Well you had to know that before this campaign was over, the dark forces of the early 50’s were going to reappear under the guise of “making our nation safe”, and sure enough, here comes one Newt Gingrich with just a dandy idea to accomplish that task: Restore a modern version of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (also known as HUAC).
Let me go a step further, because remember, San Bernardino, Fort Hood, and Orlando involve American citizens. We’re going to ultimately declare a war on Islamic supremacists and we’re going to say, if you pledge allegiance to ISIS, you are a traitor and you have lost your citizenship. And we’re going take much tougher positions. In the late 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt was faced with Nazi penetration in the United States. We originally created the House Un-American Activities Committee to go after Nazis. We passed several laws in 1938 and 1939 to go after Nazis and we made it illegal to help the Nazis. We’re going to presently have to go take the similar steps here.
For those of you Kossacks who may not have lived as long as I have, the term HUAC may be, at best a dim acronym of something bad, but when it was at its most vile, it was the organization more than eager to check into vague claims by Sen. Joseph McCarthy that Hollywood and the State Department were riddled with communist sympathizers and that colleges and universities were likewise. It was the era when a Syracuse grocery store owner could create his own “list” of likely communists and then sell it to media networks and movie studios and campuses and get those individuals “blacklisted” based simply on his inclusion of their names.
But Newt thinks this kind of thing is what we’re going to “have to do.”
Well our good buddy and one of the best political pundits now plying his wares on the Intertoobz...Charlie Pierce at Esquire, thinks otherwise, and nothing captures vintage Charlie like his latest diatribe against both Gingrich and his intellectual giant of a partner Rudy Giuliani like this characterization of Mr. Gingrich:
First of all, as a former assistant professor of history and substitute metal-shop teacher at Bugtussle Regional State College And Live Bait Barge, Gingrich has to know that HUAC was not created as a standing committee of the House until 1945, and that its primary aim was chasing shadows and the rancid butterflies flittering over the garbage dumps that were the minds of its members.
But is there any doubt that the Definer of civilization's rules and Leader (perhaps) of the civilizing forces would like to be the guy oiling the thumbscrews and apply a fresh coat of tar to the blacklist? And that's not even to mention that these two guys were as thoroughly rejected as national leaders by most of the country.
Dark forces are out there, ready to sell us the latest snake oil that if we are just nastier and more brutal, we can defeat the forces arrayed against us. Sometimes those ideas have a history attached and when you examine it, you come away realizing that combatting evil with more evil never solves the problem.
Mr. Trump is railing that we are losing our stature worldwide because our leaders refuse to use the term “radical Islam” and fail to characterize all Muslims as radicals. This makes us weak and we are losing the battle with ISIS because our leaders are weak an ineffective and we are standing by as ISIS wins.
Sometimes Donald, you have to be careful. Even before you tried to tar Hillary with that failure to use your words to define the issue, she used them and effectively said it isn’t language that will win this battle, it is actions and it is careful planning and she essentially called out Trump for his lack of any coherent policy on the matter other than boastful but empty claims that if HE were President, things would change overnight.
Funny thing Donald….every time you open your mouth, reality gets in the way. White House spokesmen Josh Ernst brushed aside Trump’s claims of a weak President, simply noting that the President’s records included “a lot of dead terrorists.”
And this morning comes initial word that ISIS leader Al-Baghdadi may have been killed in an American air strike within the past few days. Those reports are circulating in Arabic and European media, but have not yet been confirmed by the Pentagon. But if true, they will blow yet another hole in Mr. Trump’s claims and his campaign strategy and his efforts to position himself as the only one who can make America safe.
With calls for restoration of HUAC, Trump campaign cutoffs of media credentials for outlets who are critical of his policies, and threats to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies if he is elected, Mr. Trump represents a real threat to the basic tenets of American democracy.
With folks like Charlie Pierce on the attack, he is much less likely to get there.