Demagoguing

FOR THE FIRST HALF of the nineteen fifties, Senator Joseph McCarthy, (R Wisc) was the political star of America, second in popularity only to President Eisenhower. His crusade against communism in the early part of the Cold War was purely opportunistic, a ply to enhance his power and prestige politically McCarthy accused thousands of good loyal American citizens of being communists, and he knew his accusations were false. A gullible public, imbued with post war anti-communist fervor stoked by America's ruling corporate oligarchy, was more than ready to blindly follow a deluded demagogue for nearly five years, until McCarthy's crusade became so deranged, his bullying so cruel, the number of ruined lives so numerous, that finally the American public regained its senses, and discarded McCarthyism. It was too late to save hundreds of imprisoned people and thousands of ruined careers. All this is detailed in Larry Tye's new monograph "Demagogue", the most incisive exposure of McCarthy yet written. The next great American demagogue was Newt Gingrich, whose rise to power and fall is described in an excellent study "Burning Down the House".It was Gingrich who was responsible for much of our current great national political divide, for Gingrich deliberately launched super aggressive attacks against the Democrats, using highly partisan politics, in the nineteen eighties. The style was adopted by others, and is much in evidence today. Enter Donald Trump, whose adviser in early adulthood was Roy Cohn, McCarthy's assistant and point man. Cohn taught Trump that lyins is perfectly acceptable; the end justifies the means, to never surrender, to never admit fault, and to always hit back against critics twice as hard. Admit no mistakes, and never, ever apologize. To do so is weakness. Trump, quite simply, is our modern day McCarthy, our modern day Gingrich, a demagogue for the ages. he, like the other two, is a mentally unbalanced bully who ascended to the presidency like Hitler, with the support of an angry, ignorant mob of disenchanted white people who falsely believed that the system had betrayed them. Hitler's scapegoat were teh communists, the socialists, and the Jews, Trump prefers to pick on immigrants, among others. his sycophantic gang like followers, people of little moral credibility, follow him all the more eagerly the more depraved he becomes. America has a never ending love affair with gangsters and bullies, from Al Capone to John Gotti, McCarthy, Gingrich, and now Trump. America's only redemption is that Gotti and Capone ended up iin prison, McCarthy ended up out cast, and, if justice prevails, and the evangelical conservative community regains it sanity and morality, so will Donald Trump.