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.
