Parallels of Trumpism/McCarthyism

Review by Bill Doughty

Some isms are based in fear, hate, anger, paranoia, and ignorance. They take hold because they operate in emotional shadows rather than in the light of logic. McCarthyism is worth studying because of obvious parallels that would eventually be revealed nearly seven decades later in Trumpism.

Far from being a caricature, Senator Joe McCarthy, junior Republican senator from Wisconsin through most of the 1950s, was “more layered and counterintuitive than the two-dimensional demagogue enshrined in history.”

Author Larry Tye gives a colorful biography of the senator with new information from recently revealed personal and professional papers, financial files, previously sealed Senate subcommittee testimony, and medical records from Bethesda Naval Hospital. 

“Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020) shows that McCarthy was a hard-working “whizkid” entrepreneur and good student at Marquette University who became an attorney and circuit court judge and then a United States Marine before campaigning (while in uniform) for the U.S. Senate.

Some family members and friends knew McCarthy as tender and supportive in private. But his public persona was one of “a tyrant who recognized no restraints and would do anything –– anything –– to win.” He blamed his “roughness in fighting the enemy to his training in the Marine Corps.”

“Barely three years into Joe’s judicial term, the Empire of Japan sucker punched the United States of America, unleashing a crippling assault on the naval fleet at Pearl Harbor and letting loose a stampede of American boys raring to pound back. Judges like Joe, however, were deemed to be doing their part already, and most watched from the sidelines with nobody doubting their manliness or their patriotism. That was not enough for Joe McCarthy. He believed in public service, which was one reason he’d run twice for office at Marquette and two more time soon after graduation. He was also unabashedly ambitious, which had him eyeing Carl Zeidler, the wunderkind mayor of Milwaukee, who could someday be a rival for statewide office and who, in early 1942, scored page-one headlines by enlisting in the Navy. There was always more than one thing driving Joe, and now it was defending his country and one-upping his imagined opponent. The way to do that, he reasoned, was to sign on with the most hallowed of the armed services: the leathernecks of the US Marines.”

McCarthy in the Marines

Military records show McCarthy joined as a first lieutenant, but in “his first wartime fib” he claimed he joined as a “buck private.” McCarthy would lie about a leg injury he claimed to receive in combat but which he actually got 600 miles away, slipping and falling as a “pollywog” in a crossing-the-equator initiation aboard USS Chandeleur (AV-10). There were other embellishments and distortions about his time in uniform.

McCarthy’s active duty service lasted only 29 months, and the Marine Corps accepted his resignation March 29, 1945, just before the battles of Iwo Jima and Luzon. McCarthy then returned to the circuit court bench in full military dress uniform and accelerated his campaign for the Senate.

Joe McCarthy and Donald Trump are different in some obvious ways: military service (Trump avoided the draft); family origins (Trump was born rich but McCarthy started as a chicken farmer); complicated relationship with the FBI (McCarthy was friends with Hoover, while Trump fired FBI directors); views on Russia and the Soviet Union (although both opposed communism); and alcohol consumption (McCarthy died of the effects of severe alcoholism, but Trump claims not to drink alcohol).

But McCarthy/Trump parallels, as revealed in “Demagogue,” are astounding –– and plentiful:

‘Compromised’ Democracy

Review by Bill Doughty

This is an important book for anyone who takes an oath of allegiance promising to uphold and defend the Constitution. It’s also a timely review of foreign and domestic attacks on U.S. democracy over recent decades.

Peter Strzok has taken that oath many times, including in uniform. He is a good writer, and there are a lot of hard truths in “Compromised” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 2020).

As a child, much like many military family members, Strzok grew up overseas. He was an eye witness to the Iranian Revolution, and watched his father, an Army veteran and civilian contractor, burn documents before his family had to flee the country in December 1978.

Years later, Strzok followed his father’s path and joined the Army. He served as an artillery officer with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. “There I was embedded in an infantry company in the 502nd Infantry Brigade, which traced its proud lineage to World War II; its D-Day heroics memorialized in a famous picture of General Eisenhower speaking to its paratroopers before they loaded onto airplanes to cross the English Channel to liberate Nazi-occupied France.”

After his service in the Army, Strzok attended Georgetown University with an ROTC scholarship.

“By the time I entered college, I had lived through four revolutions on three continents. Whether in Iran, West Africa, or Haiti, all shared common characteristics, and all taught me lessons about dictators and authoritarians and their hunger to consolidate power and obtain –– or at least convey –– legitimacy. That quest for legitimacy played out in a host of ways. One was the desire to manipulate, control, or discredit media. A relentless distortion of reality numbs a country’s populace to outrage and weakens its ability to discern truth from fiction.

Another way dictators sought to secure power and legitimacy was by co-opting the power of the state –– its military, law enforcement, and judicial systems –– to carry out personal goals and vendettas rather than the nation’s needs.

Still another was by undermining dissent, questioning the validity of opposition and refusing to honor public will, up to and including threatening or preventing the peaceful transfer of power.”

In 1995 Strzok wanted to continue to work in government service. That opportunity came with expanded recruitment for FBI agents after the Oklahoma City bombing. White nationalist Timothy McVeigh murdered 86 people, including many children at a day care center in the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.

Here’s an example of the quality of Strzok’s writing:

“September 11, 2001, irreparably changed our country. It wounded the nation’s collective psyche, and it individually scarred anyone old enough to remember the sight of the Twin Towers collapsing, of the Pentagon’s smashed west face, and of the furrowed earth in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 77 disintegrated as it plowed into the earth. Thousands dead and missing. Nineteen perpetrators dead. The mastermind, Osama bin Laden, deep in Afghanistan, under the protection of the Taliban. A network of Internet-savvy radical Islamists spread across the globe, deftly manipulating technology to communicate and recruit new adherents. The crime scenes –– the planes and the buildings –– obliterated in a volcanic inferno. Evidence incinerated or crushed into the earth, pulverized into dust, and, in New York, belched out over the now hellish moonscape of lower Manhattan.”

The attacks changed how the FBI and other agencies conducted business, but back then counterintelligence was still conducted with analog systems in a burgeoning digital world.

FBI members learn how an Alternate Light Source as part of the tools and techniques used to collect evidence. (Courtesy Photo)

This book is marked with sublime storytelling, and the stories are true, including the case of Andrey Bezrukov and Yelena Vavilova (“Donald Heathfield” and” Tracey Lee Ann Foley”), Russian “illegals” who were spies the FBI investigated and caught. The fictionalized version of their story was depicted in the show, “The Americans.”

We get perspectives on Russian disinformation, cyber theft, and assaults on U.S. elections as well as an inside look at Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which Strzok named while thinking of The Rolling Stones song “Jumping Jack Flash.”

This book spells out in compelling detail the events known so far at the center of the nation’s devastating corruption case involving President Trump and Russia, hinting more will be revealed in the future about Trump Tower Moscow and other financial ties and arrangements.

McCabe and Strzok

Like former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe’s “The Threat,” this book shows how investigators take their oath to uphold the Constitution seriously –– even in the face of a “nerve-racking” decision to investigate then-President Trump. We get an inside look at the Mueller investigation and how the Mueller Report was misrepresented.

“Although I’ve said it before, I’ll repeat it here as plainly as I can: from McCabe down to the Crossfire team, everyone who had a hand in opening an investigation into the president was acting with a clearheaded purpose of upholding the Constitution and protecting the American people. No one had hoped or wished for this. No one was happy. No one celebrated. No one questioned it. We had avoided it as long as we could. So, as we had so many times before, we gritted our teeth and got on with our work.”

Threats to the Constitution continue in 2021, and the need for vigilance and commitment to core values remains. Strzok’s warnings are relevant even now with President Biden in office, “Because the Russians haven’t gone away,” Strzok warns.

“That is still my fear. I expect that future elections will see the Russians engaging in all the sorts of active measures we saw in 2016, and they’ll be bringing new tactics to the fight as well: Altering voter rolls. Tampering with voting results, in however limited a way, and amplifying the news of that meddling on social media. Hacking into and crashing voting infrastructure. Spreading false stories of disenfranchisement and voting fraud. Releasing kompromat that Russia has spent years collecting and that has the potential to be greatly disruptive.

We’ll find out soon enough.”

Strzok offers a mea culpa for his personal and professional mistakes while a lead FBI agent, and his honesty and perspective are inspiring and ought to be appreciated in context.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation reportedly tried to warn about the Capitol attack of January 6, 2021 by white nationalist insurrectionists. The deadly attack threatened people, the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, and our Constitutional democracy.

The Long Arc: ’What Unites US’

Review by Bill Doughty

The long arc of history bends toward justice, as Martin Luther King observed, but the arc is jagged –– two steps forward, one step backward. Yet with age, education, and knowledge, often comes wisdom and a clear perspective of the way forward to a “more perfect union.”

Dan Rather acknowledges this in his heartwarming book, written with Elliot Kirschner, “What Unites Us: Reflections on Patriotism” (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill: 2017). Rereading this quietly powerful book is a way to see clearly how we can heal and unite through truth, understanding, and accountability, especially after the attack on the Capitol by domestic terrorists and misguided believers.

Some key insights Rather shares: We can find strength through kindness and diversity. We can be patriotic through empathy and inclusion. We can be responsible citizens by caring for the environment, getting an education, and finding ways to serve. (At right: Service – Sailors aboard USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) evaluate a Guatemalan infant, June 27, 2007, during a humanitarian deployment, DVIDS).

And we can achieve greatness as individuals and as a nation by repairing our faults, to paraphrase de Tocqueville (who the author quotes in his epigraph). Another quote Rather shares is from George Washington, who “in his famous Farewell Address, warned future generations ‘to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.’”

What does it mean to love America and to be committed to moving forward along the arc toward justice? “It is important not to confuse patriotism with nationalism,” he writes. “Patriotism –– active, constructive patriotism –– takes work. It takes knowledge, engagement with those who are different from you, and fairness in law and opportunity. It takes coming together for good causes.”

Here’s a found haiku in “What Unites Us”:

We are a nation

not only of dreamers, but

also of fixers

“We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and again, this is not good enough; we can do better,” he writes.

Houston, circa 1935

Rather takes us back to his childhood in 1930s/40s Houston, Texas in “What Unites Us.” He weaves together themes of freedom, community, exploration, responsibility, and character –– in other words, cherished American values and ideals. 

As a child, Rather was an eyewitness to the Second World War on the Homefront. As a young man he enlisted in the Marine Corps. But he regretted having to be forced to leave boot camp after suffering health issues from having contracted rheumatic fever in childhood

Rather found another way to serve in war zones; he became a renowned reporter, following in the footsteps of his hero Edward R. Murrow. Now, at 89 years old, Rather reflects on the American history he has seen and experienced.

Rather shares anecdotes about people he knew on the Homefront after the traumas of the Great Depression in the 1930s and World War II in the early-to-mid 40s, and he explains how the war mobilized and united the nation, especially after Pearl Harbor.

“It is perhaps not surprising that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan looked at a nation so traumatized and felt they could defeat us. Of course, history turned out differently. The same generation that had been driven to such depths in the 1930s rose up to push back the forces of totalitarianism in a two-ocean global war in the 1940s. Perhaps those authoritarians, who felt no empathy for their own people or those they conquered, underestimated the strength of our empathy. Empathy builds community. Communities strengthen a country and its resolve and will to fight back. We were never as unified in national purpose as we were in those days. What had weakened us had also made us stronger.”

WWII and Korea (“the forgotten war”), he says, were turning points for our nation.

“We have never fully regained the confidence we felt at the end of World War II, or the unity. Korea led to a long and arduous path of questioning our place in the world. We did not always win wars, as we would soon have to relearn in Vietnam. We could not take our destiny for granted, as we began to realize under the shadow of the Cold War. There were deep ruptures and injustices within our nation, as we would see when the national spotlight shifted from the fissures of McCarthyism to the difficult struggle for civil rights.”

Truman integrated the military in 1948

Peaceful demonstrations and street marches against poverty, racism, voter suppression, and the Vietnam War were part of the jagged arc toward justice in the 60s, but courageous decisions made decades earlier paved the way. “In 1948, President Harry Truman would desegregate the armed forces, six years before Brown v. Board of Education ended segregation in our public schools.”

“Indeed, this sweep of empathy continued after the war. One of the best foreign policy efforts in American history was to help rebuild Europe and Japan. Our enemies became our friends through acknowledgment of the common bonds of humanity. The postwar world order was built on that foundation. And when the GIs returned home, we treated them empathetically as well. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, more commonly known as the GI Bill, was one of the greatest pieces of social legislation in our nation’s history. Among other benefits, the GI Bill ensured that servicemen’s tuitions to college or technical school were fully paid. Empathy makes for wise foreign and domestic policy.”

Nixon is interviewed by Rather in the White House, Jan. 2, 1972.

Rather showcases the steady, courageous, and audacious leadership of Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Truman, FDR, JFK, and LBJ. Those leaders stand in sharp contrast to any president who lies, cheats, threatens, and incites violence in order to get elected or try to stay in power.

Reflecting on the situation in the early 70s, after Nixon resigned in the face of impeachment and Navy veteran Vice President Gerald Ford assumed office, Rather writes, “The steadiness of the nation contrasted sharply with the increasing unsteadiness of President Nixon –– the full measure of which we would not comprehend until after he’d left office.”

“We would do well to study our history,” Rather observes. “For in it lies not only evidence of American greatness, but also the need for humility.”

He reminds us of humble American hero Rodger Young, an Army soldier of the Ohio National Guard who fought and died in the Pacific War during the Battle of Munda Point in the Solomon Islands. 

In the Battle of Munda Point, Private Young, shot twice by machine gun fire, continued to move forward, firing his rifle and throwing hand grenades to take out an enemy pillbox and save his team. Young was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor. 

Rather speaks with reverence about visiting cemeteries in Normandy and Honolulu. Rather's/Kirschner’s prose is crisp and unsentimental, but there are still glimmers of poetic insight.

Here is another found haiku in “What Unites Us”:

We live in debt to

those who have served and died, a

debt tallied in blood

Rather reveals truly patriotic American values –– perfect for this challenging time in the wake of a failed coup attempt, in the middle of a deadly pandemic, and as we confront an ongoing threat to our Constitution and democratic republic. Dan Rather provides a strong and hopeful commitment to truth, justice, and accountability in 2021 in this uplifting book. He helps smooth the jagged edges of the long arc of history.

National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, "Punchbowl Crater," Oahu, Hawaii, with Diamond Head in the background.

Panoramic view of the "National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific" at Punchbowl Crater, Oahu, Hawaii, 2 September 1949, four years after the end of World War II. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, USN, made a speech at the dedication ceremony.