Who here was sentient and aware during the Saturday Night Massacre?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

23. I was, very much.

I had been out of college for four years, had long since become a devout liberal who already loathed Nixon and had been watching the Watergate matter develop since the burglary was first discovered. I was with friends when the Saturday Night Massacre came out on the news and we went completely nuts! One of the differences between that situation and this, is that nobody really saw the SNM coming - as slimy as Nixon was, he wasn't expected to do something that extreme - so there was a lot of shock as well as fury.

This, in contrast, is like watching a slow-motion train wreck where you already know somebody blew up the tracks up ahead, and all you can do is watch as the train heads for its inevitable derailment. Is it worse? Hard to say. The Saturday Night Massacre was eventually Nixon's undoing, but we shouldn't forget that even October of '73, many Republicans continued to staunchly defend Nixon and supported his insistence that it was all just a witch hunt (sound familiar?). This time, though, there is an active attempt by a number of GOPers in Congress (most notably Nunes and his minions) to help Trump obstruct justice and poison public opinion against the investigation - which did not happen back then. Even though Republicans supported Nixon they weren't in on the conspiracy. So that part is definitely much more disturbing.