IVIV hating Nixon was easy

[dougmillison at comcast.net]

Agree with Mark the K. Identifying Nixon as a monster was easy, back in the day, especially for an observer as perceptive as Pynchon. Everybody I knew in the 60s had a brother or cousin or uncle or somebody who got maimed or killed in Vietnam, Nixon was scooping them up and throwing them into the fire, and even the patriots knew this was stupid by 1970 if not before. 
And, Nixon was seen as untrustworthy all the way back to his earliest days as a national political figure, when he got himself elected in part by lying about his opponent - he never could have earned the reputation that flowered in full as "Tricky Dick" if people hadn't mistrusted him for years, that track was already grooved even before he came across as a shifty shyster in his televised debate with Kennedy. The Watergate revelations just put frosting on the cake, confirming what Americans had known for decades, that Nixon was a crook and a liar with no respect for the US Constitution. 


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