He's run out of other cards.
Robert
Reich for Inequality.org
 |
The cover of “Is This Tomorrow,” an anti-communist comic
book published in 1947, suggests the chaos and ruin
that would follow a communist takeover of the United
States. The publications reflected a fevered politics that
prevailed after World War II and through the 1950s.
(Image via Wikimedia Commons) |
Trump has run out of cards to play in the midterm elections,
which is why he’s now talking about the “communist menace.”
He can’t talk about the economy, because prices continue to
rise faster than wages, which means most Americans are getting poorer. He can’t
talk about foreign policy, because his war in Iran has been a debacle,
his tariffs are
an utter failure, and he obviously hasn’t settled the war in Ukraine on “Day 1.” He
can’t talk about immigration,
because his raids and mass deportations have
become so unpopular.
So, facing the midterm elections, what’s left?
He’s resorting to the oldest of right-wing tropes —
accusing Democrats (especially a rising generation of new, young, vigorous
Democratic politicians) of being commies.
He kicked off America’s 250th anniversary celebrations on
Friday with a speech at Mount Rushmore extolling American culture and warning
of a resurgence of the “communist menace.” With the granite faces of four of
his predecessors behind him, Trump took aim at what he called “radicals” and
“extremists.”
“There is now a resurgence of the communist menace in our
land, including from newcomers to our country who embrace ideas totally opposed
to our way of life and our great success. You can be a communist, or you can be
a patriot. You cannot be both.”
Oh, please.
For years, Trump has been trying to scare Americans about
progressive Dems who advocate Medicare for All,
universal childcare, free public higher education,
and higher taxes on the super-wealthy to pay for them (all of which the rising
young Democrats are advocating).
But he hasn’t gotten anywhere because these initiatives are
supported by most Americans.
So now he’s throwing the commie label at the wall and seeing
if it sticks.
Communism was the scare word used by right-wingers after
World Wars I and II to crack the whip on the left. It provoked witch hunts and
ruined careers.
It made former Wisconsin Senator
Joe McCarthy a one-man bomb squad in the early 1950s, when he rid
iculed the
“pitiful squealing” of “those egg-sucking phony liberals” who “would hold
sacrosanct those Communists and queers,” and forced American citizens to “name
names.”
McCarthyism was a by-product of the Republican Party’s
postwar effort to eradicate the New Deal. The GOP had portrayed the
midterm election of 1946 as a “battle between Republicanism and communism,” and
the Republican National Committee chairman claimed that the federal bureaucracy
was filled with “pink puppets.”
Southern segregationist Democrats joined in the red-baiting.
Mississippi senator Theodore Bilbo, a Klansman who filibustered to block
anti-lynching legislation, described multiracial labor unions’ advocacy
for civil rights as
the work of “northern communists.”
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