The Second McCarthy Era

When the history of our time is written this decade will probably be known as the "Second McCarthy Era," after Sen. Joe McCarthy. (Below, the then-Senator and his lawyer, Roy Cohn.)

The assumption and abuse of government power is similar. The intimidation is similar. The incompetence is very similar.

The incompetence is a direct product of the abuse of power, and it's sad that liberals don't get this because it's simple math. When you play Kevin Bacon and make everyone a suspect, you limit the attention you can pay to any one suspect. Unless, that is, you can expand police budgets to give everyone a suspect's attention, and this the government has been unable to do, in either era.

What we're left with is the expansion of fear for fear's sake, which is exhausting. So without something real to renew our fear the game gets obvious and people stop playing. This is true in the Muslim world as well. Dubai looks a lot more attractive to young Muslims today than Al Qaeda's camps.

But what happens to the McCarthyites? Fear is a drug, intimidation is a drug, you need more and more of it as time goes by, and the loyal Bushies have become addicts. That's precisely what we are seeing now. Once you find yourself attacking toddlers to feed your need for enemies, or decide calling a TV camera names is a rational act (above) a lot of people are bound to think you need help.

These are the "haties," the political equivalent of the "hippies" from an earlier time. And our reaction to these "haties" is precisely the same as our parents' reaction to the "hippies" of their time. We think they're crazy, that they're high on something, that they've lost their reason.

Which they have.

What we're seeing in the larger society, then, is a reaction against tactics, followed by a reaction against those who use those the tactics, followed by a reaction against those who benefit from the tactics. Just as in the 1960s and 1970s we saw a reaction against the hippies, then against those who were behind the hippies, then against those who sided with them, then against anyone the newly-sane ex-hippies sided with.

The hippie movement, of course, atomized, and metastasized, into the violence of the Weathermen -- some might say the trail leads eventually to Charles Manson (above). I have no doubt the same thing is going to happen on the right, to the haties, and to all those who have stood behind them. Once these people are no longer a legitimate part of the discourse, they're not all going to go away, get jobs, and pretend it was all a bad trip. Some are going to freak out and do terrible things.

Just like the "Afghan Freedom Fighters" we supported in the 1980s evolved, eventually, into Al Qaeda. The next wave of terrorism will come from within, and it will come from what we now call the political right.

Only instead of looking like ol' Charlie up there, they'll look more like this guy over here.