Don't Drink the Lemonade!

In 1954, Senator Joseph McCarthy was censured by the Senate for being an unscrupulous bully who waged a campaign of fear mongering that left countless lives damaged or even destroyed. "McCarthyism" as it has come to be known cast a pall of suspicion over an already anxious nation. We look back in disgust and shame that we as a people were so susceptible to this type of reckless demagoguery.

If there's any good news here it's that he was censured on a bi-partisan basis once we found the courage to regain our national soul. The vote against Senator McCarthy was a lopsided 67-22. Perhaps more importantly, the title of this post is a reference to something said by one of the 22 who did vote on the side of Senator McCarthy. A fellow Midwestern Republican, William E. Jenner of Indiana said, "Joe, you're the kid who came to the party and pee'd in the lemonade." Clearly we had reached a point where we began to look inward and say, "Oh my God, what have we done?!"

It has been said that history doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes. History may very well show that like HUAC before it, MAGA is a dirty four-letter word that signaled a point at which half of the country chose to forsake our core public virtues. I'm not worried about my country because Trump supporters are bad people; I'm worried because they aren't. Many of these are salt of the earth people whose fears were too easily exploited by a narcissist without even the smallest trace of a conscience.

The pillars of our democratic republic are being savaged by our president, and nearly all elected "leaders" of his party are too cowardly to stand up to him. To be clear, it's not that they agree with him; it's the worst kept secret in America that privately, many Republican elected officials are horrified by much of what Trump does, says and is, but they are too afraid him and his supporters to stand up for what they know is right. They choose instead to sacrifice their souls on the altar of feigned agreement with their fuehrer.

For the entirety of Trump's political existence, the truth itself has been an enemy to be vanquished by him and his followers. I could easily fill a blog post with nothing but a list of the most outrageous examples of this, but for now I'll focus only on the most recent. After Trump lost Georgia and that loss was confirmed by a hand recount, he lashed out at Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger. Please understand that Mr. Raffensperger is a rock ribbed Republican who made no secret of the fact that he voted for Trump. Nevertheless, during a Thanksgiving press conference, the president called him "an enemy of the people" for simply doing his job with integrity. This follows numerous attacks on the free press, the military, the intelligence community and anyone else who would speak the truth rather than tell Donald Trump that his every fabrication, however preposterous, is the unvarnished truth.

For those of us who want to remain optimistic, we should remember that while this period may evoke the specter of McCarthyism, history may "rhyme" again in another way. Right before McCarthy's censure that effectively signaled the beginning of the end, Senator McCarthy's favorable/unfavorable rating was a net (-11%) unfavorable. That's basically where Trump has always been. My fervent hope is that after he leaves office and we regain some of our lost decency and values, Trumpism will be as reviled as McCarthyism and for the same reason.

Frank Capra's America on Backward Day

Yesterday, January 31st was Backward Day (look it up) and it couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. For those unfamiliar with this, on Backward Day we're supposed to do the opposite of what's normally done. Since everything this country has ever maintained to be good, honorable or noble is being undone in favor of blind fealty to an American fuehrer, the timing is poetic.

Like Frank Capra movies, we used to be the country that celebrated the triumph of what's right over the forces of corrupt and powerful bullies thanks to the courage of underdogs and society's belief in the dignity of the common man. Sadly, thanks to the cowardice of the entire Republican Party, we have officially abandoned everything admirable about our system of government. Nearly every Republican we elected to provide a check on a would-be autocrat has chosen instead to be an accomplice in the systematic dismantling of every single thing we once stood for, leaving in their place an indelible stain on our history.

Every day seems to bring a new example of things happening that I once thought would never happen here. One small example is Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) trying repeatedly to illegally expose the "whistleblower" in the Ukraine scandal. There are several reasons why this is so indicative of moral rot and bankruptcy of the Republican Party in the age of Trump: 1) We passed laws protecting whistleblowers so that someone who stood up for what was right could be shielded from retaliation from the criminals they exposed. 2) Rand Paul is philosophically a libertarian, meaning he is in the vanguard of those who would support rooting out and stopping the corruption of an overreaching government official. 3) There is no probative or other value in naming this person, so 4) The real and bone-chilling reason Paul is doing this is pure thuggery. He is counting on intimidation of those who would do the right thing. He is like someone in the early 60s sharing the names of people in Mississippi who were helping blacks register to vote.

We used to stand for the rule of law and while there was the sort of partisan wrangling one might expect in a system such as ours, what we're now seeing is so far beyond the pale on a continual basis that things that would have been front page scandals just a few years ago now provoke a collective yawn. It was like a bad dream yesterday to see headlines that Republicans had managed to block any witnesses from testifying in the impeachment trial. That is to say, they managed to stop facts from coming to light. To put it another way, they succeeded in obstructing justice and helping to create a post-truth world.

The worst part of all is that elected Republicans still know right from wrong but they refuse to do what's right. There is virtually nothing and no one they will defend against Trump's wrath. The free press, the military, our intelligence agencies, war heroes, gold star families, Navy SEALs...are all examples of those Trump has gone after if they differ with Dear Leader. In the last example on that list, Navy SEALs, they have been lumped in with the "deep state"...Navy SEALs!! Trump undid the punishment for the SEAL who by all accounts did what was wrong, then went on to punish those who dared to stand up and do what was right.

If this actually were a Frank Capra movie, Donald Trump would have succeeded in turning Bedford Falls in to Pottersville and the MAGA hat wearing faithful would worship at the altar of Mr. Potter and call George Bailey a "libtard". As proud as I once was of this country is how ashamed of it I am now. Happy Backward Day indeed.