I do . . . but then, I’m getting up there in years, so I probably don’t have a lot of company. But my remaining contemporaries, and some younger students of U.S. history, will know what I’m talking about.

I refer to the communist witch hunts of the 1950s. And today, February 9th, is the 75th anniversary of the day that Senator Joseph McCarthy announced to the world that the U.S. State Department employed (at that time) over 200 “known communists.”

McCarthy — whose checkered history makes fascinating reading in and of itself — was a virulent anti-communist, who believed that the U.S. government agencies were riddled with turncoats and spies, and that the government was guilty of a massive cover-up. He alleged — without any evidence — that the State Department had been most heavily infiltrated.

It was noted editorial cartoonist Herbert Block (1909-2001), better known as “Herblock,” who coined the term “McCarthyism.” And it has stuck to this day.

Following the perjury conviction of former State Department employee Alger Hiss in January of 1950, McCarthy targeted everyone, in famously televised Congressional hearings that continued until 1954, when he went a step too far: He accused the U.S. Army of “coddling known communists.” [“This Day In History,” History.com, February 9, 2025.] He never found a single hidden communist anywhere, and his hearings were shut down shortly thereafter.

I vividly recall, as a pre-teen, watching those broadcasts during the blistering hot summer afternoons of 1952 — my family’s first year of living in Washington, D.C. — when it was too damned hot to go outside and there was nothing else to do. Even at that tender age, I understood the possible consequences of one obviously demented zealot being allowed to run rampant through the American legal system. Those hearings wrecked countless lives through their unproven accusations, and turned friends against friends in the effort to save themselves.

McCarthy died of hepatitis in 1957; but his legacy of fear lived on for years.

*. *. *

As I read the article today and recalled that bit of history, I found myself — as I so often do lately — comparing the long-ago with the present time. And I was horrified to find myself thinking that . . . as bad as the McCarthy era was . . . what we are facing today is even worse.

In a sense, Joseph McCarthy may simply have been a man born before his time. He thought there was rot within the government, in the form of infiltration by communists. He was wrong about the source of the problem, and his timing was off by 75 years. But perhaps what he did display was prescience.

Because the real rot is now, and it’s coming from the very top of the governmental hierarchy. And it will, if left unchecked, destroy more than a few hundred lives. It will destroy us all.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
2/9/25