The Joseph McCarthy era.

[cornermouse]

One of the darkest periods of our history. Its always been a source of horror for me. Being hauled in and asked "Are you or have you ever been a Communist?" with the accompanying threat to your job, friends and associates, and income hanging over your head. This week they had the following on PBS.

American Masters
Miller, Kazan, and the Blacklist: None Without Sin
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/kazan_e.html

It focused on Kazan and Arthur Miller's friendship and the Joseph McCarthy era. I've read other accounts about the McCarthy era and have been appalled at the cruelty shown and willingness, even eagerness to destroy others over things that are not really that important, but this one and the similarities to the present time chilled me all over again.

I never realized that Miller wrote The Crucible about the Salem witch trials in an attempt to explain to himself how Kazan and others could abandon principles and friendships when fear becomes the prime motivator.

It was very depressing. There is way too much similarity between mindsets of people during the Salem Witch Trials, Hitler's rise to power, the McCarthy era, and G.W.'s presidential years.

[Swamp Rat]

1. "Are you or have you ever been a Democrat?"

[cornermouse]

2. I've been wondering how far they'll go.

How are things going in New Orleans?

[Swamp Rat]

4. Times are difficult and life is hard, but we're trying.

Thanks for asking. :hi:

If you find yourself wondering how far they will go, just remember New Orleans.

[cornermouse]

6. I honestly do not think it will ever be possible to ever

forget the things I saw and heard during Katrina.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Nah

- have you ever even dreamt of looking at subversive stuff on Democratic Underground and /or considered referring to President Bush as any other than "His Holiness" :rofl:

[Swamp Rat]

5. oui

[niyad]

7. Progressive has a regular feature called "the new mccarthyism watch"

which covers situations that are depressingly similar to the mccarthy era.

www.progressive.org

[cornermouse]

8. Thank you.

[izzie]

9. It was an odd time. I can recall Margaret Chase Smith really

got mad at what was going on. I was always told to look at talent and not the policy of people so I may have come at it different. I can still recall my mother getting mad at people not liking Germans or some of the things they had done like their music, during WW2. We were told to think of the persons and not this what the govt. does. It is a hard place to be in. I can recall a actor I liked that they just killed and I do not think he was ever in a film after that. He had joined some group in college or something. Hardly some thing very bad. Hack Bush was drunk until he was 45 and people can believe ne would stop. Well it was really a bad time. The actor by the way was Larry Parks.

[Warpy]

10. My parents were the first on the block with a TV set

and they went hungry to buy it so my mother could watch those hearings. You see, she'd had a brief flirtation with the party in the 30s when they were the only ones standing against Hitler. She never joined and she left pretty quickly as she realized the Stalin idolatry and what Stalin was all about, but she watched those hearings white knuckled, terrified, and furious.

To this day, the memory of what she went through because of that man--and she was never called, not famous enough--keeps me from signing petitions, putting my name on anything but a voter registration card.

You didn't have to be called before the committee in those days. You just had to be "under suspicion" in your own neighborhood, and that was enough. All it took was a neighbor who didn't like the way you planted your flowerbeds to start the rumor and your life was shit. You could lose your job, yout home, everything, on just that.

The evil that man did permeated every bit of this country, everybody was afraid he'd be turned in by a neighbor, a child, the milkman, anyone and for any reason at all.

The supreme irony in all this is that being a Communist was a constitutionally protected freedom! It was NEVER illegal to join the party. It was purely a witch hunt carried out by a few men mad with power. Nixon got his start during the McCarthy hearings.