A Match Made in Hell
How the Evilest Man in America Created Donald Trump
(An excerpt from The Trumpland Diary)
Even if you weren’t alive to remember him, you probably know the name Joseph McCarthy. Famous Senate hearings from back in 1954? Anyone?
Bueller?
(Boomers, you at least know “McCarthyism” as a pejorative for someone who traffics in wild, baseless accusations.)
(If you’re my age, you at least know “Joe McCarthy” as a lyric from Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.)
(Millennials, “Billy Joel” is a piano player/recording artist from before your time.)
(Gen–Z’ers, a “piano” is like a furniture-sized antique synthesizer that doesn’t need to plug into a MacBook to make noise.)
Joseph McCarthy was basically the male Marjorie Taylor Green of his time—recklessly ambitious, needlessly antagonistic, hopelessly conspiratorial, grossly unscrupulous, and more or less detached from reality. He rose to notoriety in 1950 by claiming he had a list of 205 State Department employees who were secretly members of the Communist Party (like MTG—or that crackhead Pillow Guy—McCarthy was never quite able to produce any of the information he kept claiming to have).
The infamous Senate hearings bearing his name were the result of McCarthy accusing the U.S. Army of secretly harboring and cultivating Communists, which was the absolute worst thing in the world you could be accused of in the 1950’s. It turned into a national spectacle, with the Senate proceedings drawing out for a solid month and the entire country tuning in to watch with morbid curiosity. It was basically the O.J. Simpson trial of its day.
(Kids, O.J. Simpsons was a Heisman Trophy-winning football player-turned-actor who murd– you know what, forget it. We’re never gonna make it through this if I have to stop and explain every reference to you. You’ve got Google, go look it up.)