This Day in History

Today we can almost physically hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated god of war. You can see it, feel it, and hear it all the way from the Indochina hills, from the shores of Formosa, right over into the very heart of Europe itself.- Joseph McCarthy

The speech was short, just a few minutes long, and yet it would lead to one of the darkest chapters in American history. When Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy took the stage in Wheeling, West Virginia he was merely perpetuating the brand of overly nationalistic chest beating that had swept him into the Senate four years before. This time McCarthy took things one step further, claiming he had the names of Communist sympathizers working in the State Department.

Initially his speech yielded few results. A Senate subcommittee investigated the matter and found no evidence to support McCarthy's claims, yet the senator would not be deterred and his anti-Communist rhetoric led to vast public support. Three years later McCarthy was put in charge of the Committee on Government Operations and quickly set about reinvigorating his witch hunt. The Red Scare had begun. Over the course of the next year McCarthy's committee would cause thousands of government employees to lose their jobs despite never providing evidence of their Communist affiliations. Locally, McCarthy's rhetoric sowed seeds of doubt that blossomed into allegations of Communist sympathies against neighbors and friends.

While McCarthy would finally be censured by the Senate in December of 1954, the damage of his hatred and fear mongering could not be undone. Indeed the legacies of McCarthy's sensationalist rhetoric remain well and alive today.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have rocketed into political prominence by hitching their wagons to xenophobic rhetoric against Muslims and immigrants. On the opposite side of the political spectrum Bernie Sanders looks poised to win the New Hampshire primary by reveling in the fervor directed towards the "1%". Ask someone what these candidates actually stand for and you're greeted with a blank stare and a generic phrase which invariably translates into "recapturing some imagined past where America was the best at everything."

Policies don't matter nearly as much as passion and fortunately for the contemporary voter we have passion, and enemies to direct that passion against, in spades.

Muslims, Communists, Wall Street insiders, Immigrants, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats. Americans continue to fall victim to these faceless specters that haunt our collective nightmares. We may not be able to agree on taxation, military strategy or whether climate change is real, but we stand unified in our belief that America can once again "hear the mutterings and rumblings of an invigorated God of War." The only question is who are the Communists now?

With this in mind it's essential that we stand on guard against the excesses of the politics of passion. It's easy to blame Islam, or Capitalism or Democrats or Republicans for the numerous problems assaulting America, but doing so accomplished nothing. Instead it results in close mindedness and an immediate rejection of the other side's policies. A result which merely perpetuates and multiplies our societal problems.

If we can learn to resist the allures of hostile rhetoric and instead focus on our problems rather than on the faceless groups that have allegedly caused them then maybe, just maybe, we can begin to make some progress.