| Friends... Some of the transcripts of Senate hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy were released today (see CNN link below). The documents help fill in the details of an ugly episode in US history. Most Americans, I think, see McCarthy�s use of subpoenas, Inquisition-like questioning, guilt by association, blacklisting, and witch-hunt tactics as reprehensible. In addition, it seems, he was a coward. According to the released transcripts, �McCarthy manipulated his Senate hearings by calling witnesses he could intimidate and ignoring those likely to oppose him.� Have we learned anything from McCarthy, and from his soul mate J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime FBI director? I fear that we, as a nation, have not learned enough, and that -- as a result -- we are condemned to repeat our mistakes. The cry is not �communism� anymore, but instead �terrorism�; however, much of the landscape looks the same otherwise: treating dissent as if it is anti-American, blacklisting those who speak out, finding and vilifying scapegoats (see New Yorker article link below on John Walker Lindh), locating enemy sympathizers around every corner, spending large amounts of money on security and defense, using the media to create a climate of fear, demanding that everyone rally around the president and his policies, etc. The end of the Cold War has forced the reactionaries in America to find a new enemy that the US should wage an open-ended war against, and in the wake of 9/11 many Americans are too afraid to question what they are told. Doesn�t Attorney General John Ashcroft seem like a mix of McCarthy and Hoover? Of those calling the shots right now, Ashcroft and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz scare me the most. With Bush, Cheney and Rumsfield, one can almost see the greed seeping out of their pores. They are scoundrels, but their motivation is easy to understand: it is money. Ashcroft and Wolfowitz, on the other hand, are ideologues. They see themselves as men of fate positioned to carry out some sweeping revolution that will change the country and the world. Ashcroft�s creed is that of religious conservatism; Wolfowitz�s is of a US-controlled world order. The former is sure that he knows what is right for every American, the latter, for every nation in the world. How do we begin to dismantle the grip these thoughtless and careless muttonheads have on the levers of power and on public opinion? Will it take World War III (which may be in its early stages now in Iraq and Afghanistan)? Will it take environmental devastation of the type unseen in recorded history? Will it take nuclear war? I�d like to think that such catastrophes are not the only way that those in power will be shaken off the backs of the rest of us. I want to believe that change -- even on the scale that I am talking about -- can begin with individuals and eventually impact the planet for the good of us all. What do you think? Jim Correale Links referenced: http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/05/05/mccarthy.hearings.ap/index.html http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030310fa_fact2 |