Joseph McCarthy, the inebriated Senator from Wisconsin, overstepped the boundaries of civility when he began making false accusations about respected public servants who he claimed were communist. At a televised hearing in the Senate in 1954, Mr. Joseph Welch, a Boston Attorney representing the Army, stood up and bellowed, “Senator McCarthy have you no sense of decency?” Subsequently, the Senator was censured for his demagoguery and lost influence in the Senate and in his own Republican Party. In the 1950s, American democracy stood up to the test of decency.
The communist red-baiting of the 1950s impacted many innocent lives. But despite the search for scapegoats regarding the triumph of communism in China, McCarthyism, as that form of politics became known, did not characterize American politics. As we leap from the 1950s to the second decade of the twenty-first century, we find ourselves in a state of politics that has taken us beyond McCarthyism. Decades later, we will look back at this awful period as Trumpism which constitutes an appeal to the worst instincts of white Americans. More frightening than Donald Trump is what it says about the percentage of the Republican electorate that finds his quasi-fascist rhetoric appealing.
There was a time when Trump was thought of as a sane Democrat but his recent foray into the birther school of thought provides some clue into his degenerative mindset. Trump was in the vanguard of the internet groupies who convinced themselves that President Obama was born in Kenya and thus was elected unconstitutionally. The right-wing blogs have created their own reality. When that myth was shattered, the true believers insisted that the proof of the birth certificate was a fake. The billionaire builder was in the vanguard of this true believing posse of ignoramuses.
As a Presidential candidate, Trump has been obnoxiously narcissistic. There was concern that this sense of self would ultimately lead to poor judgment as was displayed by his involvement in the birther movement. But the media found Trump to be funny and his insults of fellow candidates were accepted as a new norm in conventional American politics.
Trump’s campaign began with a vulgar attack on Mexicans who were characterized as rapists and dismissed as criminals. Trump tried to make the case that Mexicans and illegal immigrants were responsible for most of the violent crimes occurring in the United States. The scholarly studies show the converse. Immigrants have a lower crime rate than indigenous Americans. Trump was also whipping up a hysteria against Mexicans in an era when violent crime in America has plummeted since the 1990s although in recent years, it has begun to level off.
In the aftermath of the Paris carnage, Trump began his attack on Muslims. He wanted to initiate a database on Muslims and entertained the possibility of closing Mosques. In the bizarre logic of Trump, every Muslim is a terrorist and thus America should not accept Syrian refugees, irrespective of the thoroughness of the vetting process.
After a rally of Trump was interrupted by representatives of “Black Lives Matter”, Trump posted false statistics of black vis-à-vis white homicides. In the trauma of the ISIS terror, he insisted that he saw on television Muslims in New Jersey cheering the collapse of the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. That simply did not occur but Trump lives in his own cocoon and his fantasy concoction does not faze his true believers. Every responsible journalist has searched the archives and there is no footage to corroborate Trump’s fantasy. Nonetheless, Trump has not apologized and his demagoguery is yet to affect his standing in the polls.
What is the reason for Trump’s appeal to a certain segment of the Republican electorate? He draws sizeable crowds and his brand of Republicanism represents a new form of white nationalism. In his critique of America’s position in global markets, the attack is always directed at non-white countries. NAFTA encompasses the United States, Canada and Mexico yet his venom is directed at Mexico. The other obscessionism is China. Nothing is ever said of trade relations with Europe.
It is astounding that in a highly institutionalized democracy that someone with such limited knowledge of American society, poor understanding of globalization and with such a limited vocabulary could have emerged as the frontrunner for the Presidency in a major Party. There is a conjuncture of forces that explain the rise of Trump.
Life in America has become more hazardous for the middle class and the working class poor. Wages have stagnated since the 1970s. Media have become more fragmented and there is a right wing anti-government narrative that blames the Federal government for the predicament of the middle class
Further fueling this narrative is the changing demographics of the American population. The white majority vote is declining and the minority vote is increasing in its percentage of the electorate. By 2050, whites will be a plurality of the American population but not a majority. No one race or ethnic group will constitute a majority. Appeals to white nationalism is not a productive long term strategy for the Republican Party
Compounding these internal changes is the external chaos of world society. Since the Viet-Nam war and again in the war against Saddam, the limitation of military power is evident in the contemporary world. Wars have become unending.
We live in a complex, messy and disorderly world. The spectre of terrorism is omnipresent. In America, we have created our own Taliban, our own self-grown fundamentalists. A segment of the electorate seeks simplicity and is willing to be led by men with a limited understanding of the world, thus the rise of Trumpism.
American democracy was tested in the 1950s and triumphed over McCarthyism. At the turn of the twenty-first century, American democracy is once again being tested. Is there still a sense of decency in America?
