This is the kind of BS that flourished during the McCarthy era, which ran from around 1949-1954. It was named after Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin. During his decade in the senate between 1947-1957, he and his staff became notorious for making outlandish accusations that, though initially directed to government employees, would later include Americans from all walks of life.
It started with McCarthy’s list of 205 individuals -“Communist sympathizers” who had infiltrated the State Department, Hollywood, the arts. Among them were Charlie Chaplin, conductor Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), actress & singer Lena Horne, & American folk singer Burl Ives.
Also among McCarthy’s targets were writers Dashiell Hammett – The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man and other crime detective novels – and Lillian Hellman, screenwriter & playwright known for her success on Broadway & for her decades-long relationship with Hammett. She was blacklisted after appearing before The House Commmittee of -Un-American activities.
The equivalent of McCarthy’s “red scare” could very well be trump’s “deep state,” given some of those he has nominated for his cabinet. From The Guardian: “Patel promised last year on Steve Bannon’s show to go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media … who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.”
Kash Patel, whom Trump nominated to become the director of the FBI, published a “deep state” enemies list in his book, Government Gangsters, which can be compared to McCarthy’s list of 205 . “We’re going to come after you … Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice.”
Then you have Pam Bondi, trump’s pick for attorney general, saying on Fox News last year that when Trump wins “you know what’s going to happen: the Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones. The investigators will be investigated. Because the deep state … they were hiding in the shadows.But now, they have a spotlight on them, and they can all be investigated, and the House needs to be cleaned out. Because now we know who most of them are; there’s a record of it, and we can clean house next turn. And that’s what has to happen.”
Trump, meanwhile, on a Meet the Press interview, said he will most likely pardon the J6 rioters and that the J6 committee members should be jailed. Then, in a early morning rant on his truth social, trump said that Cheney could be in “a lot of trouble.” He wants the FBI to investigate her.
And the house agrees.
Before the election, I posted something on Instagram about Kamala and my hope that she would win. A man who had been on our podcast – a talented photographer – said that he was shocked that I, of all people, didn’t recognize the evil of the democrats. I replied that I was shocked that he didn’t recognize the evil of trump.
So this is what we’ve come to. Before trump even is inaugurated, we’re headed toward another McCarthy era. But the next four years will be far worse than the McCarthy era.
