Donald Trump and Joe McCarthy are Two Peas in a Pod

From 1947 to 1957, in the midst of post-World War II Communist paranoia, the halls of Congress were darkened by an alcoholic, unstable, miserable excuse for a man, Joseph R. McCarthy.  The intellectually stunted McCarthy, truly an example of mediocrity made manifest, performed in a predictably lackluster way until he decided to become the leading tout for anti-Communistic jingoism.

            McCarthy used a nascent fear of the, “Red Menace” to acquire the one thing he could never garner through talent or intelligence—power.  Suddenly one of life’s perennial, “also ran’s” was the center of attention.  People who formerly treated McCarthy as the occasional electoral mistake deferred to him in the halls of the Senate seeking out his support and good favor.  The toady had become the toad. 

            The start of McCarthy’s reign of misinformed terror began with a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia in February of 1950.  With evidence later proved to be inaccurate—if not deliberately manufactured—he alleged that the State Department had been infiltrated by Communists.  When a Senate investigating committee exonerated the State Department, McCarthy took his campaign to the air waves.   When he was asked to produce evidence of the charges against the State Department he not only refused, but, instead, made new accusations.  The media, always more interested in selling copy than ascertaining the truth, did nothing to challenge McCarthy’s baseless accusations.  Finally, one preeminent reporter, Edward R. Murrow, took him on, but this was only after McCarthy was allowed to ruin lives and affect the direction of the nation for four years. 

Where was the due diligence?  Where was the skeptical oversight?  Why were the voices of moderation ignored, attacked, silenced or implicated?   Why did ordinary citizens flock to McCarthy’s colors? 

The answers to these questions haunt human history.  Monsters of depravity from Caligula to Hitler to Idi Amin have lived lives surrounded by people who first cheered, then empowered and ended up fearing and loathing these individuals.  We seem to learn nothing.

During this election cycle I have seen Donald Trump promoted by the media because they like his bombast and are sure their real candidate (Hillary or Bernie, take your pick, they don’t care) can beat this extremist.  Quite frankly, I find the real culprits here to be the average Americans who think his anger, his vague promises of easy fixes and name calling to be “genuine” when it is really manipulative and disingenuous. 

I am waiting for Trump to have his “Murrow moment.”  I am waiting for someone who, like Murrow, has nothing to gain and much to lose by holding up a mirror of truth to Trump.  Being wealthy does not make him wise.  Bringing large companies to bankruptcy does not make him capable.  Being brash does not make him right and being rude and bigoted does not make him honest.

Trump is not a Republican.  He is not a conservative.  He is not an honorable or capable man.  But my rancor is not directed so much to him as to every person who contemplates voting for him.  I would refer them to the words of Edward R. Murrow:  We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Murrow kept the faith.