The McCarthy Age--Redux

Yesterday I picked up a really interesting book called The Age of Anxiety, by Haynes Johnson. This book deals with the McCarthy era and parallels that time with our age of Terrorism. Now its become nearly a cliche to compare the two (and if you're really on the edge, you could add Nazism to the mix), but I don't believe any of us really know the depth of Joseph McCarthy's deceit, nor do we want to believe that what we are seeing today is that same situation emerging over again.

First off, the neo-conservatives have embraced McCarthy and his cronies (Richard Nixon, Hoover) as heroes and right-wing hacks like Ann Coulter have gone as far as to call McCarthy a a "patriot." Much of this rhetoric exists not because of his legacy of success, but his legacy of tactics, which our current administration emulates. Let's not get things twisted--were there Soviet spies in America? Absolutely, much like there are members of Hamas, Al-Qaida, and other terrorist organizations somewhere within our borders today, yet McCarthy brought no new revelations regarding communist agents to the light, and if any one was discovered it was only because he was like a fisherman using depth charges to catch a couple of trout. Instead, McCarthy used the Red Scare to intimidate, frighten, and bash his way into power, becoming the most influential first term senator ever, while simultaneously tainting and weakening American values. His words were complete fabrications and lies, right from the moment he ran for Senate (he claimed he was a war hero who supplied the Air Force with documents he forged with his commanding officer's signature) to the moment he made his way to the Senate floor with his supposed list of Soviet agents in the State Department (It was a 10 year old list and the overwhelming majority of the people in it had either left the SD or had never been hired in the first place.) The boldness of these actions seem nearly comic in their audacity. It feels like something in a SNL skit, but it was as real as gravity and as deadly as cancer.

Undoubtedly though the most shocking realization (for me at least) was Johnson's statement that US intelligence knew that the USSR had been in decline since at least the mid-70s and sinking even before then. His source on this is a little known book by the late Senator Daniel P. Moynihan (considered one of the Senate's greatest statesman, and definitely one of the most popular NY Senators) named Secrecy (Yale: 1998), which states that the "Culture of Secrecy" kept even presidents uninformed of the facts. This is very reminiscent of the battles and the miscommunication that went on between the FBI, NSA, and CIA prior to 9/11 (And continues on till today though they now added the HSA to the mix). The whole thing leads me to wonder was any of this worth it? Is it worth it today? And our officials wonder why we don't seem to trust them.

Anyway The Age of Anxiety is a wonderful read and should enlighten anyone about McCarthyism while sparking thought about our current age. Though I have come to the conclusion that Joseph McCarthy was just about as monstrous and deceitful as I could imagine, and maybe even insane (he nearly beat a reporter to death), his story illuminates what happens when politicians are cowardly and a population is terrified. It's a tale that begs us to study it meticulously for fear that we will slide down that dangerous slope again.