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We need a new McCarthyism [1]

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Date: 2023-08-29  

In recent memory, the major bastions of democracy have done things that are clearly not in their best interests, very much unlike who they usually are. Britain withdrew from the European Union, and the U.S. elected someone who will surely go down as our worst president ever, Donald Trump. Who benefitted from these horrible decisions? Vladimir Putin, and his fingerprints are all over them. It has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he ordered his democracy manipulation machines to accomplish both those things, through any nefarious means at their disposal.

Trump went about systematically dismantling our democracy in every way he could. Whether he was such a “laughing fool,” to use his national defense secretary’s words, as to be manipulated into doing it by Putin, or if he was purposefully trying to do it with knowledge of what he was doing, that’s what his attack on every one of our institutions important to democracy accomplished. And Brexit weakened Britain and the European Union, all Putin’s goals. The kind of person he is views the world as a zero-sum game, and in weakening his enemies he thinks he is putting points in his win column.

There will always be a certain segment of the population attracted to authoritarian characters and toxic nationalism, and Trump’s ascendance has promoted many of them to positions of power and influence. To use the title from my last essay, we are already infiltrated. So what can we do about it?

I think we need a new McCarthyism. McCarthyism was a dishonest attempt in the 1950’s to rid the US of what were considered communist influences. There were trials broadcast on national television. Even though McCarthy was essentially corrupt, there was, in fact, a segment of the population attracted to communism at that time. For example, Julius and Ethyl Rosenberg were in fact the spies they were accused of being, and they did get classified information on atomic bombs to the Soviets. But McCarthyism made communism a dirty word in the US and shifted public sentiment very much away from it.

We need that effect but done in an honest and truthful way, not harming anyone who is not truly involved. The question should be, “Are you now or have you ever been involved in furthering an enemies anti-democratic agenda?” We need to broadcast investigations like we did in McCarthyism and Watergate. That is the best way to let the public know what is going on and let them see how far it’s gone. That is how the US shifts public sentiment when a threat to our democracy is presented. And now that the techniques have been perfected, whether it is in the future by Putin, his replacement, or China, we will continue to be vulnerable to manipulation by people wanting to hurt us unless we do something.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/8/29/2190400/-We-need-a-new-McCarthyism

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