"Watchmen" takes too many liberties to be truly, politically relevant for anyone that actually knows history. Nixon, for one, is a scapegoat for the Vietnam war, which was deemed necessary by BOTH Democrats and Republicans (Nixon's party) as an extension of plans begun in the Eisenhower administration and was then fully embraced first by Kennedy (Democrat). The idea of Nixon overcoming term limits might fit with what we know (or think we know) about his personality, but again, it's irrelevant - not only didn't it happen, but faced with impeachment, Nixon resigned rather than continue to stand defiantly.
Whether you agree with the promise of economic equality and wealth-redistribution element of Communism and Socialism or not, the fact of the matter was that, like the Nazis, the Soviets were, if not at the beginning, then certainly by the Vietnam era, fiercely militant in their quest to spread that ideology. "Watchmen" projects that behavior onto "conservatives" and, by all indications, conservatives ONLY - it just barely, and reluctantly, acknowledges Rorschach as a hero IN SPITE of his conservatism, which seems incomplete because even he hates Nixon. Say what you will about the last president (Bush), but that's not what has always characterized the Republican party. Eisenhower was a Republican that knew what war was like and ostensibly kept the U.S. out of it while still being aware and knowledgeable enough to know that contingencies had to be planned for. As a matter of fact, it was Eisenhower in his exit-speech that warned about the very "military industrial complex" for which Republicans are blamed for expanding to this day, whether rightly or wrongly so. Kennedy knew all this, too, and actually had the audacity to try things militarily that Eisenhower didn't, but the people behind things like "Watchmen" seem to conveniently forget that. Kennedy's thousand days in office were DOMINATED by the quest to push back Communism if for no other reason than that Kruschev wasn't going to give him any choice in the matter. Whether it was Cuba,Berlin or Vietnam, Russia's policy was to use certain vulnerable places, particularly third world countries, as easy targets and launching points for their expansion of Communism westward. An attack on them was thus considered by Kennedy and Johnson - by DEMOCRATS - as at least the prelude to a direct attack on the U.S., something Russia was set up to do during the Cuban missile crisis without the U.S. really even knowing about it until it was almost too late.
Ultimately, you can't come away from "Watchmen" with any real APPLICABLE insight into either ethics or politics. It's a thinly-veiled propaganda piece from a bitter and probably radical British author and artist trying to point a finger at the big bad United States. It's a great story, but it's not relevant in the way everyone would like to make it out to be. It also deflates its own moral superiority by offering up and ultimately accepting a solution to bring about world peace that is, in practice, little better than what either the Nazis or Communists could have come up with. The difference between liberal and conservative ideology, and probably why conservatives still seem to have something of an edge in everyday life, is that for better or worse, the conservative ideology says that people can choose to do ABSOLUTE GOOD or ABSOLUTE BAD whereas the liberal ideology says that good or bad doesn't matter because everyone has different motives and different excuses. Accept the former and at least you know who you are and aren't constantly second-guessing your own moral and ethical compass. With the latter, you've essentially got an excuse to blow a hole through your head because, with the exception of certain key issues like homosexualityand abortion, no matter what you do, you're never going to be able to feel certain that you're doing the right thing because you're always too worried about what someone else, with whom you don't and could never truly relate, is going to think or feel about it. No wonder something like "Watchmen" refuses to live and let live given the solutions it chooses, as clearly illustrated by the frustration of the journalists at the end because, with world peace, they no longer have anything to write about. I'm not saying that Republicans and the conservative right of late haven't made BIG mistakes, most of which contradict what they're supposed to stand for, but that ending to "Watchmen," more than anything else in the story, signifies the absolute futility and self-contradiction of a truly liberal approach to life AND to government.
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"Watchmen" takes too many liberties to be truly, politically relevant for anyone that actually knows history. Nixon, for one, is a scapegoat for the Vietnam war, which was deemed necessary by BOTH Democrats and Republicans (Nixon's party) as an extension of plans begun in the Eisenhower administration and was then fully embraced first by Kennedy (Democrat). The idea of Nixon overcoming term limits might fit with what we know (or think we know) about his personality, but again, it's irrelevant - not only didn't it happen, but faced with impeachment, Nixon resigned rather than continue to stand defiantly.
Whether you agree with the promise of economic equality and wealth-redistribution element of Communism and Socialism or not, the fact of the matter was that, like the Nazis, the Soviets were, if not at the beginning, then certainly by the Vietnam era, fiercely militant in their quest to spread that ideology. "Watchmen" projects that behavior onto "conservatives" and, by all indications, conservatives ONLY - it just barely, and reluctantly, acknowledges Rorschach as a hero IN SPITE of his conservatism, which seems incomplete because even he hates Nixon. Say what you will about the last president (Bush), but that's not what has always characterized the Republican party. Eisenhower was a Republican that knew what war was like and ostensibly kept the U.S. out of it while still being aware and knowledgeable enough to know that contingencies had to be planned for. As a matter of fact, it was Eisenhower in his exit-speech that warned about the very "military industrial complex" for which Republicans are blamed for expanding to this day, whether rightly or wrongly so. Kennedy knew all this, too, and actually had the audacity to try things militarily that Eisenhower didn't, but the people behind things like "Watchmen" seem to conveniently forget that. Kennedy's thousand days in office were DOMINATED by the quest to push back Communism if for no other reason than that Kruschev wasn't going to give him any choice in the matter. Whether it was Cuba,Berlin or Vietnam, Russia's policy was to use certain vulnerable places, particularly third world countries, as easy targets and launching points for their expansion of Communism westward. An attack on them was thus considered by Kennedy and Johnson - by DEMOCRATS - as at least the prelude to a direct attack on the U.S., something Russia was set up to do during the Cuban missile crisis without the U.S. really even knowing about it until it was almost too late.
Ultimately, you can't come away from "Watchmen" with any real APPLICABLE insight into either ethics or politics. It's a thinly-veiled propaganda piece from a bitter and probably radical British author and artist trying to point a finger at the big bad United States. It's a great story, but it's not relevant in the way everyone would like to make it out to be. It also deflates its own moral superiority by offering up and ultimately accepting a solution to bring about world peace that is, in practice, little better than what either the Nazis or Communists could have come up with. The difference between liberal and conservative ideology, and probably why conservatives still seem to have something of an edge in everyday life, is that for better or worse, the conservative ideology says that people can choose to do ABSOLUTE GOOD or ABSOLUTE BAD whereas the liberal ideology says that good or bad doesn't matter because everyone has different motives and different excuses. Accept the former and at least you know who you are and aren't constantly second-guessing your own moral and ethical compass. With the latter, you've essentially got an excuse to blow a hole through your head because, with the exception of certain key issues like homosexualityand abortion, no matter what you do, you're never going to be able to feel certain that you're doing the right thing because you're always too worried about what someone else, with whom you don't and could never truly relate, is going to think or feel about it. No wonder something like "Watchmen" refuses to live and let live given the solutions it chooses, as clearly illustrated by the frustration of the journalists at the end because, with world peace, they no longer have anything to write about. I'm not saying that Republicans and the conservative right of late haven't made BIG mistakes, most of which contradict what they're supposed to stand for, but that ending to "Watchmen," more than anything else in the story, signifies the absolute futility and self-contradiction of a truly liberal approach to life AND to government.