Tea Time and the Tail Gunner

I doubt that there was a time in our recent history that some public figure wasn’t calling “critical.” In my judgment there have been three since World War II that stand out. With our very lives at risk, the Cuban Missile Crisis is in a class by itself. Just behind, limited in context to the national fabric, are the McCarthy era and today’s threat from the radical right.

A glance at history will show that the self proclaimed “Tail Gunner Joe” led a movement that ended the careers of people, many of them prominent, suspected of Communist ties. What not everyone realizes is that the suspicion in most cases was based on alleged associations made fifteen years earlier during the Great Depression; That many of the victims were merely friends or close relatives of the suspects; That among them were people who simply objected to having to answer what they considered improper questions put to them by members of Congress.

What also seems to have been forgotten is that this was a major Republican issue in the party’s l952 Republican sweep of the White House and Congress. Ike’s campaign slogan was “Communism, Corruption and Korea.” His party stuck with this theme until McCarthy overplayed his hand by attacking the Eisenhower Administration itself. It was America’s good fortune that he was dealing from a deck soaked with booze.

What can be said of both the McCarthy’s people and, for lack of a better word, the “tea baggers,” is that they fit the “we have met the enemy and he is us” mold set by Walt Kelly in Pogo. The five year McCarthy saga is neatly tied together. Coherent books have been written about it. What we are facing now began with the inauguration of Barack Obama, so a major part of the story is missing, the middle and, most particularly, the end. This leads to the question of when, or perish the thought if, there will be an end.

The vituperative nature of the signs at Tea Party rallies may not exceed the limits of free speech. But the words of a Nevada Senatorial candidate advocating “Second Amendment remedies” to what one disagrees with in government might have broken the barrier. It sounds mighty like getting out guns as an adjunct to voting, something that never would have survived McCarthy scrutiny. Men carrying guns with signs saying they aren’t loaded “this time,” standing defiantly outside buildings where the president is speaking, seems unthinkable under previous presidents.

This crew lies about the president’s proclaimed religious preference, without a shred of evidence.* In the face of requisite Constitutional evidence to the contrary, they challenge his legitimacy as a citizen and hence his presidency. Lies, too numerous to mention in this space, are the foundation of most of their arguments.

The ham handed incivility, if not illegality, with which these people are trying to win control of government makes the possibility of their success cause for alarm. “Concern” is too mild!

*Obama’s religious preference is of no concern to me. “None” wouldn’t be all that bad.