“Are you now, or have you ever been a Communist?”
So grilled a paranoia-inducing Joseph McCarthy, an American politician and demagogue who served as Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957 at the age 48 from alcoholism. He also had a morphine addiction. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States where Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion.
On the advice from his attorney, he poked and stoked a commie straw man fear because the issue polled strongly with scared Republican voters, especially during and just after the Korean War, when Americans were being told that we were in Southeast Asia to save the falling democratic dominoes the Soviets were toppling one by one in their persistent goal of world domination, and that, “if we don’t stop them in Korea this week, they’ll be in Kansas the next.” It is necessary for despots, tyrants, and unscrupulous politicians to create a fake boogeyman and paranoia-inducing bumper sticker bon mots for fame, power, votes, and profit.
Joe McCarthy is remembered in history books for alleging that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated the United States federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere. He also used various charges of communism, communist sympathies, disloyalty, or sex crimes to attack a number of politicians and other individuals inside and outside of government, which included a concurrent “Lavender Scare” against suspected homosexuals, as homosexuality was prohibited by law at the time.
He was also a fake war hero. During World War II, McCarthy volunteered to fly twelve combat missions during World War II as a gunner-observer, but his reputation for self-serving hyperbole and for constructing false narratives about himself was laid bare after it was revealed that these missions were generally safe. After one mission, where he was allowed to shoot as much ammunition as he wanted to, mainly at coconut trees, he acquired the nickname “Tail-Gunner Joe”.
Some of his claims of heroism were later shown to be exaggerated or falsified, leading many of his critics to use “Tail-Gunner Joe” as a term of mockery. He later falsely claimed participation in 32 aerial missions in order to qualify for a Distinguished Flying Cross and multiple awards of the Air Medal, which the Marine Corps chain of command decided to approve in 1952 because of his political influence.
Senator McCarthy’s first three years in the Senate were unremarkable. He was a popular speaker, invited by many different organizations, covering a wide range of topics. His aides and many in the Washington social circle described him as charming and friendly, and he was a popular guest at cocktail parties. He was far less well liked among fellow senators, however, who found him quick-tempered and prone to impatience and even rage.
McCarthy experienced a meteoric rise in national profile beginning on February 9, 1950, when he gave a Lincoln’s Day speech to the Republican Women’s Club of Wheeling, West Virginia. During that speech, he produced a piece of paper that he claimed contained a list of known Communists working for the State Department. McCarthy is quoted to have said: “The State Department is infested with Communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205—a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department”.
In autumn 1953, a McCarthy-led Senate committee began an ill-fated inquiry into the United States Army. This began with McCarthy opening an investigation into the Army Signal Corps laboratory at Fort Monmouth. He garnered some headlines with stories of a dangerous spy ring among the army researchers, but after weeks of hearings, nothing came of his investigations except tons of free publicity.
Still, McCarthy continued to rail against Communism. He warned against attending summit conferences with ‘the Reds’, saying, “you cannot offer friendship to tyrants and murderers ... without advancing the cause of tyranny and murder.” He declared that “co-existence with Communists is neither possible nor honorable nor desirable,” echoing his hero, President Andrew Jackson.
By 1954, Joe McCarthy’s divisive campaign against manufactured enemies was growing tiresome with most Americans. The blowhard craving fame began leaking air when his phony outrage was slowly being uncovered. In a June 1, speech, Vermont senator,Ralph Flanders, compared McCarthy to Adolf Hitler, accusing him of spreading “division and confusion” and saying, “were the Junior Senator from Wisconsin in the pay of the Communists he could not have done a better job for them.”
At a session from the recurring Army hearings on June 9, 1954, McCarthy charged that the Army’s lawyer, Joseph Welch, had ties to a communist organization. As an amazed television audience looked on, Welch responded with the immortal lines that ultimately ended McCarthy’s career: “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.” When McCarthy tried to continue his attack, Welch angrily interrupted, “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”
On December 2, 1954, the Senate voted to condemn McCarthy by a vote of 67 to 22; after his condemnation and censure, he continued to perform his senatorial duties for another two and a half years. McCarthy’s career as a major public figure, however, had been ruined. His colleagues in the Senate avoided him; his speeches on the Senate floor were delivered to a near-empty chamber, or they were received with intentional and conspicuous displays of inattention.
The press that had once recorded his every public statement now ignored him, and outside speaking engagements dwindled almost to nothing. The term “McCarthyism”, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy’s practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.
Senator McCarthy’s chief counsel and advisor throughout this national disgraceful ordeal was New York attorney, Roy M. Cohn. Modern historians view Cohn’s approach during those hearings as driven explicitly by demagogic, reckless and unsubstantiated accusations against political opponents. During the Lavender Scare, Cohn and McCarthy attempted to enhance anti-Communist fervor in the country by claiming that Communists overseas had convinced several closeted homosexuals employed by the US federal government to pass on important government secrets in exchange for keeping their sexuality secret.
After leaving McCarthy’s life in shambles and the country deeply divided, Roy Cohn became a prominent political fixer in New York City during the 1970s and early 80s, and got especially involved in the construction business. At the time, there was a city-wide Teamster strike going down, and because most of the unions in Manhattan were controlled, or at the very least, had ties to organized crime, and because he had represented mobsters in the past as their trusted attorney, he had ties to Carmine Galante, Anthony Salerno, and Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambino family who controlled the concrete business—the poop! Poop! Poop! necessary for new building projects.
In 1986, he was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court for unethical conduct after attempting to defraud a dying client by forcing the person to sign a will amendment leaving him his fortune. He died five weeks later from AIDS-related complications, having vehemently denied that he was suffering from HIV.
Roy Marcus Cohn, the chief architect of Joe McCarthy’s deceitful and corrosive persona, his main flamethrower of hate and lies, also represented and mentored real-estate developer Donald Trump during his early business career. When Trump first undertook large construction projects in Manhattan, he seemed to have found the necessary concrete somewhere. In 1973, when the Justice Department accused Trump of violating the Fair Housing Act in thirty nine of his properties, Cohn was his attorney.
In addition to being Donald Trump’ fixer, mentor, and consul, Cohn was a close friend and confidante of Roger Stone, the 2016 presidential candidate’s chief adviser, who, over the course of the campaign, promoted a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories regarding Democrat opponents.
Roy Cohn’s legacy is that he had taught his pupils, Tailgunner Joe, Trump and Stone, altogether too damn well.
2
Labor Day, 2016, and the Mayhews motored up to the annual Democrat Labor Day picnic in Hampton, Illinois to welcome the presumed 45th President of the United States, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Living life in a virtual soundproof booth now for five years and still mostly struggling, Jack went along just to see her.
Escorted up front because Julia told security they needed to be up close so her husband could read the candidate’s lips, one perk of not being able to hear, he shouted to Clinton as she walked off stage, “the deaf community supports you,” to which she flashed the sign for “I love you” back. For this private message, she didn’t have to shout over the crowd.
All went well at the event, although Julia tapped out on her cell phone afterwards: I’m worried! Not very well attended —— those who showed up = uninspired, bored.
Jack pooh-poohed her and predicted Clinton by 10.
3
Nature has a way of balancing the scales, providing equality for all.
Jack had been receiving SSI for the past two years and although his “government handout” was meager, especially compared to those given to corporations, farmers, and the uber-wealthy in tax breaks and subsidies, the Mayhews were hanging in and hanging on--even nibbling away at their debt they had racked up just after his ears crapped out. Even without help from Z.
Their budget was helped considerably by decreasing the ledger on the liability side--money saved by not dining out (still traumatized by the HOBBY LOBBY experience), not going to movies (the cineplex in the Burlington mall had a closed-captioned device but that was hit-and-miss--a hit when the dialogue display device worked, but another sad, “less-than-equal” miss when its battery was dead or it was misplaced completely), and blowing wads on rock concerts.
With Julia’s annual incremental raises and Jack actually selling some of his paintings at area art shows he was invited to attend (with supplies purchased at Blicks, where the sales force of artsy-fartsy types weren’t against people who were ‘different’), but still floundering in the red, just not as deep, they finally said “screw it”, got passports and prepped for a real vacation--their first outside the US. ¡Viva, Mexico! What the hell, if he couldn’t understand English, people speaking español shouldn’t be a problema, either.
Julia booked a resort that lapped against the Carribean in the Yucatan near the ruined pre-Columbian Mayan city of Tulum, an area marketed as the Riviera Maya. The two were ready to flee America and maybe not come back when they caught their first glimpse of the exquisiteness south of the border, and especially after the presidential election two months before that had shocked the world.
The jet carrying the two foreign-traveling neophytes landed at the Cancun airport, February 2, 2017. The ride down the 307 cutting through the jungle was a canvas-splash of colors, versus the bland pallet of whites and grays nature uses to paint Midwestern winters. 83℉ versus 15 below zero. The tropical sunshine, skin-candy for their frozen souls. The resort and sea, indescribable. Jack and Julia had been scorched in hell. Now it was time to lounge on heaven’s blancos beaches.
They especially loved what was inside the sea, living amongst the coral reefs, explored by snorkeling: French angelfish hip in black, striped with bands of neon green, tangs, turtles, “smiley” fish who seemed to welcomed them to come swim with them, starfish, sergeant-majors, cuttles, grumps, and urchins—the latter three sounding as if Rowling collaborated with Dickens. And the best part of all, the sea was a silent world! Bajo el agua, yo soy sordo, tu eres sordo, y todos están sordos! (Underwater, I am deaf, you are deaf, and everyone is deaf!)
Nature has a way of balancing the scales, providing equality for all.
4
Nature may provide equality for all, but her “prime achievement” tends not to.
Archeologists have determined that Tulum, the Maya word for wall (or the seaside town’s original name, Zamá (pronounced zam-MAH) translated as “Place of the Dawning Sun”), began to be inhabited as early as 564 A.D. With never more than an estimated 1,600 inhabitants, it appeared to be more of a religious and ceremonial site rather than a population center. The walled village was built on a 39-foot bluff facing east toward the Caribbean Sea, and remained occupied until shortly before the end of the 16th century.
Tulum had access to both land and sea trade routes, making it an important trade hub, especially for obsidian. It was one of the last cities built and inhabited by the Maya and was at its height between the 13th and 15th centuries, when the fortified city was first mentioned by Juan Díaz, a member of Juan de Grijalva’s Spanish expedition of 1518, the first Europeans to spot the city.
Old World diseases brought on board by the Spanish resulted in very high fatalities for the natives, which soon afterwards bankrupted Mayan society. The city was abandoned a mere 70 years after el conquistadores began occupying it. ¡Destino manifiesto!
5
The Keep was closed, its owner charged and convicted of four counts of voluntary manslaughter, a lesser charge than homicide. (Voluntary manslaughter involves an intentional killing but without malice aforethought. This means that a person who kills another person in the middle of a fight, or in the heat of the moment, may be charged with voluntary manslaughter and not homicide because they did not plan to commit the crime and did not have prior intent. Blowing the brains out of her Christmas guests because Deena Webber thought they were Norway sewer rats fit the legal bill, perfectly.)
Voluntary manslaughter in Illinois is classified as a Class 1 Felony, which may lead to a sentence between 4 to 15 years in prison. Dee received four consecutive 10-year terms and is currently serving time at the Logan Correctional Center in Lincoln. Her request that a box of rat poison be placed in each corner of her cell was quickly denied as a potential suicide risk.
And of course, the tongues in town wagged: It was a lovers’ quarrel between her and her secret Mormon boyfriend. After he broke off the relationship, she decided in a blind rage to take it out on “his people” (“the only good Indian is a dead Indian” line of irrationality). Well I heard that her lawyers cooked up the rat-huntin’ bullshit to save his rich client’s ass. Now they’re sayin’ a sudden seizure made her see shit and act on it. Did you hear that Ben and Deena Weber were on the verge of divorce when he died? Knew it all along that their “lovey-dovey niceness” was a hoax. And don’t forget those bruise marks! And so forth.
Others, particularly the regular church-going old-timers in town who had heard stories of Captain von Poppel’s ghost for decades, wondered if a malevolent force had took hold of her. If you believe in God and angels, ya gotta think that the devil and demons exist, too, they justified. The parishioners at First United Methodist sent their thoughts and prayers to their former fellow parishioner during the trial, which, apparently, fell on jurists’ deaf ears.
Nobody in the courtroom had known that Dee Webber had become a closet alcoholic after her husband’s tragic fall until her alcohol-blood level that night was revealed as evidence, her drinking problem revealed.
“My client’s morning coffee may have been spiked with a few drops of Bailey’s Irish cream or Kahlua. She may have enjoyed a glass or three of cabernet with her lunch. A couple gin martinis while making dinner. A night cap of a brandy or two,” her attorney argued, “but just because she liked an occasional cocktail, doesn’t make her liable for murder.”
“Furthermore, the pharmacy of nerve pills she was prescribed, also contributed to her delusions, especially when waking up in the dead of night, still deep asleep in the delta stage. Add to her abuse of booze and narcotics, her breaking point was her disgust for infiltrating rodents that became her irrational obsession after her beloved husband succumbed to a pack of them, very much like Ahab’s descent into madness in his pursuit of his great white whale. I close my case.”
The Mormon Christmas Eve Massacre and trial got national attention on the cable news channels for a couple days, but that was still back in the day when a mass shooting of four innocent Americans was still something shocking enough to hold viewers’ attention.
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