Karl Marx's great quote, taken from his long time friend, collaborator, and economic patron, Friedrich Engels, is "...all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice...(T)he first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
In the run up this week to the release of the "memo" (really an advocate's legal brief) from right wing Congressman, David Nunes, I kept thinking of the eccentric Democratic Party Senator from Maryland from the early to mid 20th Century, Millard Tydings, and the Tydings Committee report that was supposed to put an end to the supposedly reckless charges of the then junior-right wing Republican US Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph R. McCarthy.
Tydings, and several members of his Senate Committee, were trying to defend New Deal internationalists, several of whom turned out to be Communists, and some who were, in the parlance of the time, "fellow travelers" of Communists (one thinks of Owen Lattimore and John Stewart Service, for example). What made the Committee's report so pathetic was that the report was focused on whether these people were Communists, when the report should have focused on whether such people were traitors. The report assumed the "conventional wisdom" of the time, including the belief that if one was a Communist Party member, then such a person was in an actual, continuing conspiracy to overthrow by violent means the US government and let the Soviet Union take over. So some Democratic Party Senators and Congressmen, who knew, respected, and even admired the knowledge and experience of people like Service and Lattimore, rushed to these advisers' and career government employees' defense as not being Communist Party members.
The Republicans of the time knew what to do with such a report, as the Wiki entry for the Committee report tells us:
Tydings labeled McCarthy's charges a "fraud and a hoax," and said that the result of McCarthy's actions was to "confuse and divide the American people[...] to a degree far beyond the hopes of the Communists themselves." Republicans responded in kind, with William Jenner* stating that Tydings was guilty of "the most brazen whitewash of treasonable conspiracy in our history." The full Senate voted three times on whether to accept the report, and each time the voting was precisely divided along party lines.
*Republican US Senator from Indiana. Jenner was so much an anti-Red, he backed McCarthy right through the hearings investigating General and later Secretary of State George Marshall, and the entire Army. Just read the Wiki entry on Senator Jenner.
We now see Trump allies, starting with Nunes, suddenly concerned with civil liberties, for the Nunes memo is essentially about a FISA surveillance warrant against one person tied to the Trump campaign. We see Trump allies and partisans, like Cold War liberals of yore, saying the investigation is dividing the American people and calling the investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration ties to Russian oligarchs and Putin a "fraud" and a "hoax."
But this is history repeating itself in farce. The Nunes memo was, at the very least, a "nothingburger" as Esquire's Charles Pierce and Bret Stephens (a right wing anti-Trumpist for what can only be said is reasons of style) each said. The Nunes memo did not challenge the authenticity of the Steele memo, including the salacious parts. In fact, the memo refers to Steele as a "longtime FBI source..." The memo did not prove Trump and his campaign/administration did not collude with the Russians. One may even say, by what it does not talk about, that it is giving more weight to the government investigation into Trump and his campaign/administration because it is clear there are in fact other sources besides the Steele dossier. Also, as stated in the last linked article from The Intercept, whose top guy, Glenn Greenwald, is the left apologist for Trump on the entire Russian issue, the FBI routinely relies on sources who are motivated by revenge, money, etc. Finally, the memo is wrong about who "funded" the Steele dossier: First, it was initially funded by a Republican opponent of Trump, as one finds within this detailed article in Vanity Fair about Steele, Fusion GPS (the investigative organization), and the Trump-Russia story. Second, the FBI never paid Steele after he went public with his investigative work about Trump and the Russians. And isn't it amusing to hear Trump allies treating as nefarious that the main opponent to Trump, Hillary Clinton, would have wanted to find out if her opponent, Trump, is somehow engaged in something that, if true, would be highly nefarious?
The Nunes memo was, again, more about poor Carter Page, who the FBI was targeting for, ahem, overzealous activities with Russian oligarchs in 2013--three years before the Steele dossier was created. Poor Mr. Page may even be seen as the Nathan Silvermaster of our times...
So here we are: David Nunes is the farcical version of Millard Tydings, and Nunes' memo is the farcical version of the Tydings report. Carter Page is the farcical version of Nathan Silvermaster. And Trump? He is at least a farcical Russian stooge or dupe--or maybe he is a corrupt, money-laundering traitor to his nation, again, using Cold War parlance so favored by conservatives and Cold War liberals in the US, and not just right-wingers.
I must also, say, however, that the Red Scare remains a tragedy. People like John Stewart Service and Owen Lattimore were simply analysts who understood Chaing Kai Shek (I am still not comfortable with the new spellings for Chinese leaders of the early to mid 20th Century) was going to fall to the Communists, and no amount of fairy dust in the form of deadly US bombs was going to stop that. People like Harry Dexter White and Alger Hiss were not spies, and whatever information they gave to the Soviet Union was more about gossip and trying to keep lines of communication open as they, as New Deal internationalists, were trying to stop the creation of a bi-polar world full of tension and mistrust in a world with nuclear weapons.
If anyone wants to say that Trump and his allies are merely trying to side with Putin against international Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, and that the Russia investigation is a criminalization of politics, then I say to such a person, Welcome to the Club I like to call "Let's all apologize to Alger Hiss and Jane Fonda." For if such a person, wanting to defend Trump, is not ready to admit the Red Scare and the Cold War apparatus against "Comm'n'izm" was a criminalization of politics, that the nomenclature about "fellow traveler," "dupe," "stooge," "traitor," etc. was a demonization of people who had legitimate domestic policy differences (you know the drill: Someone says there should be Medicare for All, and right away, we say: "That's Socialism! And Socialism equals Communism equals Treason!"), then I say to such persons:
Trump is at least a dupe or stooge of the Russians, led by a former KGB operative, Vladimir Putin. Trump needs to open his tax records--all of them since the early 1990s--because there is reason to suspect he is being blackmailed by Russians. Trump may also, based upon his policy pronouncements, whether the statements denouncing the FBI, various chiefs of the CIA, and even questioning US involvement in NATO, and, in disclosing secrets, be deemed an agent of influence of the Russians, and, therefore, anti-American.
And we can also do what Republicans, conservatives and assorted right wingers (remember Ann Coulter's "Treason" book, which Bill Buckley, himself a defender of Joe McCarthy, called "fun"?) over the years like to say: Trump's Republican allies are enabling treason!
God, that feels so good to say, and so much fun to say! I think the Democrats should do what Republicans did during the Red Scare from 1946 to well....now: "Congressman _______," who supports Trump, "why are you enabling treason in the White House? Are you anti-American!?" Yes, Republicans knew what to do with the Red Scare. Time for a new one against the right wingers who want to so badly destroy our nation and its institutions, amirite? Bwwwaaaaaha-ha-ha!
Sherriff--I mean, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) is maybe like Richard Nixon, who made his fame as a Commie-pinko chaser, but I don't see the haze of corruption around Schiff that enveloped Nixon from his earliest days, and Schiff is legitimately wondering about the money influence with the Russian oligarchs, Trump's own sons who have admitted Russian money has funded the Trump clan, and Trump's relationship with the only major bank to fund Trump--Deutsche Bank--being a known Russian money-laundering institution, etc.
For let's face it. I challenge pro-Red Scare historians Harvey Klehr and John Haynes to tell us what Hiss or Harry Dexter White actually gave to the Russian Communist government that was so important. We know Hiss was likely a Communist Party member at some point, but so what? As Conrad Black pointed out in his majestic biography of FDR, Hiss was at Yalta and argued against the Soviet Union position on the number of votes in the upcoming United Nations organization that the Soviets were seeking (page 1080). Some "spy." And White was told to cajole the Russians into joining the upcoming World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and, yes, did believe that the Russians would, if they did so, morph into a more capitalist nation, while we embraced what can only properly be called social democracy a la Scandinavia. Again, some "spy."
But one wonders, just what is driving Trump to dump on American institutions, praise Putin, and have business relationships with Russian oligarchs tight with Putin? As the idiot pundit Peggy Noonan once said about a silly issue over trying to keep a Cuban boy from being returned to his father at the turn of our century: "Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to."
And let us recall the words of William F. Buckley and his even more lunatic brother in law, L. Brent Bozell, in their infamous work, "McCarthy and His Enemies" (1954), at page 333, and let's substitute the word "Conservative" for "Liberal," as Buckley/Bozell spoke about the real goal of the Red Scare--as they denounced only some of McCarthy's bellicose rhetoric, but defended its intent and import. The two then rising stars were talking about a speech Joe McCarthy had made where he made a remark about then Democratic Party Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, saying "Alger...I mean, Adlai..." The two authors then wrote:
"...But it may well be we have not heard the last of this idea. Some day, the patience of America may at last be exhausted, and we will strike out against (Conservatives). Not because they are treacherous...but because...we will conclude 'that they are mistaken in their predictions, false in their analyses, wrong in their advice, and through the results of their actions injurious to the interests of the nation. That is a reason enough to strive to free the conduct of the country's affairs from the influence of them and their works.'"
Buckley and Bozell went on to tell "the MacLeishs, De Votos and Schlesingers" (liberal anti-Communist intellectuals of the time) they had "no grounds for arguing that any sustained effort is being made to read them out of the community." Sure, Bill and Brent, sure. For how does one explain why "Liberal" became part of the trio of dreaded words to those who came of age from the post-World War II period up through the near end of the 20th Century in thinking "liberalism equals socialism equals communism equals treason?" Foreign policy disputes are almost always about domestic politics and domestic political maneuvering. For if you convince swing voters the other guy or gal is a traitor or suspected traitor, you win elections.
And this Red-baiting continued a quarter century after the Soviet Union fell. For how many liberals and even some lefties were fretting in 2016 about Bernie Sanders being opened up like a sardine can for his left liberal policy proposals? That is how ingrained this rhetoric became in people over 40 in our nation, and why it is so goddamned important to use this nomenclature back against those who perfected it decades ago.
I know it is not pretty, and it is not nice. But I am not saying you or I need to do this. But, as Buckley and Bozell did with McCarthy, let's not be so quick to denounce Rachel Maddow and others like Craig Unger for harping on the Russia-Trump story. Let's recognize that each plays his or her role in domestic electoral politics. Demonizing opponents is what Jefferson and Hamilton did to each other in the 1790s, if we know our history. It is as American as apple pie, unfortunately, and it is about time some otherwise erstwhile leftists (I am calling you out personally, Glenn Greenwald and Stephen Cohen) grew a spine on this.
On Facebook for over a year, I have been saying I am munching on my popcorn about this whole scandal of Trump and Russia. It has been cathartic for me. I feel powerless anyway, and a mere bystander in American politics. But really, this is a moment that should not be lost, as there really is something there about Trump and Russia, and what it is about, as Steve Bannon admitted he is thinking, too, is money laundering. Sorry historians Klehr and Haynes. That ain't about ideas and policies, which you support criminalizing. This is about financial corruption, emoluments, and then, if you guys want, the ideas of white nationalism expressed in a guy like Putin.
So I munch away. I say, in 2018 mid-terms, if you want to focus on the tax cuts being a danger to the Social Security and Medicare programs, I say, Go for it! If you want to focus on Republican policies against women's reproductive rights, I say, Go for it! If you want to focus on the environment and how our weather is already showing that the climate is changing, I say, Go for it! If you want to revitalize unions and support Medicare for All, I say, Go for it! It is a melodic cacophany of political strategy and choice. But don't stop the music about Trump and Russia. That political music has a place in the overall discourse, and the Nunes memo just showed how scared and desperate the right wing, Republicans, and Trump and his administration are about this whole investigation. I wonder what is in those Trump tax records going back to 1992 or so...? Bwwaaaha-haaaaa....
