McCarthyism Redux
To know where we’re going, it helps to pause, look back, and see if we’ve been down this path before.
For example, BushCheneyAshcroftRumsfeld & Co. — backed by a compliant chorus of Wobblycrats — currently has our democracy headed down a particularly dark path. They’re suspending our individual liberties, empowering more police agents to snoop on us, targeting citizens they say are “suspicious,” asking us citizens to snoop on each other, and imprisoning people with no evidence of illegal activities. They’re condemning and browbeating anyone who questions any of this, branding dissenters as unpatriotic and treasonous. They’re operating in secret, declaring that they don’t have to reveal who is on their lists … or why.
How interesting, then, that as the Bushites push us down this path, an ominous piece of our past has surfaced, giving us a marker that ought to give us pause. Five thousand pages of transcripts have recently been released, revealing details of secret hearings conducted 50 years ago by the infamous and venomous Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Generating a nationwide “Red Scare,” McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunt smeared thousands and ruined the careers of hundreds of good Americans, turning family members and colleagues against each other and miring our nation in a decade of self-destructive paranoia. McCarthy’s bullying demagoguery was backed by cowardly media barons, opportunistic preachers and pundits, right-wing zealots, and flag-waving leaders of both political parties.
Sound familiar?
McCarthyism is loose on our land again, pushed not by one deranged, malicious senator, but by a self-righteous, slow-witted president who is under the wing of such maniacal, anti-democratic ideologues as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft.
To keep America from stumbling down this dangerous path, We the People must speak out against the Bushites’ push for more police power, intrusion, secrecy, xenophobia, militarism, and executive rule.
The Tinhorn President
Even by today’s big money standards, a million bucks is a lot to pay for a TV ad, but George W. spared no expense in putting together an ad for his upcoming election campaign. Unfortunately, he stuck us taxpayers with the bill.
The ad has already run as “news” on all the networks, and we’ll see snippets of it again and again next year when George goes campaigning. But Bush spent more than taxpayer dollars to make this ad for his personal political advancement — he also spent the integrity of the American presidency, using our brave soldiers as his political props, then trying to lie to We the People about his shameful action.
The scene was the U.S.S. Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that was returning to San Diego from action in Bush’s Iraqi war. George’s political hack, Karl Rove, thought it would be a PR coup to have Bush greet the troops. But he quickly shifted from greeting troops to manipulating them. He dressed W. up in a military flight suit, put him in a fighter jet, and swooshed him out to the carrier, making a dramatic, made-for-TV, tailhook landing.
What imagery … and irony! Here was America’s most famous Vietnam draft dodger — a guy who used his family connections to keep from fighting for his country — now strutting around posing as some “Top Gun.”
Caught in this crass act of politicizing the war and the troops, the White House did what it’s best known for doing: It lied. Bush, they said, had to take the jet, because the carrier was too far out at sea to be reached by helicopter. This turns out to be sheer bushwa — in fact, the carrier was so close to shore that it had to be turned around to keep the TV cameras from catching the San Diego coastline in the background as Bush landed.
Imagine Eisenhower or Kennedy or even Bush the Elder — all of whom were real war heroes — resorting to such a cheesy political stunt. George W. can dress up like a Top Gun, but he’s nothing but a tinhorn — and what a fine example of presidential dishonesty he’s setting for young people.
This article appears in May 23 • 2003.