I started being aware of politics in 1950. Truman, a democrat, was president. He instituted the Marshall Plan to facilitate the rebuilding of Europe, which had suffered serious damage during WWII. A major concern at that time was the increasing strength and avarice of Russia and the Communists. The U.S. also had internal concerns about the growing popularity of Communism as a way of life, and we—politicians elected to national office—wanted to make sure that we weeded them out before they could take over in the States.
A senator named Joseph McCarthy was charged with rooting them out. He was more than a little enthusiastic about that responsibility and ruined many careers with accusations (mostly false) before Joseph N. Welch asked whether McCarthy had “no sense of decency.” I was young at the time, but I can still remember seeing film of that exchange on early, black & white, TV.
My current concerns are with a similar sense of “lost decency” in U.S. politics. Senator McCarthy was on the Cold War equivalent of a “witch hunt.” The witch hunts of history were, of course, in response to anything bad that happened. Did a hail storm destroy your crops? Must have been caused by the old woman who lived in the hut next door. Did a baby get typhoid fever and die? It must have been a witch. It was a difficult time for old women, especially those living alone.
Our ancestors can, perhaps, be forgiven for not having discovered scientific principles sooner. These days, we know enough about causes and effects to determine that the guy shouting, “witch hunt,” is the one who has lost his sense of decency. He (and you know who he is) is trying to discredit legitimate complaints about his dishonesty and political corruption. If he’s accused of nefarious actions, it must be a “witch hunt.” Meanwhile, he says to his cronies, when shall we meet again? He and his cronies remind me of the Wicked Witch and her flying monkeys in the “Wizard of Oz.”
Our Founding Fathers were by no means perfect, as slavery seemed OK to them, but their vision of democracy was a political ideal. We haven’t achieved it yet. Progress has been “two steps forward, one step back” since the days following the Revolutionary War. And, of course, there’s no guarantee that our movement will continue in what I would consider a positive direction. History is replete with the rise and fall of empires, so it should be obvious to us that our future is not guaranteed. We once had to endure a Civil War to advance the causes of freedom and justice. We are, in fact, currently in a battle to determine what kind of future we want, not only for ourselves, but also for the generations that follow. Do we want to go forward with the idea of improving our lives and the lives of everyone currently alive, or do we want to return to some mythical past where some live well off the fruits of others?
I am not at all sure what it is going to take for us to restore a modicum of decency to U.S. politics. I grew up being used to having the U.S. provide the political leadership for what was called the Free World. That torch has been passed to others, and I find the results of that disconcerting. Progress is by no means guaranteed. When the cowboy and Indian movies came on TV. my father, who was primarily Cherokee Indian, would always say, “Root for the Indians.” He was also fond of saying that those of European descent “stole the country fair and square.” And there’s a lot of truth to that, in spite of the very long history of mass migrations influencing populations world-wide.
Europeans, primarily the English and the French, really did “steal” the land in North America from the Native Americans bit by bit, killing those who resisted the European take-over. The Spanish and Portuguese did the same thing in Mexico, Central America, and South America. Those with the guns won the battles. Some of the new-comers revolted to form Mexico, and then we stole some of that land from the Mexicans. It is not as though any of us are without blood on our hands. An old saying is that chickens come home to roost, and cultures tend to bring about their own downfalls by failing to live up to their ideals.
In his new book, Messing with the Enemy, Clint Watts, a former FBI Special Agent and leading cyber-security expert, discusses the misinformation campaigns, fake news, and electronic espionage operations that have become what should be considered modern warfare. If you want to know more about what President Bone Spurs is doing, it’s a book worth reading. The US is at a pivotal point in history, and it is up to us whether we get better or worse as a nation—and as individuals. Progress is neither automatic nor guaranteed.
Regular readers of my blog will know that I typically include a music video that fits the subject. As far as I know, no one has yet written a song about President Bone Spurs, and, although I have used it in a previous blog entry, I think Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” addresses our current concerns. The images are based on Vietnam, one of our most serious mistakes as a nation:
