THE NEW McCARTHYISM – AT 2:18 P.M. ET:   The term "McCarthyism" is one of the most commonly used, and misused, in American politics.  It referred originally to the raw tactics used by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy of Wisconsin in his anti-Communist crusade of the early 1950s.  While McCarthy's cause was basically just, his tactics and personal behavior were awful, and he was eventually brought down by his own party.

We are today going through a new McCarthyism, this time the McCarthyism of the left.  Of course, the mainstream media won't call it that, but it's there.  Dennis Prager, at RealClearPolitics, has written one of the best pieces I've read on this disturbing and dangerous development:

You and I are living through the greatest mass hysteria in American history. For many Americans, the McCarthy era held that dubious distinction, but what is happening now is incomparably worse.

For one thing, any hysteria that existed then was directed against the greatest evil in the world at the time: communism. Then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee notwithstanding, there really were Americans in important positions who supported communist regimes enslaving their populations and committing mass murder. McCarthy was on to something.

In contrast, the country is choking on hysteria over the extremely unlikely possibility -- for which there is still no evidence -- that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with the Russian government to meddle in the 2016 presidential election, and the absurdity that President Trump works for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

For another, the mainstream media did not support McCarthy. Most in the media were highly critical of McCarthy. Today, the mainstream media are not the voices of caution. They are the creators of the hysteria.

There have been conspiracy theories throughout American history (e.g. Lee Harvey Oswald didn't kill President John F. Kennedy alone; the moon landing never happened). But this is the first time the media have created and promoted a conspiracy. Not surprisingly, they have dropped any pretense of objective reporting in the process. 

And while some Americans were unfairly labeled communists during the McCarthy era, countless Democratic politicians and leaders in news and entertainment have called members of the Trump administration and the tens of millions of Americans who support the president fascists, white supremacists, haters, xenophobes and even Nazis.

MSNBC contributor Jill Wine-Banks said of the Trump-Putin Helsinki press conference: "It's just as serious to me as the Cuban Missile Crisis in terms of an attack, or the 9/11 attack. ... (Trump's) performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht."

Former communist, Obama operative and CIA Director John Brennan tweeted: "Donald Trump's press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of 'high crimes & misdemeanors.' It was nothing short of treasonous."

The constant invoking of the Holocaust, the Nazis and now Kristallnacht (the unofficial beginning of the Holocaust, a night in 1938 when German Jews were beaten to death, synagogues were burned and Jewish shops were destroyed) only minimizes the evils of Nazism and the Holocaust. A young American who, having gone to a typical university, probably knows nothing about the Nazis and the Holocaust will now think Nazism and the Holocaust were 20th-century expressions of Trump and American conservatism. 

COMMENT:  Please read the whole thing.  We are experiencing an enormous journalistic failure.  We have had journalistic failures before, and they have been costly.  Reporting from Vietnam became highly politicized, and leftist, and it clearly affected the American public's attitude toward the war.  By contrast, the reporting of the campaigns and presidency of Barack Obama were a disgrace to journalism, giving a weak, inexperienced man a pass no matter what he did.  The country was poorer for it. 

Will we get out of this?  American history tells us that we go through cycles that include failure and despair, but that we always survive and prosper.  I don't know.  This feels different.  It's as if "success" and "accomplishment" and "patriotism" have become unacceptable ideas. 

July 24,  2018