-Gate

So I was reading yesterday - somewhere! - that the ever increasing use of the suffix -gate is an intentional device used by Repuglicans since the 70's as a FUD technique. Specifically, to conflate any and all scandals or alleged scandals to Watergate, and, of course and as usual, to confuse and muddy the waters of real scandals. I mean, that "crook" Hillary actually got caught in Travelgate (an actual point I heard raised at T-giving dinner by a Palin suppporter), and ain't they all crooks anyways? 

The gestalt of what we're dealing with here is becoming clearer to me: Everything that is happening today can trace directly back to the 60's and 70's - civil rights and the hippies, precisely. Both these movements caused white crackers to shit their pants; it caused the wholesale re-alignment of the political parties (the Dems used to control the South, and the Repugs the northeast, not so long ago); the hippies successful demonization of the war in Vietnam led to a wholesale re-selling of the military, nicely setting us up for our current Imperial ways -- SUPPORT THE TROOPS  can now be shouted at anyone who would dare question any aspect of military policy; Lee Atwater and the Silent Majority introduced our current political operative handbooks, and we've been following them since; mass media, specifically TV, made Nixon look like a chump, so the large scale take over of the media by conservative forces has utterly and completely removed the media as an objective force - also the Pentagon Papers. For a good example, see the Washington Post, then and now; the rise of the Religious Right, in direct response to the secular humanism and dare I say, paganism of the Hippies.

I could go on - it's a fertile topic and would make for a wonderful book or thesis. 

It gives me some hope too, that once these old farts die, they'll take their wars with them, and we can have a go at a fresher outlook, more in line with the realities of the 21st century.