Dan Carlin (who is awesome) went into detail describing how we, the people from the future, cannot properly evaluate the actions of people in the past because we’re not in the same mental state. Often, the folks back then were pants shittingly terrified. Maybe justifiably so. Maybe not justifiably so. They acted according to the madness of their time and with the information they had.
In the case of the Red Scare of the 1950’s (and lingering much longer), we’re not terrified in the modern time so running around like your head’s on fire in 1950 seems a bit silly. Reasons why we’re not currently flipping out:
- We know the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 because we watched it on cable TV. Nobody in 1970 knew that was going to happen. (They didn’t even know cable TV was going to happen.)
- We know the Soviets fizzled from economic rot in 1991 without firing a single shot.
- We know what the people of the past didn’t (and couldn’t) know.
I was there. I was then. I was in a society that had recently lost its goddamned mind. Sure, JKF wasn’t going full retard at the Bay of Pigs in the mid-1970’s but crazy was still in the air. The press shrieked that dumbass cowboy Reagan was gonna’ make the cold war go hot and we’d all die. It was a guy named Dan Rather that did that on CBS. How were we to know Dan Rather was a fucking liar? In the 1970’s we didn’t know Rather would flame out in 2004 with false evidence (forgeries!) against President George W. Bush. The people then can’t know what hasn’t yet happened. (Keep Rather’s fate in mind. Did I not already mention my theory that chickens usually come home to roost?)
Surprising everyone (including the FBI which apparently never gets anything right), the USSR flaked out. Peace happened. No shit! We still have commies but they’re no longer terrifying. They’ve wrecked Venezuela which kinda’ sucks, but none of us hang out there anyway. We were on the edge of our seats waiting for the Mighty Soviet Bear to nuke Pasadena (which is exactly what cold war ICBMs were built to do!) and it fizzled. Recent Commies are a little less “James Bond Supervillain”. They do tame stuff like bitch about health care. When Bernie Sanders whines about how many Ferraris an arrogant CEO has compared to your uncool but completely adequate Honda Civic (which is a hoot coming from a dude who owns multiple houses) it’s a much lower level of FEAR. (Instead it’s envy. Envy is an equally powerful tool which seems the choice of politicians this decade.)
Commies don’t blow shit up anymore so we’re a bit more chill about them running things in certain cities and states. (There are new groups that like explosives and maiming and death. There was a tall building in NYC that comes to mind. Folks are trying to forget/never forget that memorable event according to their favorite team… but that wasn’t commies.) Commies recently just wave free college tuition under the noses of kids so young and dumb they can’t comprehend a 401(k). Not the same. Less FEAR. Mutually assured destruction doesn’t resonate like a geezer from Vermont like “reallocating” shit he didn’t pay for. For one thing, it lacks the photogenic radioactive blast patterns of earlier concerns.
Now here’s the funny part; Dan Carlin recorded Hardcore History #40 on October 12, 2011. Half a decade later we had a new improved third red scare. This is the smallest, weakest, and silliest red scare yet. Regardless, it happened (and is happening). Part of why it’s happening is we (as a people) were still primed to associate “Russia” and “we’re fucked”. The experiences of the older generations that still remember Fear #2 (if not Fear #1) are receptive to that pitch.
After a long bitter and ugly cold war, the press shrieking “Russia, Russia, Russia” resonated. Would a made-up unverified bullshit story about pissing hookers have gotten traction if they’d been bitching about “Italian Collusion”? Would “Lithuanian Meddling in Elections” create the same talk of impeachment? Suppose there’d been a two-year investigation into President Hillary Clinton that discovered a complete absence of “French Collusion”? What if we found absolutely no serious “Finnish Election Meddling”? Do any of them have the same emoptional punch? I submit that folks who don’t have our best interests at heart knowingly tapped into the last lingering terror of a fading Red Scare. They tried to get the band back together for a farewell tour and it almost worked. J. Edgar Hoover is probably smiling from his current residence in hell.
My next post wraps it all up.