Seventy years ago this week, the United States government crapped all over itself and for much of the next decade, the entire country swirled around in the bowl, gaining speed in an ever-tightening circle as a boogeyman that really didn’t exist dominated the headlines, helped to foster disastrous political careers, and maybe even scared a few regular Americans.
On October 27, 1947 (70 years ago tomorrow), the House Un-American Activities Committee began the crazy-ass phase of its “investigation” into whether communists had infiltrated the entertainment industry and were using films to spread pro-Soviet propaganda.
The answer to those (and other such) questions should have been, “Who the hell cares?” But, as Stephen Stills would sing 20 years later, paranoia runs deep. Some members of the committee began to take themselves way too seriously and set out to bring down an industry and ruin many lives.
Oddly enough, it wasn’t even against the law to be a communist back then. (Even odder, it technically is against the law today. In 1954, at the height of McCarthyism, Congress passed the Communist Control Act, which outlawed the Communist Party in the United States and made it illegal to belong to the party or support any Communist-activity organization. Of course, it’s wildly unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court has never taken up the case and Congress has never gotten around to taking it off the books. One of the most important test cases at a lower level took place in, of all places, Arizona. In the case of Blawis v. Bolin, a federal district court in Arizona ruled the law unconstitutional and said that the state couldn’t keep the Communist Party off the ballot.)
Communism had grabbed a little, tiny bit of popularity during the Great Depression. Its simplistic idea of everybody being the same instead of having a handful of rich people and a whole lot of poor people had its appeal in those tough times. In Hollywood, some of the intelligentsia tried on communism as though it were a sweater they had purchased on sale. A lot of people who would later admit to having gone to Communist Party gatherings for the free food and the chance to pick up chicks.
But it turned out to be deadly serious and the members of HUAC milked it for all it was worth. Careers were ruined, marriages broke up (including that of Chief Rat Ronald Reagan), and people even died. It was an ugly, ugly time for America and one might think that the country and its people would have learned a valuable lesson from its detour into mindless fascism.
It hasn’t.
Before I forget, I’ll admit that there is some propaganda in some films. Movies that are made with passion are going to have a point of view. But that doesn’t make them un-American. I remember when I first saw Red Dawn back in the 1980s. I thought it was a right-wing gun nut’s wet dream—virile young people using extreme firepower and high explosives against the godless commie bastards. But so what? It was a movie. Besides, it starred Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey (before the career-killing nose job) and Ron O’Neal, who had played Superfly a decade earlier. What’s not to like?
Jump forward to today, when First Amendment rights are under attack, often by the vile putrescence that sits in the Oval Office, the person whose No. 1 job it is to uphold the Constitution. I would bet any amount of money that Trump doesn’t even know how many amendments there are to the Constitution (there are 27) or how they got there.
(It reminds me of when I went to the national convention of the NRA up in Phoenix. I walked around the hall, offering $20 to anyone who could correctly state the Second Amendment to which they refer on a frighteningly regular basis. Not surprisingly, I still had the 20 bucks at the end of the day.)
And yet still the attacks keep coming from the person that San Antonio Spurs Coach Greg Popovich called a “soulless coward.” An NFL guy is un-American because he respectfully takes a knee during the playing of the National Anthem? He is somehow disrespecting the military? How the hell?!
Are we to believe that all of the people who fought and died for this country put their lives on the line so that everybody in America would think and act alike? That’s not America; that’s the opposite of America.
Then President Draft Dodger, whose racist daddy bought him free from the military, tries to wrap himself in the American flag. Forget the $20; I’d bet everything I own that Trump can’t even accurately describe an American flag. (Try it yourself without looking and then see how wrong you are about the stars.)
In these again-ugly times, try to remember that the flag doesn’t represent the military or first responders or just decent white people. The flag represents an idea, an incredibly powerful one that people can come together to form a nation that is free and dynamic. And we have the greatest country in the history of the world because of that freedom. Now, freedom isn’t always pretty, but even at its most challenging, it’s always uplifting and worth fighting for.
Sadly, the Soulless Coward in Chief will probably never understand that.
This article appears in Oct 26 – Nov 1, 2017.
In 8 years under Obummer ( 32 Quarters ) The economy never grew more that 1.5 %. Under Trump it’s already grown 3.0 % I voted for Trump to be my president, not my priest.
Now the fun begins. Your Legion of Liberal Losers will line up 10 deep to hit dislike and call me all sorts of moronic names. But no one will offer a substantive argument. Not even Miss Francis or his ” friend ” Peabrain.
Let the games begin.
Mr. CW13,
Please, sir. A statistic as a _talking point_ remains meaningless to the rest of us unless documented. Could you please cite a reliable source for such a generalized assertion?
You assert, “In 8 years under Obummer ( 32 Quarters ) The economy never grew more that 1.5 %. Under Trump it’s already grown 3.0 %.”
Assuming the word “economy” applies to every man, woman and child in the good, old US of A, one can presume that every working person’s salary and benefits have increased 3% vis a vis Obama’s 1.5%.
If so, cite a source.
Assuming that your statistic applies to the homeless population, does that mean the number of homeless has decreased 3% vs 1.5% during Obama’s tenure?
Assuming it applies to the unemployed, does your statistic mean that 3% more people have found a living wage job vs 1.5% during Obama’s term, that manufacturing has returned to American shores?
Assuming that it applies to college students, does your statistic mean that 3% no longer have to apply for student loans to attend college, vs 1.5% less during the Obama years?
Assuming that it applies to elementary school children, does that mean that 3% less have dropped out of the poverty level, no longer need school breakfasts and lunches to get through the academic rigors of the school day vs. 1.5% during the Obama years?
Does your statistic mean that the sales of stocks have increased 3% vs 1.5% that may or may not have occurred during the Obama years?
I could go on and on asking these questions about the _economy_ and its _real_ impact on the man on the street, in terms we could measure. In terms of quantity and quality…of life.
Facts are one thing, propaganda another…
Be well.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Finally someone who challenges what I said without calling me names like that idiot who signs his posts CW is an asshole or some other such nonsense.
I caught part of it on the Steeple Report, a daily financial post. I looked it up on Politifact. A non-political site that said Obama never had higher than 1.5 economic growth.
I’m not an economist, but I’m a little familiar economic growth. In a nut shell economic growth is caused by an increase in aggregate supply and demand. It’s an increase in National output and income.
Like I said I’m not an economist but I know positive economic growth is a good thing.
I enjoyed sharing ideas with you. At least you’re not an asshole who hits dislike and runs.
You be well, too.
Economic growth refers to the Gross National Product. Obama was the first president in U.S. history not only to not to have a 3.0% growth year, he never reached 2.5%.
The stock market, the most accurate predictor of the economy, has already gone up $5.0 trillion, 18%, under Trump to $28.6 trillion. Trump’s stock market is implicitly forecasting over 5% growth.
By comparison, all Europe is worth $8 trillion total and is forecasting 1% growth for them.
Using Nintzel’s inexcusable and historically unjustified language, that rat Obama’s two best years, 15 and 16 had total growth of 3.5%.
By comparison President Reagan’s two best years, 87 and 88, the economy grew over 8%, putting the rat to complete shame.
Source: Saint Louis Federal Reserve Bank FRED data system
My, I can understand CW13 not liking name calling. But then he turns around and does it – several times.
What can I say, I had good teachers. Besides, nobody’s perfect.
“mindless facism” more like muddy thinking. Facism is communism. It is the belief that government, because of economies of scale, can do a better job of producing things like computers than IBM or Apple.
Where did this idea come from? Karl Marx. People, idiots, actually, believed that north Korea and Venezuela would produce a higher standard of living instead of the starvation.
Karl Menger, within 15 years of Marx, completely destroyed the intellectual underpinnings of communism and predicted the 80% economic collapse and starvation that took place in russia.
Contrary to your brainless article, people didn’t view communism as a fashionable sweater, serious discussion took place to kill millions of us all the way through the 60s. See the intercepts on the weathermen.
Want to see the most eloquent testimony you will ever hear? Listen to Ronald Reagan talk about the ability of our system, our first amendment, our democracy to handle threats like this. All without sacrificing our values. People are free to plan to murder us all.
Listen to Ronald Reagan ? I don’t think so. According to the intellectually challenged ( is that better Mr. Corvi ?) writer of the above gibberish, Reagan was a total boob who hoodwinked us with ” voodoo economics”. I wish he had a pair and would be open to a debate with you on the subject. Now, that would be funny.
Nothing like a little input from an idiot into a discussion about economics. It must suck being you. I assume that all you have to offer is a challenge to fight. I’ll pass.
A note on character, those whom HUAC and McCarthy harassed and accused, while often having good intentions, were mostly people who kept quiet or publicly blew off accusations of nastiness going on in the USSR. Also, they were people who raised no alarm during the Spanish Civil War when some American and other volunteers–leftists of various types–were disappeared by the Loyalists and Soviet advisors. Really, they had much in common with Trump, Manafort, Flynn, Hannity and so on now, giving a pass for collusion with Moscow. Hurrah for bipartisanship. (And, remember Jill Stein sitting with Flynn and Putin–unless you will not remember, by using your “disciplined mind” as per Orwell in 1984.