Ellen Schrecker, the premier historian of McCarthyism, once made the keen observation that the McCarthy Era's truest injustice was less its persecutions than its abject squander of the nation's time and opportunities. As Tail-gunner Joe thrashed around and peeked behind bushes and members of both political parties demagogued a mortal yet nonexistent danger, the country stalled. National progress in providing, say, health care or a quality education was in turn nonexistent; we instead marched ourselves into a black hole of senseless distraction.
The analogy is apt. The new McCarthys -- too numerous to name them all, from Newt Gingrich to assorted broadcast clowns -- have learned well. Without senseless distractions they'd possess no political program at all. And the body politic -- mired in the real problems of high unemployment and foreclosures and sluggish credit -- is falling for it.
Don't look now, but Sharia law is on the docket, that is as judges resist, as best they can and in accordance with the politico-judicial Zeitgeist, from touching themselves. Or, when not obsessed by some obscure NY imam, how about we compare, in the way of a free-market threat, the covering of children's preexisting health conditions to property insurance.
The objection might be raised that most of the American body politic is resistant to such garbage. And, phony issue by phony issue, it generally is. Yet the electoral whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Somehow, the New McCarthys' frantic worries and wanton accusations, ranging from the merely comical to downright diseased, have taken their toll. While the party invested of late in confronting unemployment and slow credit takes staggering hits in the polls, the party invested in causal distraction thrives.
Hence issues that should be a momentary distraction prolong into agonizing, multiyear affairs. Yesterday's was yet another prime example. A spokesman for Republican Sen. Susan Collins, for instance, reasserted that his employer "believes that our armed forces should welcome the service of any qualified individual who is willing and capable to serve our country," so naturally the Maine senator voted against the welcoming of qualified individuals.
For the record, the senator raised procedural concerns. In reality, the senator heard the vengeful footsteps of the New McCarthys.
Don't get me wrong. This too shall pass, just as our national hysterias and wasteful distractions of the original McCarthy Era passed. Newt Gingrich won't prevail electorally, Christine O'Donnell won't be our next secretary of defense, Michele Bachmann our attorney general. These are but the last gasping voices of a cryptofascistic Christian theocracy that appeals to a dying but still-assertive demographic.
But, good God, what an immense waste of time.