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@Skibboleth
This is where, in the standard thumbnail psychological sketch of Nixon, we talk about the Franklins and the Kennedys and how he just never felt loved. One theory is that the break-in was trying to dig up dirt on Ted Kennedy re:Chappaquidick, as part of Nixon's long running grudge against the Kennedy clan he always felt got away with everything. There was definitely a degree to the whole ratfucking enterprise by which Nixon self-justified by pointing to his enemies' actions and to his even larger suspicions of their actions, he felt this was revenge or par for the course variously.
Shades of the psychology of Fascism, how the worst atrocities often come from a sense of having been oppressed oneself.
The majority of people who wanted Clinton in jail saw the Emails as a fair pretext to put the woman who had been accused of everything from killing aides to raping (female and male) Air Force One stewards over the years behind bars. Trump's actual prosecutions are so pretextual as to strain credulity. Nixon is in that same tradition in many ways: if he hadn't done so much else, he might have gotten away with Watergate.
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