Trumpism is on track to exceed McCarthyism in duration and destructiveness. A coordinated mass counter-movement may be forming. It can’t come too soon. It may already be too late.
True, and where is our Margaret Chase Smith, who was not afraid of McCarthy and publicly confronted him? It was Joseph Welch who was the Army’s counsel who silenced everyone with his comment to McCarthy.
I ask myself going in when I have problems if they're more circumstantial or constitutional, thinking that with circumstantial problems I'm more likely to be interacting with reality and not bringing my own baggage into a situation and creating new problems to try to come to grips with old hurts or other unresolved 'structural' stuff. There may be blessed souls with limited baggage -- I think I know some -- but most people have their share and the usual array of issues associated with life and mortality and all that.
So most people have the experience, I think, of having been in relationships where they don't feel 'seen' and interacted with in a way that reflects reality. This could be that baggage and those old hurts asserting themselves. This just happens and is normal but, when the baggage is serious enough, there can be persecution and individuals and society need to draw the line and try to protect the innocent or the harm can spread and become a contagion. I see the McCarthy episode more in the circumstantial camp.
A bug that society might get over and develop a resistance to in the deal. If we did in that instance -- and I think we did -- the resistance is gone. I think Trump is a whole new kind of threat and potentially lethal to the country. And it's not Trump himself but a wrecking ball tendency that's been seen and acknowledged and written about for a couple of decades. This is serious structural and constitutional shit going back to our founding in a shotgun marriage involving a fundamentally racist and irrationalist substate.
The South. The Confederacy. This is about desegregation and the end of American apartheid and the resentment it caused. All of the things Trump is doing reflect the sensibilities and injuries of southern white people, especially evangelicals and SBC member churches, right down to the recent attacks on colleges. Remember when the feds went after the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University? They do. Remember the National Guard needing to be used over schooling issues? They do.
So this is way more structural than McCarthy, possibly a mass mental health problem that's effectively incurable and only capable of being managed with difficulty and maybe requiring institutionalization and quarantine, like in a prison at Guantanamo or somewhere, because this is a raging, organized criminal enterprise. Trump is their wrecking ball. Now, that makes sense. Who better if all you want to do is blow shit up? And especially the federal government who handed your balls to you in the Civil War.
And then the feds had the nerve to enforce desegregation when you knew all along you were the real Americans and that they were illegitimate and usurpers and probably immigrants and not good Christians. So, there. Never let it be said people didn't see this coming. Many did. They couldn't get traction and it reflects well on Democrats and the many other decent people who failed to understand this mess. It's incomprehensible to people who don't have the resentments and the anger and the crazy drives.
I should add almost all of this is unconscious. The attackers have no idea why they're doing what they're doing, characteristically of constitutional and structural problems because the defense mechanisms are strong. They see the world differently. And, not incidentally, their outlook makes no sense and is delusional and destructive. For the same reason the level of projection is high, a characteristic of a paranoid mindset. The projection is PERFECTLY predictive. Their view of the world is authoritarian and based in fear and therefore a need for control and strict, arbitrary hierarchy drives everything.
True, and where is our Margaret Chase Smith, who was not afraid of McCarthy and publicly confronted him? It was Joseph Welch who was the Army’s counsel who silenced everyone with his comment to McCarthy.
Excellent piece!!!!!!!!
I ask myself going in when I have problems if they're more circumstantial or constitutional, thinking that with circumstantial problems I'm more likely to be interacting with reality and not bringing my own baggage into a situation and creating new problems to try to come to grips with old hurts or other unresolved 'structural' stuff. There may be blessed souls with limited baggage -- I think I know some -- but most people have their share and the usual array of issues associated with life and mortality and all that.
So most people have the experience, I think, of having been in relationships where they don't feel 'seen' and interacted with in a way that reflects reality. This could be that baggage and those old hurts asserting themselves. This just happens and is normal but, when the baggage is serious enough, there can be persecution and individuals and society need to draw the line and try to protect the innocent or the harm can spread and become a contagion. I see the McCarthy episode more in the circumstantial camp.
A bug that society might get over and develop a resistance to in the deal. If we did in that instance -- and I think we did -- the resistance is gone. I think Trump is a whole new kind of threat and potentially lethal to the country. And it's not Trump himself but a wrecking ball tendency that's been seen and acknowledged and written about for a couple of decades. This is serious structural and constitutional shit going back to our founding in a shotgun marriage involving a fundamentally racist and irrationalist substate.
The South. The Confederacy. This is about desegregation and the end of American apartheid and the resentment it caused. All of the things Trump is doing reflect the sensibilities and injuries of southern white people, especially evangelicals and SBC member churches, right down to the recent attacks on colleges. Remember when the feds went after the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University? They do. Remember the National Guard needing to be used over schooling issues? They do.
So this is way more structural than McCarthy, possibly a mass mental health problem that's effectively incurable and only capable of being managed with difficulty and maybe requiring institutionalization and quarantine, like in a prison at Guantanamo or somewhere, because this is a raging, organized criminal enterprise. Trump is their wrecking ball. Now, that makes sense. Who better if all you want to do is blow shit up? And especially the federal government who handed your balls to you in the Civil War.
And then the feds had the nerve to enforce desegregation when you knew all along you were the real Americans and that they were illegitimate and usurpers and probably immigrants and not good Christians. So, there. Never let it be said people didn't see this coming. Many did. They couldn't get traction and it reflects well on Democrats and the many other decent people who failed to understand this mess. It's incomprehensible to people who don't have the resentments and the anger and the crazy drives.
https://harpers.org/archive/2008/08/the-wrecking-crew/
https://billmoyers.com/content/moyers-on-america-capitol-crimes/
I should add almost all of this is unconscious. The attackers have no idea why they're doing what they're doing, characteristically of constitutional and structural problems because the defense mechanisms are strong. They see the world differently. And, not incidentally, their outlook makes no sense and is delusional and destructive. For the same reason the level of projection is high, a characteristic of a paranoid mindset. The projection is PERFECTLY predictive. Their view of the world is authoritarian and based in fear and therefore a need for control and strict, arbitrary hierarchy drives everything.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump
McCarthy and Trump were counseled by the same unprincipled lawyer, Roy Cohn.
Although “over-the-top,” McCarthy was basically right (pardon the pun). Read “Blacklisted by History” and “Stalin’s Secret Agents.”