I was in high school then -- a leftish private school. I read the papers. My impression is that McCarthyism was an opportunistic infection that ran its course. Here are the peculiarities of the '50s that seem to me to have contributed to its temporary success. (I should perhaps warn you that I am a dissenter from the religion in which blaming the victim is taboo.)

1. Moral cowardice had something of the status of a cult. It was widely identified with maturity & mental health. In some quarters it was taken for granted that true dissent was impossible: people who claimed to be thinking for themselves were actually only conforming to a deviant & therefore wicked subculture, or had merely inverted the majority's value system and perversely opposed whatever the majority approved of.

2. Many respectable liberals had been demoralized by the castastrophe of their identification with the Soviet Union.

3. Many respectable conservatives who despised McCarthy nevertheless gave first priority to fighting Communism, thought that for that purpose the masses of Americans had to be scared the hell out of, and thought that McCarthy would be useful for that purpose & could be got rid of when it was accomplished. In that respect they resembled the German conservatives who thought they could use Hitler -- with the important difference that the Americans were right & the Germans were wrong. Americans, despite much trying, have always found it impossible to come up with world-class sons of bitches. McCarthy was our attempt at a paranoid politician -- our answer to Stalin! But he wasn't serious. (As to his antiCommunism, it is well known that he was elected, the first time, with Communist support.) He did not crave power, only attention. So it was easy to cut him enough slack so that he would make a fool of himself. Once that had happened, it took only the coughs of a couple of stuffed shirts to make him dry up & blow away.

--- Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||: Sometimes I think I am happier than I think I am. :||