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America, Have You No Decency Left?
We are in the midst of a McCarthyism redux
With a little over a month left until what will be the most contested election in U.S. history, it is increasingly evident that America as we know it, as we have loved and loathed it, is dead. We have gone from a two-party system where we once battled ideology for the betterment of the country to one party versus one vociferous anti-American cult. What else can you call a group of people who have turned the Department of Justice on its own people, performed unnecessary medical procedures on those the president referred to as animals, labeled American cities as “anarchist jurisdictions” in order to cut federal funding to economic foes, and all but danced on the grave of an American judicial icon so they can revert space and time back to an era of undisputed White male dominance? And what’s worse: They don’t even have enough shame to hide their motives anymore.
The entire Republican apparatus has looked the American people straight in the eye and said in the immortal words of Sheree Whitfield, “Who gone check me, boo?”
The problem with our current state of despair is that we actively chose to miss all of the signs until now when we as a nation have reached the doorstep of fascism. You see, America has in fact been in this paranoid state of terror and fear before, ushered in by yet another infamous Republican: Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy for a not-too-brief period of time turned the State Department, CIA, and Committee on Government Operation — which he chaired — into a witch-hunting machine. He swooped into power in 1946 and rose to prominence just four years later under the belief that communists had infiltrated U.S. government agencies with the desire to shape our policies in their own image. Sound familiar? For close to a decade, McCarthy worked tirelessly to freeze out and oust public servants he deemed were working to undermine America. This of course was during a time when America feared Soviet domination unlike today’s Republicans who welcome Russian influence with open arms.
