I have tried, three times, to have a poll asking people how long they believed Kevin McCarthy would last as Speaker of the House. Twice before, when I published the article lost all of its formatting, and its poll.
Therefore, I’ve given up on voting. If you feel like having an opinion, please give it in the comments.
Blather about McCarthyism 1 & 2
The first McCarthy was in the Senate when he went viral (became a self-replicating virus). His name pointed at a disease that had been exploited by bipartisan politicians attacking the pre-War order (both FDR and the talent pool of the war). It was a way to attack the immigrant intellectuals from Europe, a way to thin the interlopers in the realms of government, arts, journalism, and education. It was also a way to create a new Enemy — one that couldn’t be defeated — in the form of Your Neighbor the Red.
His zenith flared for nearly three years. But, as his star smoldered, the world was left remembering neither the man nor the issues he inflated. Instead, it was left with a name, and the name only pointed at connotations of “bad” and “ganging up” or “false charges” — not demagogues and opportunists victimizing thousands of Americans with false patriotism and perverting the meaning of “American” and “freedom” in the process.
By the 1990’s, REM ridiculed the power suit, power tie, MBA culture, and “executive summits,” wrote their “Exhuming McCarthy” because, at long last, H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan had left no sense of decency; their “patriotism” was rapacious capital and idolizing the manager. (“You’re walking on coals/ To improve your business acumen.”)
Ronald Reagan revivified a Red fear (Managua being a “nine hour drive” from Brownsville, Texas), but his real project all along was masking for the same anti-FDR, anti-liberal consolidation of wealth that the McCarthy era shoved. Heck, Warren Beaty tried to revitalize the Reds as heroes, but he had to make them romantics. [The best answer to the new McCarthyism was the “red” hero from John Sayles’s Matewan (which is finally available on DVD).]
We’ve got another McCarthy now, and he’s a L-E-A-D-E-R. He doesn’t do much leading, but neither does a weather vane. Neither does a rabbit’s nose.
He’s been a leader ever since he appeared on the cover of a book announcing the Young Guns (an attempt to link three Republican wonks to “yet another brat pack” manufacture from Hollywood). Like Gayle Sayers in exactly one respect, he was third. Eric Cantor of Virginia (defeated by Dave Brat), Paul Ryan of Wisconsin (retired after being Speaker of the House of TEA Party and Donald Trump), and Kevin McCarthy of California. They were, above all, more PAC than pact, and they proved it.
Like everyone else talking about the New McCarthyism, I’m going to ignore the Republicans and focus on MyKevin’s base.
It’s McCarthyism mockery three.
It’s a group that includes serious enemies of democracy with a small d, and he wants to be the elected leader of a deliberative body of (and this is the best joke) majority rule.
The seditionists (the members of the House in 2020 who voted against accepting the electoral college count) and enemies of democracy are not supporters of Donald Trump. They are, far more fundamentally, virulent pathogens of democratic principles.
For example, they don’t hate gay people, immigrants, or even care about the oppression of African Americans built into law and practice. Rather, they are fundamentally dedicated to power as it is operating without hindrance or question. They will not tolerate any studies or recommendations that say that those with power should have less of it, or that power should not be an infinite competition leading to the result of a single winner. They believe in autocrats in their businesses, in their families, in their churches, in their sports. To them, it is not merely natural that all social exchanges are zero sum, but any sharing of power is a crime.
This is a complement or precondition to the ruthless, kleptocratic form of capitalism that they believe in. Minority rights, consumer protections, equal opportunity laws, torts, anti-trust — all of these mean that wealth cannot consolidate as quickly. They mean that capital, and, worse, wealth, gets spread.
The McCarthyists hate liberalism because it’s liberalism -- the movement of power and wealth from few hands to multitudes (i.e. freedom through greater self and community rule) — and think that it is the enemy of license and independence (i.e. the freedom to do and say whatever you want, in any context; freedom from that part of the social contract that binds to sacrifice).
The McCarthyism of today advocates “freedom.” Listen to their words. Ryan Zinke, the old fraud, has spoken already of freedom. It means “self-reliance” and “the cowboy.” Forget the actual cowboy and think about what freedom to the camera-snagging, selfie masters and mistresses mean. It isn’t freedom from fear or freedom from want. It’s freedom from giving a fig.
Of course some of them are less sophisticated than “Whitefish Energy” Zinke. They just want to be famous.
Tailgunner Joe wanted to be famous. It was his adviser, Roy Cohn, who was full of spite. Cohn used McCarthy, and then he used Donald Trump. Today’s “radicals” are the good and proper heirs to the first McCarthy: they being told that they have any moral obligations or that the world is larger than themselves, and they know that a journalists get rich making people afraid.
Fear pays.
It doesn’t legislate, and it doesn’t allow for more than one Matthew Hopkins or Titus Oates at a time.
. . . So, how long will THIS fit of McCarthyism last?