The history of the US has some embarrassing moments and the days of the Red Scare and McCarthyism is one such time….
But first any idea what I mean when I say McCarthyism? No?
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist party?”
In the 1950s, thousands of Americans who toiled in the government, served in the army, worked in the movie industry, or came from various walks of life had to answer that question before a congressional panel.
Senator Joseph McCarthy rose to national prominence by initiating a probe to ferret out communists holding prominent positions. During his investigations, safeguards promised by the Constitution were trampled.
http://www.ushistory.org/us/53a.asp
And trying to reach the most people with my historical looks at our world..I also have a video for those that get trip up over the big words……
Now that the stage has been set…..
I do a lot of reading and research and I find a lot of stuff that I should be using but I am only one old fart trying to make sense of the world around me…..recently while reading I found an article that looks at the return of McCarthyism……
Almost fifty years ago, an obscure senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, used fear as a means to initiate widespread panic and intimidate the innocent.
Fear can do this to people. Fear makes the rational become irrational, the innocent become guilty, the mainstream become evil. McCarthy used the fear of communism to instigate mass panic throughout America. Seemingly rational people began to accuse others of being communist without any evidence whatsoever. The panic gained momentum. Anyone who disagreed with McCarthy was accused of being a communist. Anyone who spoke out against the fear-inspired panic became guilty for even questioning the relevance of the panic. The McCarthyists, emboldened by a narrative of lies that became a pseudo-truth, went after anyone who displeased them: the reasonable, the level-headed, those who reserved judgment, those who realized that such fear-inspired panic is a constant throughout human history.
Read more…….
We are living in a country that is trying to force fear on us all…make us afraid of our neighbor or anyone that does not look as we do…….I refuse to buy into this crap lead by Our Dear Leader….I refuse to see the fear that he wants me to see….and I refuse to judge a people….I judge the person…..and so far I see NOTHING about Our Dear Leader that should be followed.
McCarthyism like Trumpism is nothing more than political babble.
So I Have Written!
Turn The Page!
In Saner Thought 
Did it ever really go away? If so, I didn’t notice. Even as late as 1998, I was still being told ‘Go and Live in Russia’, or ‘You’re just a tool of the Communists’. And I was simply an Ambulance Union organiser. When something doesn’t work as they want it to, or their own policies are proven to be ineffective, it’s always easy to ask ‘Are you now, or have you ever been?’, and blame it all on ‘Communists’.
Best wishes, Pete.
Never went away…..just went thru several name changes….chuq
like standardized testing. Ugh. Great video–useful as hell. And those were the “good old days”? Sounds freaking scary…how many more steps would it have taken to make curfews and identity checks and interrogations without charge a part of daily life?
…oh, wait…
It does sound a bit familiar, huh? chuq
When an angry and/or powerless group of people want to “redress their grievances” with the system, rarely does their anger get directed toward those actually responsible. They’re too powerful and will squash them. That’s why it’s really easy for them to get directed towards scapegoats. That could be The Other; people from other races, immigrants, etc. They are much weaker and far easier to hate/punish.
Scapegoating can also be directed using jealousy…aim them at the folks just slightly better off than they are. Folks with a little bit more power/privilege. For example, them “damn dirty commies” in unions. They have it better, but they aren’t nearly strong enough to win a fight with the ruling class armed with an angry mob. The only thing unions “drag down” is the ability of the 1% to exploit the entire population even more than they already are.
McCarthy exploited legitimate concerns about Communists infiltrating our government covertly to gain political clout and power. For him, it was all about a power grab. As you state, anyone who sought to put the brakes on his rampage was branded a Communist. The fact that it is not illegal to be a Communist or to have Communist sympathies or leanings was disregarded. It is illegal to try to overthrow our system of
government or to try to damage it with the help of outside forces. Finally enough people were caught in the snare that it impacted Joe Blow and Jane Doe. By that time a lot of lives had been ruined and, yes, a few genuine Communists who sought to collude with the Soviets were punished as well.
The concerns about Trump’s collusion with Putin is not outrageous, there is a lot of smoke. But it must be proven and, if it is, we must demand that justice be surgical and not scorched earth.
Collusion is not a crime….conspiracy is…..many people were ruined by accusations without proof other than the typical “I say so”…..some of the old ones still see Communist under every shadow….but see NO problem with the possibility of Russian interference…..like most thingas it is hypocritical……..chuq
Hear. Hear.