Exhuming McCarthy

What I know about Joseph McCarthy all comes from movies, documentaries and history.  None of it is good.  I know that "McCarthyism" is one of the most roundly rejected "isms" of the 20th century.  It was fueled by fear of communism and a willingness for the system to sacrifice people on the altar of that fear.  At its core though, McCarthyism is a pure and simple over-reaction, like an allergy.  Communism was not a benign alternative to capitalism or even an under-rated threat to our nation.  It was an existential threat and a global rival (it was also not strictly speaking communism, but that's another discussion entirely).  The Communism of the USSR under Joseph Stalin was a brutal and hostile ideology manifest in a totalitarian system.  If it had risen to the level of ascendance that the United States occupied in say the 1990's the world would be a very different place.
Communists in the US were not anything like the "Red Communists" though, they were union organizers, artists and social activists who chose to criticize unfettered capitalism and/or speak for the dignity of human persons.  The essential difference between these two things made very little difference to McCarthy, all that mattered was the fear and the threat.  Nowadays we don't have any real villain to fight against.  China is a rival, but a hard one to hit, most of our political types agree that China is a bad actor with regard to human rights and economic policy, but they also acknowledge that we are locked in a codependent relationship with them.  China smiles and sends us cheap goods and dangles the promise of a "market" that is so very massive that our business class drools on their Brooks Brothers Suits.  We don't take India seriously at all, and our "Axis of Evil" countries are not really in our weight class, so we seem like bullies when we push them around and we seem like patsies if they take advantage of us (lose/lose situation).
So what do we do?  Well, if we follow the McCarthy model, we turn on each other.  Which is what we seem to be doing. Poll after poll is telling us that what we actually want as a nation is fairly consistent: justly regulated markets, good opportunities, immigration that is decent and in order, and a sense that we are "safe," whatever that means.  Most people want health care to be better (and more affordable) than it is, most are okay with the idea that the people who reap the most benefits should pay a greater share of the cost of infrastructure, defense and social welfare.  Some people trust the government to accomplish these goals, other people do not.  Shorten that: some people trust, others do not.
The non-trust crowd is a problem on both sides of the aisle.  Lack of trust is, in fact, a symptom of a deteriorating relationship.  One of the things I look for in couples that are seeking to be married, is whether or not they trust each other.  Not whether they love each other, not whether they are a "good match" because who knows what that means, whether they trust each other is the thing.  It's not always easy to sort that out, but there are symptoms of distrust that can quickly escalate to a toxic level.
One such symptom is not listening to what the other says.  Now I'm not talking about not hearing the words, I'm talking about deliberately interpreting those words in a way that suits your own narrative, regardless of what the actual content might be.  If you read different opinions about our political situation right now you see that happening on a large scale.  Trump assures his followers that what the "liberal media" or the "fake news" is telling them is not what is actually happening.  People believe him, because they "know" that that media is biased against him.  There are moments where I suspect that it can't possibly be as bad as what I read, then I read someone who says precisely that, like an opinion piece by a true Trump believer.  I do actually do that from time to time, it's increasingly difficult to find any that do not come across as un-moored from reality.  Most of them that have any reasonableness to them say that we just have to ignore his bluster and focus on what he's doing.  It's all just a smokescreen for pretty normal "conservative" agenda goals.
I do not have any great love for most conservative agenda goals, but I do like a few of them: fiscal responsibility, limits on government authority, free speech, rule of law, I'm really pretty good with those.  I do not happen to trust corporations any more than I trust the government (see I don't trust parts of this relationship).  To me the profit motive is actually behind the corruption of both corporate and government systems, the corporations are simply more up front about it; this does not make them more reliable partners.
Other symptoms are "gas lighting" and hypersensitivity, or some combination of the two.  These are particularly dangerous in our system right now, they feed each other.  "Gas lighting" is a manipulative process that seeks to convince another person that reality is not reality.  The name comes from a movie where a man dims the gas lighting fixtures and when a woman complains that they aren't bright enough, he convinces her that they're fine and that it is she who has the problem.  It is a form of manipulation often used by abusers to control their victims: this is normal, I didn't hit you that hard, regular people get into fights, I'm not lying, you're just paranoid.
Truth be told, we are all rather more vulnerable to gas lighting than we would like to admit, especially if we are being victimized by people we thing are on our side.  That's why Trump's supporters are proving so very resilient to reality: they really want to believe what they are being told by their demagogue. The vulnerability of the opposition actually plays right into the hands of the gas lighting abusers.  The "other" side of this coin is very easily cast as a hysterical woman being hypersensitive and seeing things that aren't there.  That is a literal part of this strategy: complain about the nanny state that censors free speech on college campuses and insists on "safe spaces," "trigger warnings," and "political correctness" in all its many forms.  "Look at Nancy Pelosi, she wants to shut all you good, red blooded Americans up and take your freedom and your guns." The problem with it is that Nancy Pelosi plays right into that scheme, at least enough for people to actually doubt whether the light is dim.
Political correctness should just be an attempt to speak in a way that avoids deliberately offending others.  The problem is too many people do not draw a very clear line about what is offensive, and in our modern age, everything anyone ever says is on the table.  Case in point, a couple of baseball players had their Twitter feeds from years ago dragged out into public, because they just made it to the majors.  When they were teenagers they had made bad jokes, said racist things and generally been despicable on Twitter.  Now they had to apologize for being stupid when they were 17.  I feel like, right now, I should just issue a blanket apology for stuff I did and said when I was 17, because I really need to, because I was an idiot when I was 17, and I said lots of dumb things, offensive things, probably racist things, and I wasn't even a jock.  I thank the Lord in Heaven that Twitter wasn't a thing when I was 17.
What we should do in a functional society is accept their apology and move on.  They were high school baseball players, who were good enough to actually be moving up the food chain.  Did you know any really good athletes in High School?  Were they introspective and sensitive types who deeply thought about how their attitudes and words effected those around them? I'm sure there were some of those out there, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is not the norm.  That's not an excuse for their behavior, it's more a "he who is without sin cast the first stone." We are going to have to get a lot better about apologizing and accepting apologies in this brave new world, or else our relationship is going to continue to circle the drain.  Being able to forgive and be forgiven is central to healthy relationships (that's why Jesus included it in the big prayer).
A perpetual quest for vengeance and the destruction of your opponent is really unhealthy, and that is where I feel like we are right now.  Joseph McCarthy was one guy, but he had a whole system of people that allowed him to do what he did.  That system really didn't change that much, even after they drove him out into the wilderness, perhaps we should get around to changing it now.