From a post in Prime …
As far as I can tell, one of the biggest costs of not knowing history is that you’re doomed to repeat it. For example, “Watergate, Watergate, Watergate.” For another, “Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.”
In my opinion, people reach for these historical analogies overwhelmingly for no reason but stupidity. They compare someone they disagree with to Hitler because they literally don’t know of any other leader in history who it is generally agreed was a tyrant.
I think the same thing is occurring on these “scandals” to Watergate. While Nixon was directly implicated in a shocking web of conspiracies and executive malfeasance, now mistakes made by workers in a regional IRS office are the same thing.
I think all of this comes back to: If you don’t know any history, you just repeat the historical buzzwords you do over and over again.
