Two examples of exactly what's wrong with this country.

1.  Standards decayed to the irrelevant level.

I think Nixon's historical legacy is enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and deservedly so. 

If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12 hours news story. The idea that it took down a presidency is crazy.

 J. D. Vance.

Vance is probably correct.  Watergate wouldn't have taken down Nixon today.

Watergate was inexcusable.  Nixon should not have been pardoned.  He should have been tried, convicted, and served jail time. That failure, combined with the failure to push traitorous Southerners after the Civil War, have helped give us Donald Trump.

What Nixon did give  us was Jimmy Carter.  Ford couldn't survive his association with Nixon and inflation.  Carter was not a good President, but he was a decent man.  That meant a lot.

And, and James Donald Bowman, James David Hamel, James David Vance, JD Vance should remember this.  While Carter as a one term President, the then youthful Democratic Party swept into power in that election and reset the country's middle meter to the left.  It remained there for decades.  Right now Republicans are pointing towards New York and saying "look, the Democrats are commies!" Well, the swing to the left and the right wing histrionics about it were exactly what occurred in the 1973 time frame, brought about by the corruption of Nixon, the Vietnam War, and economic distress.

A failed war.  A failed economy.  And corruption.  

Sound familiar Republicans?

2.  They actually feel Trump is a prophet

There's a reason why Donald Trump is still here. God's will is that his work is not done. By the way, our president knows that.

House majority whip Tom Emmer.

Hitler survived 42 known assassination attempts.

Nobody knows the mind of God.  As I earlier noted here, Donald may be our Attila, whom early Medieval Christians regarded as the "Scourge of God", Flagellum Dei.  Medieval Christians, whom Protestants latter slandered as being ignorant, were clear eyed enough to attribute Attila with being allowed to proceed in destruction as a punishment for their sins.  If Trump's luck with surviving assassination attempts has been due to the divine, given that he's a completely unGodly man, that possibility should be at least considered.

But beyond that, and this is truly scary, the far right Evangelical branch of American Protestantism is actually treading upon what essentially amounts to a new fringe religion, something that is well within the country's historical culture.  The 19th Century was full of them, with a collection of religions that proclaimed themselves founded on the teachings of Christ but lead by a new latter day prophet whose message departed from the Christian gospel.  In the 20th Century we've seen a few more.

A new book by journalist of the New York Times holds that those in Trump's cabinet believe that he's endowed with nearly an otherworldly foresight and is always right in spite of all the evidence that he's demented and was never very smart.  Like Communists in the mid 20th Century, they'll excuse any failure as temporary or a simple misunderstanding.  Molotov even excused Stalin's imprisoning his won wife.  Hardcore Communist, we might note, have a similar mindset to radical false religious prophets, and their adherents do as well.

Normally the further these movements go, and the longer they last, the more disastrous the fall.