really, Trump-savvy) in view. they. an explanation of how the US is taking a slide towards right-wing corruption.

Journalist and cultural anthropologist Sarah Kendzior in particular has done some outstanding work predicting Trump’s rise and explaining the kleptocratic nature of his rise, including her book Hiding in Plain Sight. For Kendzior and others, they sometimes mention Ronald Reagan or cite the US Supreme Court’s Bush v Gore decision (which handed George W Bush the presidency in 2000) in understanding how American leaders prepared the US for Trump. But they do not explore further the path that has brought the US and its democracy to the brink.

At least 50 years ago, attempts by other governments to alter potential election results were first exposed. Granted, Trump’s television attempt to steal the presidential election by force isn’t anything entirely new, but simply a variation on the “dirty trick” theme since President Richard Nixon.

With the 50th anniversary of The Plumbers Democratic National Committee breaking at the Watergate complex having passed on June 17, many Americans will recognize the most notorious attempt to steal the presidential election in US history before January 6, 2021. Few Americans understood at the time the dangers involved. inflicted by Nixon’s American democracy and his 1972 campaign operations, particularly in covering up their spying, wiretapping, and disinformation operations against Democratic candidates.

My own memories as a four and a half year old are tied to Nixon’s televised announcement at 9 p.m. on Thursday night, August 8, 1974, announcing his official retirement from office.

It started due to a traumatic injury. My mother was cooking in the shared kitchen of our second-floor flat, making some sort of chicken dish. He opened the oven door, just took the chicken out of it and put it on the stove. I tried to get on the stove to feel it using the open oven door as a step stool, and I burned the outside of my right calf. The skin around the burn area has disappeared (this is a fairly good second degree burn), leaving a white circular burn scar. Mom applied ointment and bandages and told me to take two Bayer aspirins for pain relief.

Still crying in pain from the shock of seeing, smelling, and feeling my skin burning in the kitchen, I lay down on the sofa in the living room, which was slightly to the right of the TV. A man with a pig’s head appeared on the 19-inch Quasar color television screen, a man I vaguely recognized as President Nixon. I remember mom shaking her head, and Walter Cronkite calling it a “sad time” for the country. Nixon looked just as sad and pathetic as I felt that night, as other Americans probably felt too. I don’t understand everything I see, of course. Words like “impeachment,” “trial,” and “resignation” are far beyond a child’s vocabulary a month away from kindergarten. But I saw what I saw, and more than a moment.

For the past 48 years, I have flashbacks to those times. With that, I was encouraged to learn more about the unprecedented level of political corruption that Nixon brought to the White House and maintained during his more than five years as president. The worst part of Watergate and the digging of all the corruption that followed was what happened after Nixon stepped down from office on August 9, 1974. A month later, newly inaugurated President Gerald Ford issued Proclamation 4311, pardoning Nixon for any and all crimes in which he played. .

Ford’s excuse? “As president, my primary concern must always be the greatest good of all the Americans who serve me… My concern is the immediate future of this great nation,” Ford said in a speech defending his decision. So much for, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over,” Ford said a month earlier after taking the oath of office.

Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon for his illegal activities to undermine his Democratic opponents and then cover up that activity was shortsighted, thirsty, and narcissistic. Ford allowed Nixon and everyone else to be punished for their role at Watergate, extending the “national nightmare” to this day. The decision not to convict the ringleaders of the greatest attempt to destroy American democracy at that time would have led to even more corruption and even bolder scandals.

One can draw connections from Nixon and Ford to Iran-Contra, to Bush v Gore, to Citizens United and the ever-increasing amount of black money in the American election, to Trump, and now to the January 6 hearings.

With an excessive focus on Trump’s rise, though so many ignored the slide that led to the January 6 hearings, and with it, serious doubts that Trump will ever be punished for his fascist deeds. And that will likely encourage him and others to try again. Despite what experts like Sarah Kendzior and others have written in recent years, the US movement towards corruption and fascism has never been “hidden in plain sight” at all.

This flight to destruction began in response to the expansion of civil and human rights for blacks and white women and in response to the quagmire of Vietnam who had become politically cold warriors seeking economic access to mainland China. Right-wing forces have blinded Americans and the rest of the world with their penchant for unpolished and craved rudeness. They have emboldened progressives and the left to call them out for their willful ignorance, corruption, and lies, in 1968, in 1972, and in 2022. Trump and his corruption of American politics, the fascism of his nominee, and the band of gleeful kleptocrats he leads , its rise is just the latest danger in a representative democracy heavily influenced by white male incitement. The belief that the election of Hillary Clinton in 2016 will reverse this 50-plus year trend is as delusional as the belief that the foundations of America’s political institutions remain strong.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.

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