Russians

Love Sunday morns. First, I do my one-hour (plus) study of the Sermon on the Mount. Then I watch Noir Alley on TCM. If time permits, I catch the message from Pulaski Heights Methodist Church in Little Rock to make sure that a least one Protestant Church in America still preaches love and peace. I call it my “Grace Sandwich,” i.e. grace followed by darkness followed by grace. It’s a spicy-smooth delicacy that makes me think.

The films on NA were made in the 1940s and 50s. Invariably, the discussion gets around to the blacklisting of actors, writers, producers, and directors, particularly those carried out by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), what, until recently, I regarded as the most evil group ever to achieve power in Washington. They were, of course spurred on by Senator Joe McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and his chief vermin Roy Cohn, whom, until recently, I regarded as the two most evil men ever to gain power in Washington.  I don’t think it is documented how many lives these folks ruined. It was in the hundreds, I think, maybe more.

For what sin did they ruin innocent lives? It was for the sin of exploring Communism, an act legal at the time of commission and shared by many affected, and influenced, by the bitter poverty and despair in America during the Great Depression. Of course, at the time of the witch hunts, flirting with Communism meant communication with Russia. One minor dalliance could destroy you, your family, your associates, and your career.

One contact with Russia, the most casual incident of intercourse, and your life would drain away like the muddy remnants of a spring rain flowing to the sea.

Sometimes, while I’m listening to how some successful American saw her or his life ruined by simply having some turncoat colleague like Ronald Reagan accuse them of sympathizing with the Russians, I think of my life.

See, the same America that produced HUAC, McCarthy, Cohn, and Reagan, once ordered me to a war zone to spend a year of my life in harm’s way.

Why?

Let’s see, oh yes. It was to wage war against a country that had never done America a smidgen of harm, but which had to be destroyed because they were aligned with and armed by, … by … are you ready?

Yep, our old arch-enemy, Russia, that demon of demons. Over 50,000 of my comrades died trying to teach those Communist bastards in Moscow a lesson.

I made it home reviled, hated, and rebuked because we didn’t seem to punish the Russian proxy-nation enough. I withstood the experience, but I never was quite the same person who left for the war. I don’t think any of my surviving brothers and sisters were. Those who dodged the honor were the lucky ones, I suppose.

So you, dear reader, may understand that I can’t explain why the only love expressed by our current president is for the former communists in Russia. Maybe it’s because they never damaged him.

Well, at least we’re not trying to ruin people’s lives today because they don’t love Russians enough, the way we ruined them back in the day for not hating Russians enough.

Uh.

Wait.

Let me get back to you on that one.

Be Thou Not Afraid

Sometimes I think things happen because they are planned. Sometimes I think they happened by accident. Sometimes I even wonder about divide intervention.

Last evening, one of those occurred. Brenda was in the kitchen. I was doing my part to help with supper by reclining and selecting a film to watch with the meal, teamwork at its best.

A black and white trailer appeared announcing the film Good Night and Good Luck. I recognized it immediately as the film about legendary TV pioneer Edward R. Murrow. The film, I knew, dealt with his courageous stand against Joe McCarthy and his evil henchman Roy Cohn. I knew the film was about the time we almost lost America.

The trailer read, “America was afraid.” I can remember those times. A country we had once befriended had turned into our worst enemy. It threatened our national security, our lives, our homes, and our way of life. We were afraid, very afraid. Those in power, and those who claimed to speak for them, made us so. We were made to contemplate the most primal of fears by hiding under our desks at school.

We had learned about the causes there. Russia had sat out WWII until America had carried the brunt and had been bled white. Then, when victory had been assured, Russia and Great Britain had jumped in and taken some credit for the final victory.

Well, that’s not exactly the way it happened. That’s what we had been taught in school. I had to find out, much later and on my own, what had really happened. At the time, we only knew that Russia hated us and that a Communist was worse than the Antichrist. The faintest, most specious, most fragile connection to one was cause for “social death.”

Editors note: It’s different now. Much more different. One of the current “soldiers of darkness,” a Franklin Graham, told us when he visited our state, “Humanists are worse than communists." Oops, that took me in, despite my country's having made me spend a year of my life fighting communists.

Back then, though. with the specter of dark Armageddon hanging over our heads and promoted by the communists, we went about our business because we weren’t one. But, when I was around ten or eleven, national affairs entered my life. Oh, I had lived through the horror of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s election. My sister had assured me that, if a Republican got elected as president again, we would have another “depression.” “What’s that?” I had asked.

“That’s when the communists will take our house and our store and we will have to live in tents out in the woods.”

Oh, that kind of a depression.

School ended without a depression, though I had hidden my Boy Scout compass and a couple of other items I won’t mention (mainly reading material) in a dark corner of my daddy’s barn. The summer of 1954 came.

Summers were hot in Arkansas. Still are. We played outdoors anyway, mostly. There was this new thing, though.

Television.

During the day, shows mainly consisted of filmed plays where adults said silly things to one another. Sometime during the day, though, on the one channel we had, they played a cowboy show. That summer, it was different. Instead of the cowboy show, there were just a bunch of old men, some in uniforms, arguing with one another, mentioning the communists a lot. We watched as much as we could bear, then went and made a cowboy show of our own, practicing living in the woods in tents.

Yep, it was the result of when Joe McCarthy made the cosmic mistake of taking on the United States Army. It almost makes me cry to think I may have actually watched Joseph Welch live when he destroyed the Monster with “You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

We cleansed America of the evil of McCarthyism, almost treating is a joke as time went by. You can’t imagine the surprise to those like me who are watching it arise again like some 1950s monster liberated by nuclear testing. Just substitute ‘immigrants” for “communists.”

I fear, and this is only my opinion, that our country is afraid again. Yes, I think, afraid. We’re afraid on the one hand that our country has lost its bearings and is adrift in a fickle sea buffeted by angry waves, with our anchors ripped away by social media and Fox “news.” We’re afraid because some of our dearest friends seem to have awakened from an alien pod of hate, bigotry, and mendacity fostered by a pro-wrestling promoter and his cadre of faux “Christians.”

We need, I believe, another cleansing.

If I offend. I’m not sorry. America is too great a country for silence in the face of evil. If only we could ask Joe Welch.

Oh, and the high point of the movie I mentioned was when then U.S. Senator from Arkansas, John McClellan, became a large hero by attacking Roy Cohn in a way that only old, articulate, brave Senators from our state once would do.

Sunrise With Schubert: April 10, 2018

Tempted to feel sympathy for Mark Zuckerberg today? Instead, why not have a moment of silent sympathy for other victims of the U.S. Congress? How about a bit of remorse for the victims of the House Un-American Activities Committee? Add to them the victims of Senator Joe McCarthy and his venomous aide Roy Cohen. Many of those victims saw the loss of their jobs, their savings, their homes, and even their families in a particularly sad moment in our history.

Who were the victims and what was their crime? Most times, the crime amounted to having attended meetings, perfectly legal at the time, with known communists or about communism. These would have occurred in the 1930s, when the poverty and cruelty of the Great Depression spawned an interest in the government’s helping the poor, in whatever way possible.

Most of the victims had toyed with the ideas of communism and abandoned them, much as college sophomores read Ayn Rand, become enamored, then abandon her foolishness during their junior year.

The greatest transgression in appearances before HUAC seems to have been a refusal to provide the names of others who had attended meetings or read communist literature in their younger years. The committee went after those in the arts with particular vehemence: artists, entertainers, actors, and writers.

Some actors, like Ronald Reagan and Robert Taylor, gleefully supplied names from among their friends and colleagues. More honorable people, like playwright Arthur Miller, refused and were found guilty of contempt of congress.

In a particular example of dark humor, a HUAC Chairman offered Arthur Miller, who was married to Marilyn Monroe at the time, a deal to drop Miller’s upcoming hearing if he would arrange a photograph of the Chairman with Marilyn. Miller refused, and we can each decide the more honorable of the two.

It was a dark time in America. The tactics of the committee were repeated by Joe McCarthy and Roy Cohn. Cohn, if you remember, was, before he died of Aids, was a legal advisor and confidant of the now President of the United States of America.

Mark Zuckerberg walks into the halls of congress today as a billionaire genius. He will be a billionaire genius when he leaves, and will be a billionaire genius when he wakes up tomorrow, the day after, and the day after.

Weep not for the billionaire. Weep instead for the innocents who saw their lives destroyed by the darker forces of government.

Oh, and read about the new museum dedicated to the thousands of victims of lynchings in our country. Sorrow and sadness should always appear to us through the prisms of time and context.

One of the few memorials in
our country to true victims.