Good grief, the dishonest claims of McCarthyism from the ahistorical left are annoying. It's as though their history stopped in 1990. There was no dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. No nascent democracy from 1991-2000. No rise of mafia oligarchy. They think today's Russia
is somehow a legitimate democracy that fosters socialism rather than an autocracy trending toward theocracy. It is an oligarchy run by gangsters supported by the church who is rewarded with the legalization of spousal abuse, the criminalization of homosexuality and feminism.
They think being anti-imperialist means being anti-American imperialism but applauding Russian and Chinese imperialism. They don't mind Russians bombing civilians. They don't mind Chinese putting Uygers in concentration camps. That's all good
They defend Assad and his apologists. Civil servants who come forward with the truth about Russian intervention are worse to them than Russian intervention. Their morality is limited to "is it good for Bernie" political judgments.
They would rather people have NO health care and die than move incrementally to a system that does not suit their ideological model. They don't care that most other countries with UHC don't use their model, they don't care about outcomes, only "being right"
Rebecca West nailed them in 1941: "They clap as if in defiance, and laugh at their enemies behind their hands, with the shrill laughter of children. They want to be right, not to do right.
"They feel no obligation to be part of the main tide of life, and if that meant any degree of pollution they would prefer to divert themselves from it and form a standing pool of purity. … I looked into my own heart and I knew that I was not innocent.
"Often I wonder whether I would be able to suffer for my principles if the need came, and it strikes me as a matter of the highest importance. That should not be so.
I should ask myself with far greater urgency whether I have done everything possible to carry those principles into effect, and how I can attain power to make them absolutely victorious
But those questions I put only with my mind. They do not excite my guts, which wait anxiously while I ponder my gift for martyrdom."
West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (pp. 912-913)
West, Rebecca. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (pp. 912-913)
My father was investigated by HUAC and the FBI. They sent 5 FBI agents to a town of less than 200 people to question his friends and neighbors because he was active in the Farmers' Union. I know what McCarthyism is. My brothers and sisters saw it and have told me what happened
My dad always joked about it, so I thought it was funny, but my sister told me it was not funny. Unlike me, she lived through it and said it was frightening, that my dad was scared. So when these cretins call the disgust for people defending Putin and Assad McCarthyism, it vile
