Conspiracy

An unsourced quote from Gary Wills about the 1972 Presidential election — possibly from The New York Review of Books back in the day — quoted in Sen. George McGovern’s autobiography: Grassroots (p. 245):

Vietnam is the shared crime that has turned our country into…a pact of blood. Now patriotism means the complicity of fellows in a crime; if we are all in it, no one is worse than the rest; we excuse each other; we keep the secret. That is why the members of the pact had to re-elect a war criminal as their ruler. Senator George S. McGovern was hysterically feared because he was an accuser.

Members of the pact most fear the man who has not joined in their mystery of communal criminality. When ten men commit a crime, and the eleventh refuses, the ten will turn on him, fear and suspect him. They resent him because he is free, his mouth not gagged by the knowledge of his own guilt.