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American democracy keeps facing the same test. Reconstruction. Watergate. January 6th. Each was an inkblot: some saw freedom and law, others tyranny and betrayal.
The danger isn’t just the crisis—it’s perception unmoored from fact. A lie, repeated often enough, creates its own inkblot. Not to reveal the viewer. But to control them.
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#history #blackmastodon #histodons #blackandwhite #photo #photography #politics #democracy #fascism #civilwar
Reconstruction was the first great inkblot. The war was over. The Union preserved. Slavery abolished. To freedmen, it meant democracy fulfilled: citizenship, schools, the vote. To white southerners, it meant humiliation: Black men in office, white supremacy shaken. The same moment: freedom, or tyranny.
2/17
Image: Union soldier representing the Freedman's Bureau / Drawn by A.R. Waud, 1868. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/92514996
The Freedmen’s Bureau? Lifeline—or corruption. The 14th & 15th Amendments? Democracy perfected—or perverted. Reconstruction was not a single meaning. It was a national test.
3/17
Image:The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, June 16, 1866; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.
A century later came Watergate. A burglary, small at first. Then the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. What Americans saw depended on what they were prepared to believe.
4/16
Image: In this Nov. 17, 1973 file photo, President Richard Nixon speaks near Orlando, Fla. to the Associated Press Managing Editors annual meeting. Nixon told the APME "I am not a crook."
For some, Watergate proved democracy’s strength: Press exposing corruption. Congress investigating. Courts demanding compliance. A resignation that showed no man was above the law. For others, it was only a witch hunt.
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Image:Tourists reading President Nixon resignation news, 8 August 1974. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive.
Even Nixon’s helicopter ride divided opinion.
To some, disgrace.
To others, dignity.
Watergate offered no single meaning. Only a choice.
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Image: Richard Nixon flashes his trademark V signs before boarding Marine One and leaving the White House grounds on August 9, 1974. The night before, he had announced that he would resign as president because of the Watergate scandal.Oliver F. Atkins/National Archives.
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