A lot's been written about Nixon. (They've made movies too.) One of the stories (theories) is that Nixon was a history buff and saw a parallel between the empires of Rome and the US.
The theory goes on that he also foresaw the end of the US empire.
Being Nixon, he wanted to prevent that.
Nixon saw the counterculture movement as the way Pax Americana would come crashing down. But the counterculture movement was splintered, falling into shambles. There was, as he saw it, only one thing holding the movement together.
Hatred of war.
So, Harry, Nixon began in that oval office, Harry... You gotta end the war in Southeast Asia, for then the counterculture movement will fracture and disappear, and we'll save our Pax Americana!
Get to it, Harry!
It's Henry, Mr President.
Of course it is. Now go get me some peace! And oh, Harry? Tell Mr Presley he can come back in now and pick out his badge.
So Henry got to work. He murdered a few hundred thousand or so, but his boss finally got what he wanted.
Henry had worked for the Rockefeller Foundation.
Nixon was a Republican.
The counterculture movement was far left (if it was anywhere at all).
Times change. Nixon, a Republican, had nothing against napalm or burning little babies alive, but Donald Trump, also a Republican, of a sort, is the complete opposite. Trump likes to create things, and not empires, and he doesn't like seeing things destroyed.
Nixon led to Ford, to Carter, to Reagan, to Bush, to Clinton, to another Bush... And through it all a red thread gradually emerged.
The neocons.
As Glenn Greenwald explains below, the neocons care about only one thing. They might say things about other policy positions, but they don't really care about them. They're lying. There's only one thing they care about.
The antiwar people today are on the right. Not the left. The right. The neocons are on the left. They took over.
The antiwar people? They're the MAGA REPUBLICANS - the people that today's Democrats want you to be afraid of. Because they're Putin puppets, or Kremlin trolls. Or whatever. Because war is peace. And ignorance is strength.
It might not be until the final moments of the first clip below that you get what Greenwald's getting at. When you finally see the wheels turning in that head, trying to further dissemble about the real agenda. Odds are good you're still only scratching the surface.
Things shift all the time. The neocons, once the secret force behind the Republicans, have found a new host.
There's only one thing they care about. It's not something you're going to like.