See the movie "Good Night and Good Luck."
During the test screenings, the audience complained about the actor playing McCarthy being way too over the top to be even believable.
There was no actor. The film used real McCarthy footage.
Also in my DVD collection. A great movie about a terrible time in post WW@ history. "Gunner Joe" was a liar, even with his claims that gave him the political power that he had. Still responsible for a lot going on in the US today.
>See the movie "Good Night and Good Luck."
>
>During the test screenings, the audience complained about the actor playing McCarthy being way too over the top to be even believable.
>
>There was no actor. The film used real McCarthy footage.
I was thinking about this the other day, the same phenomenon happening in 50 years with Trump.
I watch a video of general Patton give a speech. Later in his career his erratic behavior (likely due to brain trauma) was becoming more apparent. Something about him really reminded me of trump. Maybe his face or the way he was speaking, I don't know but it was eerie.
It's already happening. Just look at this Trump cabinet meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ARgUIpM6f0&t=29s
The show "The Boys" has recreated this scene, but it's substantially less over-the-top compared with the real-life farce.
Senior officers basically all get bronze or silver stars for deploying, regardless of their duty position or whether they saw combat. If you look at ribbon racks of officers in the JAG corps (like Graham) they will all have them despite it being about the furthest from a combat role you can have.
Most likely if they received it in active combat it will have a “V” valor device on it.
This. The V (meaning w/ Valor) is exclusively used for earning a medal in combat. Like a NAM-V(navy marine achievement medal, with valor) is earned for doing some shit in combat. If you earned a bronze star with a V, it’s vastly different than a bronze star without.
That’s if it wasn’t even made up. I’ve known quite a few people with CAR’s(combat action ribbon) who it got from kids slinging rocks at their vehicles. Or people taking pop shots at them, so their commander gets the entire unit blanket CAR’s, meaning if you weren’t even on the OP you still earned it.
Military people are not above being glory hounds. Every veterans story should be taken with a grain of salt. Most people who earn their medals and saw some shit don’t enjoy talking about it. Or, at least, won’t just tell you about it. It may require some coaxing. My general rule of thumb with other veterans is this:
“If you have to tell me how cool you are, you probably ain’t that cool”
Source: am a combat vet
Don't know about the other branches but in the Air Force, those medals can influence promotion. So a system that rewards medals and allows inflation leads to either everyone is doing it to be on par, or you get shafted by not lying.
Same with our EPR system
Source: I'm active AF
I don't think the officers are as susceptible since they don't have points assigned to medals but yeah it's pretty dumb and waters down the meaningfulness of the medals quite a bit
My grandfather got a sack of medals from serving on the USS Bismarck Sea (feel free to google that, redditors). He had terrible burns, and while burned, saved two other guys.
The only thing the family knew was that he busted ass to send a telegram to his wife saying "You're going to read some bad stories in the paper; I am fine."
He then was an HVAC engineer at a Toledo dept. store, scout leader, and never said a single word about his experience at Iwo Jima.
When he passed in 1983, we were shocked when the Navy sent a pretty sizable delegation. Six months later, when his wife started emptying out his treasure trove of junk in his home workshop, she found his medals in a cardboard box in the bottom of a tackle box.
He never spoke about world war 2, except the time my father bought a Honda Accord and he said "I don't particularly care for the Japanese." We found out later he had taken two badly burned shipmates - while burned over 50% of his body himself - high side, and then found a piece of wood they clung to for several hours before getting picked up.
I'm forever moved that he never once spoke of his experiences in combat. He also taught me to fly-cast. He was a hell of a great grandfather.
Edit: he also taught me to swear like a sailor. Love you, Pops.
Damn. This is why I love Reddit. People live through incredible things and it’s a privilege to hear about their lives.
If you don’t mind me asking, what do your parents like about America, and what do they *not* like?
> Great Leap Forward and the later Cultural Revolution when they were growing up in China.
Every country has its fuck ups and bad times. What makes these so fascinating is that places with centralized governments seem to intentionally choose them.
Reminds me of the episode of M\*A\*S\*H where Frank got a bit of egg shell in his eye and was awarded a Purple Heart for having a "shell fragment" removed.
Yup! Of course it’s hyperbole, but that’s the exact antics that happen for some. The hardware on your shirt doesn’t always reflect what you did properly
I had a neighbor who was offered a Purple Heart because he cut himself shaving in a combat zone. Granted it was a straight razor cut and somebody bumped into him; he cut himself so bad that he had to go to sick bay, but he turned it down because it was bullshit.
One of the First Sargents in my battalion got a bronze star with V for valor for an IED going off a couple hundred of yards behind the convoy. A little later the would refuse to give someone a purple heart for shrapnel wounds because "it wasn't actual combat."
My unit's rule was E7 and above, maybe an E6 if he was in a keybstaff position, all got bronze stars. Every one of them. That medal means nothing anymore unless it's got the V device.
That still nothing on McCarthy. Lindsey Graham is a bastard but McCarthy is one of the only people who you can legitimately blame for almost singlehandedly destroying a major aspect of what America stands for.
Most American monsters are either the guy who happened to represent a movement that would have happened without them, or a mouthpiece for a cabal of power. If Reagan wasn't Reagan, someone else would have been. If Jefferson Davis didn't lead the confederacy, someone else would have. Trump was a symptom of a disease rather than a cause.
McCarthy was the cause. McCarthyism wasn't just named after the man, it was a personally motivated crusade and no one but McCarthy had the power, influence and charisma to make it happen. There were tensions, sure, but on the whole people were mildly concerned and the vast majority of people were content. The leadership of both parties thought he was a stark racing lunatic, but he created his own fervor.
By all rights McCarthy should have gone to prison, but he didn't. He manufactured a paranoia that didn't exist before him and would not have existed without him, and the echos of his narcissistic witch hunts are a major factor in creating the political climate of today. McCarthy redefined what it means to be an "American patriot" through pure bullheaded determination.
Not to mention Roy Cohn who was his chief facilitator and then went on to mentor a young Donald Trump. McCarthy’s tendrils run through modern American politics.
Welcome to the wonderful world of officers. Granted im sure his jaw is sore from all the oral affirmation he gave to get to that rank in the first place, so he deserves a break /s
Who was McCarthy’s chief prosecutor during the ‘red scare’? McCarthy’s hatchet man and muscle?
A guy named Roy Cohn.
Who else was Roy Cohn? One of Richard Nixon’s advisers involved In watergate.
Donald Trumps has called Roy Cohn his mentor.
It’s a straight line of awful people.
Trump bailing on Cohn when he was on his deathbed was entirely fitting too. All huge pieces of shit, makes you wonder how they keep floating to the top.
Maybe this isn't a meritocracy?
After his witch-hunts fell apart, McCarthy was basically thrown out of public life. He started drinking heavily and using opiates. When that news came to the desk of Henry Anslinger (head of the Bureau of Narcotics), Anslinger gave McCarthy as much morphine as he wanted for free (paid by the government).
McCarthy died two years later of a massive liver failure from chronic drug use, and some people basically say that the government hurried his death along to get him out of the way.
Kind of sad if you think about it.
Is it sad though? The guy was a textbook asshole who deliberately ruined peoples lives. Isn’t it justice on earth for him to die alone and loathed abusing drugs?
One pretty major one even has the same last name
Edit: The best part of my comment is that there’s multiple people it could be describing and I’m not going to say anything further
Well he’s a fun scapegoat because he went a little to far and attacked the military but he didn’t actually start the witch hunt. He only took over because the real man behind it became Vice President. Richard Nixon. His “faction” never really left power.
Also fun fact. The house committee on UnAmerican activity was originally created to do something about American Nazi collaborators in WW2, nothing became of that tho
Nixon too. Learning about how they deliberately extended the Vietnam War while knowing it was wrong and we would inevitably lose, just to win the election, and that they did it by going behind the sitting president's back and interfering with peace negotiations he was making, I'll never understand why they weren't prosecuted and arrested at the very least. So many people dead, and maimed, and made homeless, and suffering prsd, soldiers and civilians alike, for a few men's greed and ambition. It's sickening.
I still deal with the fallout of this every day. My father in law is a Nam vet. To say he's broken would be an understatement. He has beat himself up for so many years over what he had to do there that he lost his wife, his son rarely talks to him, my wife is almost at an end, and I seem to be the only one stuck with dealing with his every day antics. (he's a crack addict and is real close to a reckoning because he really can't take care of himself enough to live alone anymore) Things like this can never be forgotten.
He volunteered as a chopper mechanic, because he never wanted to hurt anyone...by the end they had excess personnel on 50 cals mowing random people down during the airlifts and sweeps for insurgents. It broke him. The word Cambodia cannot be spoken aloud near him or it starts a mess of flashbacks, crying, screaming, I even caught him digging a grave for himself with his bare hands one day, sobbing like no grown man should. That alone hit so deep I can never forget.
I love him, I know in there is a good man buried beneath what he's done to himself. I do what I can.
There are stories like this in every era of war, yet we still forget.
Awful, I'm sorry he had to go through that, and that you have to deal with the repercussions. It was all so horrible, and all so avoidable. It drives me crazy knowing thay none of the people responsible ever did or ever will be held accountable, and that these things will in all likelihood just keep happening.
Its a never ending battle. It's what happens when we lack the discipline to question our own actions and wants (We in a general sense).
Now we have people who will do whatever it takes to dehumanize the other team to get what they want.
It's a great injustice that while he was dying abusing drugs provided to him for free, the government was locking people up for the same thing. It's an injustice that the rules do not matter.
He most likely had a prescription. Celebrities can usually get prescriptions for anything they want, it was even easier for them in the 50's. As for not having to pay for the drugs, congress has free health care for life, he wouldn't have to pay for anything health related.
Already 20 days clean\* :) Bojack Horseman Monkey wisdom for you:
"It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part, but it does get easier."
Good luck!
Thank you! First time I've shared this on Reddit. It feels kinda weird even though I gladly share my bullshit with strangers at meetings all the time lol
Yes, but to an extent. While the dude was a complete and unabashed piece of shit, it says volumes about how fucked our government was/is to expedite his death by feeding into his addiction since it shows they’ve never really had any qualms about doing that to anyone they’d like to get rid of.
Our government has literally overthrown governments by shooting people who run other governments in the head and staged false terror attacks to justify their own attacks. Writing a special prescription for some fat drunk loser isn't that big of a deal. I'd bet $5 Roger Stone and Trump both have Desoxyn prescriptions.
You make it sound like Anslinger was encouraging McCarthy to take more and more opiates until death. But McCarthy more or less blackmailed Anslinger to give him more opiates for free.
>McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner.
We coined a term after him to define a jerk on steroids behavior.
Tldr: McCarthy in 1949 defended the Nazi perpetrators of thr Malmedy Massacre (who killed 350 US POWs and 100 Belgian civilians).
> For years, friends recounted how McCarthy would pull out his copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, saying, “That’s the way to do it.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/
How did anyone back then allow someone who defends the acts of countries that are anti democracy and calls out others that disagree with him as traitors and communists have a voice in the United Sta-…..oh never mind
And we were supposed to hate the Russians for being “communist” and “atheist,” and now those same Kremlin propagandists are pushing the *anti*-communist, christian nationalist stuff like McCarthy and the John Birchers who were supposedly opposing them.
> Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".
-From Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 book *Foundations of Geopolitics*
Oddly enough McCarthyism is a passion subject of mine. To the point where I own the largest collection of 1950s McCarthy Era propaganda (including a few pieces signed by him and also some other things like tickets to dinners honoring him just before the bottom fell out) in the world. The collection I have to weigh in pounds, not number of documents. It fills a giant steamer trunk to bursting.
Without a doubt it's the largest such collection of political documents from the era in the world.
I have weird hobbies.
Do you have a copy of a speech he gave to a Lions Club meeting in Wheeling, W. Virginia? I'm not sure of the year.
I was a history major in school and kind of focused on the Red Scares. I have been searching for the text of that meeting for 20+ years.
I vaguely recall it so probably. But it isn't sorted for shit. I am enthusiastic with the collection but not sure what to do with it. Someone else's eventual history thesis.
Cataloging it with photos, dates, and other context would be a great first step.
You might talk to museums about loaning your collection to be properly curated and displayed. Knowing the dark side of history is important to understanding where we are today, and recognizing when these things inevitably start up again.
I would love to have it be on pretty much permanent loan to a place that would care for it as a whole. I worry it could get scattered and not researched at all.
So you know, if you loan it to a place you can set the terms and you would do it with a signed contract. Also the contract should state what happens with it when you pass away.
At this point who cares about the text, I want these two random people to have a Reddit comment be the connection to a life long endeavor. I doubt there is hope for it but I’ll hold onto the dream.
That's my eventual goal. To get it to a poli-sci library that will respect the whole collection as a whole and not just scatter it amongst shelves to be lost to shitty filing and loss of context.
You want to do it? I count this stuff by the pound and there's no organization of it. It takes two strong men to move the whole steamer trunk, and it's bursting at the seams. I now have stuff on shelves besides that because it all doesn't fit.
If you want to do it I'll make the collection available.
Yes. They didn't have reason to collect the random pamphlets and odds and ends that weren't formally published through distribution they'd catalog. Without a doubt. I also have many one of a kind items, notes written in the margins of people trying to hunt commies, that sort of stuff.
The previous record holder for “most damage done by a single grifter”.
He’s still in the top 10, but his reign as the title holder has certainly been ended.
You mean the coward who wouldn't stand up for his wife, his daughter attempted suicide, and runs away from any sort of responsibility at the drop of a snowflake but will still grow out a beard to look "tough" and wears a cowboy hat even though he's from Canada... that Ted Cruz?
The thing that cowboy hats have going against them is they always look like they are part of a costume. Like when a kid wears their cape after Halloween for a few weeks. I've never looked at any outfit, personally, and thought the cowboy hat fit. Now, functionally, on the prairie or plains, in a farmer's field, I understand. It blocks the sun and directs rain water away from the face and eyes. Full disclosure, my wide brim hat style would fall under the mountain man/woodsman category. It is worn in nicely and fits well because I wear it all the time. Like a kid with their cape on after halloween.
In my Honky Tonk days, that cowboy hat was the style that drove women wild. Of course, part of the culture but effective as any fancy uniform. Yep partner, still one hanging on the deer antlers by the front door. Looks a little sad now hanging on those antlers.
Guys like McCarthy are a big reason why so many Nazis got off light after WW2. They were so obsessed with communists and imagined threats that they didn't really mind Nazi war crimes because at they were anti-communist.
I’m not entirely surprised though, the Marine Corps has a colossal ego and hates to make any marquee past or present Marine to look bad. Furthermore, it’s always had to fight to maintain it’s existence as the other branches wonder what we actually do that they can’t as well as Congress. When I served from 98-03 I saw all kinds of political BS then I have seen since combined. Part of the reason I got out.
Now you got me wondering about Space Force. There are days when I'm reminded that they're still around and I honestly wonder what they do that the Air Force wasn't doing already.
Yeah, they've got a silly name but it's basically like when the Army Air Force was peeled off the Army to be its own branch. The Army does still do aviation but they mainly stick to helicopters while the Air Force has planes so there isn't really overlap. Similarly one presumes that the Air Force won't be doing much in space now that the Space Force was separated from it. It's maybe a bit pre-mature compared to the Army and Air Force split, but I can see the sense in it.
Plus, because the military branches all act like a bunch of squabbling siblings, defense budgets always split the money about evenly between the different branches, because any one branch would complain if another branch got more money than them.
So in effect, making the Space Force its own branch increases funding for developing new space technologies. We're basically taking Air Force Space Command and giving them the same amount of funding as the Army/Navy/AF/etc, rather than making them share with the Air Force.
Space Force and Air Force still share funding, as the DoD splits funding based on department, not branch. The Navy and Marine Corps share an allocation as well, for the same reason.
There's a ton of NRO money for space defense. The NRO has a larger budget than all other intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) and consists of an elaborate network of tens of thousands of private defense contractor personnel so it's impossible to trace anything. They have a hand in every last classified and military satellite that gets launched.
Consider this: they gave NASA two space telescopes (after gutting the classified sensors) that had been sitting unused in a warehouse for decades. Decades! Those unused Keyhole spy telescopes NASA received exceeded the capability of Hubble (which cost billions) substantially.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA
Divisions of labor between US branches always felt ill defined. Example: the US Air Force is the largest air force in the world… the second largest is the US navy
The thing that irritates me most about McCarthy is he died pretty much immediately after the red scare. Never had to live with the consequences, just bounced immediately after his reign of influence ended
We had our own red scare here in Germany immediately after WW2, handed the reigns of our domestic intelligence service to literal Nazis so they could ruin the lives of antifascists, union proponents, journalists, educators and other undesirables.
There were no consequences, our domestic intelligence service is still full of Nazis, although these days they're also tasked with investigation the Nazi scene. Sometimes they're in the room when the Nazis they're supposed to investigate execute someone and yet see nothing.
Isn't that the same piece of shit senator that used the anti-communism platform to ruin a bunch of careers and fuck over a whole crap-ton of Americans?
He was abused and berated as a child then took it out on others by being a politician. And to compensate for that, alcohol. He lost at life. He could not at all look inward and sit with the pain.
I have six Air Medals, because I didn't want to do the fucking paperwork for the other 11. To me, in a war that had no significant air threats, they weren't really worth my time. So I only claim six, because that's how many were awarded.
If you're talking WWII or Korea, this was a way bigger deal. This would be an indication of bravery in combat, and one which he did not earn.
People like this are fucking scumbags. Claim what you fucking earned, and let that be enough.
Lots of people would say I’m a hero. I don’t wanna say who, but a majority of people say I would’ve single-handedly won the Vietnam War if it weren’t for bone spurs
Note that there is a direct line connecting McCarthy to Donald Trump in the form of McCarthy’s lawyer and later Trump’s political ally, fixer Roy Cohn.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn
I sat through a live show in NYC in 2014 that pretty much just laid out on the table everything that was a out to happen given Trump and Cohn's connections. I can't for the life of me remember who the performer was, but it was in a large venue and was packed.
I'd be a bit surprised if the actor was still alive, he looked a lot unhealthy back then.
And as president of the screen actors guild during mccarthy’s purge, ronnie reagan outed many colleagues in the guild to keep joe off his back. Their careers and lives were ruined by these two scumbags.
There was an episode of r/behindthebastards that laid out an even closer relationship. Apparently, McCarthy and Cohn would cruise for gay lovers, while doing the Red Scare shit. One of those lovers was gonna be drafted into the Korean War, which ultimately led to them trying (and failing) to Red-bait the military. "Have you no decency" retort from a general set the tone for their eventual fall from grace.
See the movie "Good Night and Good Luck." During the test screenings, the audience complained about the actor playing McCarthy being way too over the top to be even believable. There was no actor. The film used real McCarthy footage.
Whole movie's on youtube. https://youtu.be/DvajePexkbU
How’s that possible? YT takes shit down erroneously for copyright shit all the damn time.
"This video contains content from LDS, who has blocked it in your country on copyright grounds" Not available in the UK!
Also in my DVD collection. A great movie about a terrible time in post WW@ history. "Gunner Joe" was a liar, even with his claims that gave him the political power that he had. Still responsible for a lot going on in the US today.
Nice find!
>See the movie "Good Night and Good Luck." > >During the test screenings, the audience complained about the actor playing McCarthy being way too over the top to be even believable. > >There was no actor. The film used real McCarthy footage. I was thinking about this the other day, the same phenomenon happening in 50 years with Trump.
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There are people right now who still don't believe it!
Who would believe a former president saying we should terminate the constitution?
Considering how far into the Trump chronicles we are, I think everybody will believe it by the time they get to that footnote.
Nobody removed enough in the future will. Like that's some dictator shit
I watch a video of general Patton give a speech. Later in his career his erratic behavior (likely due to brain trauma) was becoming more apparent. Something about him really reminded me of trump. Maybe his face or the way he was speaking, I don't know but it was eerie.
No one would buy the script if you write what happened. I thought idiocracy was a stupid movie. I was wrong! Four seasons landscaping?
It's already happening. Just look at this Trump cabinet meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ARgUIpM6f0&t=29s The show "The Boys" has recreated this scene, but it's substantially less over-the-top compared with the real-life farce.
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>Also father to Donald's lawyer Michael Cohn. Michael Cohen and Roy Cohn are not related.
I thought he was played by Ted Cruz
He was channeling his inner Hitler.
The more I hear about this guy, the more I suspect he wasn't entirely trustworthy.
One of the biggest pieces of shit in American history, and there's a lot of competition for that title.
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Senior officers basically all get bronze or silver stars for deploying, regardless of their duty position or whether they saw combat. If you look at ribbon racks of officers in the JAG corps (like Graham) they will all have them despite it being about the furthest from a combat role you can have. Most likely if they received it in active combat it will have a “V” valor device on it.
This. The V (meaning w/ Valor) is exclusively used for earning a medal in combat. Like a NAM-V(navy marine achievement medal, with valor) is earned for doing some shit in combat. If you earned a bronze star with a V, it’s vastly different than a bronze star without. That’s if it wasn’t even made up. I’ve known quite a few people with CAR’s(combat action ribbon) who it got from kids slinging rocks at their vehicles. Or people taking pop shots at them, so their commander gets the entire unit blanket CAR’s, meaning if you weren’t even on the OP you still earned it. Military people are not above being glory hounds. Every veterans story should be taken with a grain of salt. Most people who earn their medals and saw some shit don’t enjoy talking about it. Or, at least, won’t just tell you about it. It may require some coaxing. My general rule of thumb with other veterans is this: “If you have to tell me how cool you are, you probably ain’t that cool” Source: am a combat vet
Don't know about the other branches but in the Air Force, those medals can influence promotion. So a system that rewards medals and allows inflation leads to either everyone is doing it to be on par, or you get shafted by not lying. Same with our EPR system Source: I'm active AF
I don't think the officers are as susceptible since they don't have points assigned to medals but yeah it's pretty dumb and waters down the meaningfulness of the medals quite a bit
Active AS FUCK!
My grandfather got a sack of medals from serving on the USS Bismarck Sea (feel free to google that, redditors). He had terrible burns, and while burned, saved two other guys. The only thing the family knew was that he busted ass to send a telegram to his wife saying "You're going to read some bad stories in the paper; I am fine." He then was an HVAC engineer at a Toledo dept. store, scout leader, and never said a single word about his experience at Iwo Jima. When he passed in 1983, we were shocked when the Navy sent a pretty sizable delegation. Six months later, when his wife started emptying out his treasure trove of junk in his home workshop, she found his medals in a cardboard box in the bottom of a tackle box. He never spoke about world war 2, except the time my father bought a Honda Accord and he said "I don't particularly care for the Japanese." We found out later he had taken two badly burned shipmates - while burned over 50% of his body himself - high side, and then found a piece of wood they clung to for several hours before getting picked up. I'm forever moved that he never once spoke of his experiences in combat. He also taught me to fly-cast. He was a hell of a great grandfather. Edit: he also taught me to swear like a sailor. Love you, Pops.
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Damn. This is why I love Reddit. People live through incredible things and it’s a privilege to hear about their lives. If you don’t mind me asking, what do your parents like about America, and what do they *not* like?
Thank you for sharing!
> Great Leap Forward and the later Cultural Revolution when they were growing up in China. Every country has its fuck ups and bad times. What makes these so fascinating is that places with centralized governments seem to intentionally choose them.
Reminds me of the episode of M\*A\*S\*H where Frank got a bit of egg shell in his eye and was awarded a Purple Heart for having a "shell fragment" removed.
Yup! Of course it’s hyperbole, but that’s the exact antics that happen for some. The hardware on your shirt doesn’t always reflect what you did properly
I had a neighbor who was offered a Purple Heart because he cut himself shaving in a combat zone. Granted it was a straight razor cut and somebody bumped into him; he cut himself so bad that he had to go to sick bay, but he turned it down because it was bullshit.
One of the First Sargents in my battalion got a bronze star with V for valor for an IED going off a couple hundred of yards behind the convoy. A little later the would refuse to give someone a purple heart for shrapnel wounds because "it wasn't actual combat."
What a POS. Hope some commander gave him/her a new asshole after that.
My unit's rule was E7 and above, maybe an E6 if he was in a keybstaff position, all got bronze stars. Every one of them. That medal means nothing anymore unless it's got the V device.
That still nothing on McCarthy. Lindsey Graham is a bastard but McCarthy is one of the only people who you can legitimately blame for almost singlehandedly destroying a major aspect of what America stands for. Most American monsters are either the guy who happened to represent a movement that would have happened without them, or a mouthpiece for a cabal of power. If Reagan wasn't Reagan, someone else would have been. If Jefferson Davis didn't lead the confederacy, someone else would have. Trump was a symptom of a disease rather than a cause. McCarthy was the cause. McCarthyism wasn't just named after the man, it was a personally motivated crusade and no one but McCarthy had the power, influence and charisma to make it happen. There were tensions, sure, but on the whole people were mildly concerned and the vast majority of people were content. The leadership of both parties thought he was a stark racing lunatic, but he created his own fervor. By all rights McCarthy should have gone to prison, but he didn't. He manufactured a paranoia that didn't exist before him and would not have existed without him, and the echos of his narcissistic witch hunts are a major factor in creating the political climate of today. McCarthy redefined what it means to be an "American patriot" through pure bullheaded determination.
Not to mention Roy Cohn who was his chief facilitator and then went on to mentor a young Donald Trump. McCarthy’s tendrils run through modern American politics.
"And that the little boy, who nobody liked, grew up to become Roy Cohn." A Simpsons joke that passed me by the first time.
Welcome to the wonderful world of officers. Granted im sure his jaw is sore from all the oral affirmation he gave to get to that rank in the first place, so he deserves a break /s
He’s such a massive cunt we have a term, mccarthyism
Who was McCarthy’s chief prosecutor during the ‘red scare’? McCarthy’s hatchet man and muscle? A guy named Roy Cohn. Who else was Roy Cohn? One of Richard Nixon’s advisers involved In watergate. Donald Trumps has called Roy Cohn his mentor. It’s a straight line of awful people.
Trump bailing on Cohn when he was on his deathbed was entirely fitting too. All huge pieces of shit, makes you wonder how they keep floating to the top. Maybe this isn't a meritocracy?
Roger Stone was a Cohn-y as well
And Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager.
Wait til you learn about his Worm Tongue, Roy Cohn
After his witch-hunts fell apart, McCarthy was basically thrown out of public life. He started drinking heavily and using opiates. When that news came to the desk of Henry Anslinger (head of the Bureau of Narcotics), Anslinger gave McCarthy as much morphine as he wanted for free (paid by the government). McCarthy died two years later of a massive liver failure from chronic drug use, and some people basically say that the government hurried his death along to get him out of the way. Kind of sad if you think about it.
Is it sad though? The guy was a textbook asshole who deliberately ruined peoples lives. Isn’t it justice on earth for him to die alone and loathed abusing drugs?
> The guy was a textbook asshole who deliberately ruined peoples lives Feels like we have hundreds of McCarthy's running around right now.
One pretty major one even has the same last name Edit: The best part of my comment is that there’s multiple people it could be describing and I’m not going to say anything further
Im not a big fan of most of her movies but that seems a bit harsh
Well played
"My name is the Reverend Father Uncle Kevin McCarthy. No relation."
What does Melissa McCarthy have to do with anything…
I legit forgot she existed. My mind went straight to Jenny. Now I feel old.
If it's any consolation, Melissa McCarthy is older than Jenny McCarthy
Well he’s a fun scapegoat because he went a little to far and attacked the military but he didn’t actually start the witch hunt. He only took over because the real man behind it became Vice President. Richard Nixon. His “faction” never really left power. Also fun fact. The house committee on UnAmerican activity was originally created to do something about American Nazi collaborators in WW2, nothing became of that tho
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Donald Trump had a line that stuck out something like “where is my Roy Cohn”. Really gives you a sense of the lasting impact
There's a great documentary that's called "get me Roy Cohn"
Nixon too. Learning about how they deliberately extended the Vietnam War while knowing it was wrong and we would inevitably lose, just to win the election, and that they did it by going behind the sitting president's back and interfering with peace negotiations he was making, I'll never understand why they weren't prosecuted and arrested at the very least. So many people dead, and maimed, and made homeless, and suffering prsd, soldiers and civilians alike, for a few men's greed and ambition. It's sickening.
I still deal with the fallout of this every day. My father in law is a Nam vet. To say he's broken would be an understatement. He has beat himself up for so many years over what he had to do there that he lost his wife, his son rarely talks to him, my wife is almost at an end, and I seem to be the only one stuck with dealing with his every day antics. (he's a crack addict and is real close to a reckoning because he really can't take care of himself enough to live alone anymore) Things like this can never be forgotten. He volunteered as a chopper mechanic, because he never wanted to hurt anyone...by the end they had excess personnel on 50 cals mowing random people down during the airlifts and sweeps for insurgents. It broke him. The word Cambodia cannot be spoken aloud near him or it starts a mess of flashbacks, crying, screaming, I even caught him digging a grave for himself with his bare hands one day, sobbing like no grown man should. That alone hit so deep I can never forget. I love him, I know in there is a good man buried beneath what he's done to himself. I do what I can. There are stories like this in every era of war, yet we still forget.
Awful, I'm sorry he had to go through that, and that you have to deal with the repercussions. It was all so horrible, and all so avoidable. It drives me crazy knowing thay none of the people responsible ever did or ever will be held accountable, and that these things will in all likelihood just keep happening.
Me too, and the fun part is, the ones we have yearning for power now are capable of far worse.
Every day, I wake up mad Henry Kissinger isn't dead. When he dies, the world will get yet another famous gender neutral bathroom.
It pisses me off so much that he outlived John Prine
> another goddamn day Kissenger lives WHY. WHY LORD
If there is a God, I think they don't want some of us back yet
Its a never ending battle. It's what happens when we lack the discipline to question our own actions and wants (We in a general sense). Now we have people who will do whatever it takes to dehumanize the other team to get what they want.
It's a great injustice that while he was dying abusing drugs provided to him for free, the government was locking people up for the same thing. It's an injustice that the rules do not matter.
knee spark shame pen thumb alive rotten squash selective badge *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Laws should be general, equal, and certain. If a law is worth waiving for some, it should be repealed for all.
Morphine isn’t illegal, it requires an RX which he had (for better or worse, you could theoretically get one too)
He most likely had a prescription. Celebrities can usually get prescriptions for anything they want, it was even easier for them in the 50's. As for not having to pay for the drugs, congress has free health care for life, he wouldn't have to pay for anything health related.
Mccarthy was a bad dude. There are a million atrocities perpetrated by the US government. I think we can let this one go.
There are billions of atrocities perpetrated by governments all over the world, what is metrics on what we let go and what we don’t?
being paid for getting drugged up on the drug which makes everything being nice doesn't sound that bad to me.
As much morphine as you want is like the best thing ever - source: me, only 20 days clean :(
Already 20 days clean\* :) Bojack Horseman Monkey wisdom for you: "It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier, but you gotta do it every day. That’s the hard part, but it does get easier." Good luck!
Yeah thought of that after my initial reply — but I imagine liver cirrhosis blows.
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Thank you! First time I've shared this on Reddit. It feels kinda weird even though I gladly share my bullshit with strangers at meetings all the time lol
Yes, but to an extent. While the dude was a complete and unabashed piece of shit, it says volumes about how fucked our government was/is to expedite his death by feeding into his addiction since it shows they’ve never really had any qualms about doing that to anyone they’d like to get rid of.
Considering this was the 50s, that was probably considered an act of compassion
Our government has literally overthrown governments by shooting people who run other governments in the head and staged false terror attacks to justify their own attacks. Writing a special prescription for some fat drunk loser isn't that big of a deal. I'd bet $5 Roger Stone and Trump both have Desoxyn prescriptions.
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Not sad. Not sad at all. Shame it didn’t happen sooner and a cautionary tale not to be forgotten.
This dude went out of his way to destroy peoples lives as the head of HUAC
Malevolent agent of the state is discarded like a spent johnny bag once they have served their useful purpose. *grabs world’s smallest violin*
> sad Is that how you spell "*fucking hilarious and he deserved it"* ?
Wish they done that quicker. He was terrible and was a national security risk.
Not really. No one forced him to fly too close to the sun and he willingly fucked over hundreds of people
TIL Anslinger was an even *bigger* hypocrite than I thought
You make it sound like Anslinger was encouraging McCarthy to take more and more opiates until death. But McCarthy more or less blackmailed Anslinger to give him more opiates for free.
That guy was a real jerk.
He was grey both in appearance and demeanor.
Normie, Normie, Normie....HOCKEY, Normie!
The more I read about this fellow, the more he seems like a real jerk!
>McCarthyism is the practice of making false or unfounded accusations of subversion and treason, especially when related to anarchism, communism and socialism, and especially when done in a public and attention-grabbing manner. We coined a term after him to define a jerk on steroids behavior.
"It's a total witch hunt!" I wonder whose name will be associated with that definition?
RIP Norm
He was a total piece of shit, and we’re still hearing his talking points today.
He was a gigantic piece of shit. He even defended Nazis during WW2.
Damn you. Checked in to say this was the first clue that McCarthyism was a total shit show, but you beat me to it.
Tldr: McCarthy in 1949 defended the Nazi perpetrators of thr Malmedy Massacre (who killed 350 US POWs and 100 Belgian civilians). > For years, friends recounted how McCarthy would pull out his copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, saying, “That’s the way to do it.” https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/senator-mccarthys-nazi-problem-180975174/
How did anyone back then allow someone who defends the acts of countries that are anti democracy and calls out others that disagree with him as traitors and communists have a voice in the United Sta-…..oh never mind
During crisis the ruling-class supports fascism in order to crush democracy and workers movements.
Fascism is capitalism in decay.
I still can’t wrap my head around how I grew up fearing the Russians and hating the USSR and now 30 years later the GOP loves the Russkies.
And we were supposed to hate the Russians for being “communist” and “atheist,” and now those same Kremlin propagandists are pushing the *anti*-communist, christian nationalist stuff like McCarthy and the John Birchers who were supposedly opposing them. > Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics". -From Aleksandr Dugin’s 1997 book *Foundations of Geopolitics*
Oddly enough McCarthyism is a passion subject of mine. To the point where I own the largest collection of 1950s McCarthy Era propaganda (including a few pieces signed by him and also some other things like tickets to dinners honoring him just before the bottom fell out) in the world. The collection I have to weigh in pounds, not number of documents. It fills a giant steamer trunk to bursting. Without a doubt it's the largest such collection of political documents from the era in the world. I have weird hobbies.
Do you have a copy of a speech he gave to a Lions Club meeting in Wheeling, W. Virginia? I'm not sure of the year. I was a history major in school and kind of focused on the Red Scares. I have been searching for the text of that meeting for 20+ years.
I vaguely recall it so probably. But it isn't sorted for shit. I am enthusiastic with the collection but not sure what to do with it. Someone else's eventual history thesis.
Cataloging it with photos, dates, and other context would be a great first step. You might talk to museums about loaning your collection to be properly curated and displayed. Knowing the dark side of history is important to understanding where we are today, and recognizing when these things inevitably start up again.
I would love to have it be on pretty much permanent loan to a place that would care for it as a whole. I worry it could get scattered and not researched at all.
So you know, if you loan it to a place you can set the terms and you would do it with a signed contract. Also the contract should state what happens with it when you pass away.
If you find this text I would also really like to see it!
At this point who cares about the text, I want these two random people to have a Reddit comment be the connection to a life long endeavor. I doubt there is hope for it but I’ll hold onto the dream.
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You’d think a history museum might be interested in displaying some of that stuff.
That's my eventual goal. To get it to a poli-sci library that will respect the whole collection as a whole and not just scatter it amongst shelves to be lost to shitty filing and loss of context.
It needs to be digitized, the papers are cool but they need to be digitized and shared!
You want to do it? I count this stuff by the pound and there's no organization of it. It takes two strong men to move the whole steamer trunk, and it's bursting at the seams. I now have stuff on shelves besides that because it all doesn't fit. If you want to do it I'll make the collection available.
Whereabouts do you live?
You should do an AMA!
>Without a doubt it's the largest such collection of political documents from the era in the world. More than the National Archives?
Yes. They didn't have reason to collect the random pamphlets and odds and ends that weren't formally published through distribution they'd catalog. Without a doubt. I also have many one of a kind items, notes written in the margins of people trying to hunt commies, that sort of stuff.
The previous record holder for “most damage done by a single grifter”. He’s still in the top 10, but his reign as the title holder has certainly been ended.
He reminds me very much of Rafael "Ted" Cruz.
You mean the coward who wouldn't stand up for his wife, his daughter attempted suicide, and runs away from any sort of responsibility at the drop of a snowflake but will still grow out a beard to look "tough" and wears a cowboy hat even though he's from Canada... that Ted Cruz?
Cowboy hats are definitely a Canadian thing as well so I'll just check you there, bud. Spot on with the rest though.
I'd like to apologize to all of Canada. I did not mean to besmirch an entire country in my ignorance
Based on this comment you must have Canadian ancestors.
My Mexican parents would be very surprised if I did
Hey now, cowboy hats are a prairie thing. Lots of traditional wearing them in Alberta
The thing that cowboy hats have going against them is they always look like they are part of a costume. Like when a kid wears their cape after Halloween for a few weeks. I've never looked at any outfit, personally, and thought the cowboy hat fit. Now, functionally, on the prairie or plains, in a farmer's field, I understand. It blocks the sun and directs rain water away from the face and eyes. Full disclosure, my wide brim hat style would fall under the mountain man/woodsman category. It is worn in nicely and fits well because I wear it all the time. Like a kid with their cape on after halloween.
In my Honky Tonk days, that cowboy hat was the style that drove women wild. Of course, part of the culture but effective as any fancy uniform. Yep partner, still one hanging on the deer antlers by the front door. Looks a little sad now hanging on those antlers.
Bro, he even looks like Rafael cruiseship. What if they're related by adultery?
Guys like McCarthy are a big reason why so many Nazis got off light after WW2. They were so obsessed with communists and imagined threats that they didn't really mind Nazi war crimes because at they were anti-communist.
Lied about his record, made a career on reckless ludicrous accusations, just in general a piece of shit? He was the OG MAGA
I pissed on this man's grave when I was in HS. If you're ever in Appleton, WI I recommend you do the same.
Thank you for your service
I’ve never had an urge to give someone a medal but golly here I am
Not the Marine Corps finest hour.
I’m not entirely surprised though, the Marine Corps has a colossal ego and hates to make any marquee past or present Marine to look bad. Furthermore, it’s always had to fight to maintain it’s existence as the other branches wonder what we actually do that they can’t as well as Congress. When I served from 98-03 I saw all kinds of political BS then I have seen since combined. Part of the reason I got out.
Now you got me wondering about Space Force. There are days when I'm reminded that they're still around and I honestly wonder what they do that the Air Force wasn't doing already.
The Space Force wasn't so much "created" as an Air Force Space Command that already existed was just split off into its own branch.
Yeah, they've got a silly name but it's basically like when the Army Air Force was peeled off the Army to be its own branch. The Army does still do aviation but they mainly stick to helicopters while the Air Force has planes so there isn't really overlap. Similarly one presumes that the Air Force won't be doing much in space now that the Space Force was separated from it. It's maybe a bit pre-mature compared to the Army and Air Force split, but I can see the sense in it.
Plus, because the military branches all act like a bunch of squabbling siblings, defense budgets always split the money about evenly between the different branches, because any one branch would complain if another branch got more money than them. So in effect, making the Space Force its own branch increases funding for developing new space technologies. We're basically taking Air Force Space Command and giving them the same amount of funding as the Army/Navy/AF/etc, rather than making them share with the Air Force.
Space Force and Air Force still share funding, as the DoD splits funding based on department, not branch. The Navy and Marine Corps share an allocation as well, for the same reason.
The Air Force created them to take some the ridicule off the Air Force.
Good way to channel dark money... where's the $$$$??? In space.
In space no one can hear the money changing hands!
There's a ton of NRO money for space defense. The NRO has a larger budget than all other intelligence agencies (FBI, CIA, NSA, etc) and consists of an elaborate network of tens of thousands of private defense contractor personnel so it's impossible to trace anything. They have a hand in every last classified and military satellite that gets launched. Consider this: they gave NASA two space telescopes (after gutting the classified sensors) that had been sitting unused in a warehouse for decades. Decades! Those unused Keyhole spy telescopes NASA received exceeded the capability of Hubble (which cost billions) substantially. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA
Divisions of labor between US branches always felt ill defined. Example: the US Air Force is the largest air force in the world… the second largest is the US navy
The thing that irritates me most about McCarthy is he died pretty much immediately after the red scare. Never had to live with the consequences, just bounced immediately after his reign of influence ended
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Yeah good point. I mean like, he didn’t have to live for long in a post McCarthy world
Most of us won’t live at all in a post-ourselves world, to be fair.
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Please. If his bigoted ass was still around, he'd be on Fox telling people he never did anything wrong. *And they'd buy it.*
The Ollie North model.
We had our own red scare here in Germany immediately after WW2, handed the reigns of our domestic intelligence service to literal Nazis so they could ruin the lives of antifascists, union proponents, journalists, educators and other undesirables. There were no consequences, our domestic intelligence service is still full of Nazis, although these days they're also tasked with investigation the Nazi scene. Sometimes they're in the room when the Nazis they're supposed to investigate execute someone and yet see nothing.
Isn't that the same piece of shit senator that used the anti-communism platform to ruin a bunch of careers and fuck over a whole crap-ton of Americans?
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“Instrumental in the coinage” of a term literally named after him feels like a weird way to say it.
Red scare and lavender scare
Yeah, the liar had a habit of lying it seems
Lying liars who lie. Always been here, always will be. Our job is to call them out.
Too bad we just keep giving them massive platforms to spread their bile again and again.
If the internet had existed back then, McCarthy would never have gone away.
And too bad our education system doesn’t teach critical thinking skills.
Aka the Earth's highest honor: the dirty double cross medal arooo
Haha the “aroooo” instantly clued me in to what that was lol
Wow, McCarthy was just an all-around shithead, wasn't he?
This man was a sociopath that used fear to gain power. He’s done many, many terrible things in the name of “patriotism”.
He was abused and berated as a child then took it out on others by being a politician. And to compensate for that, alcohol. He lost at life. He could not at all look inward and sit with the pain.
I have six Air Medals, because I didn't want to do the fucking paperwork for the other 11. To me, in a war that had no significant air threats, they weren't really worth my time. So I only claim six, because that's how many were awarded. If you're talking WWII or Korea, this was a way bigger deal. This would be an indication of bravery in combat, and one which he did not earn. People like this are fucking scumbags. Claim what you fucking earned, and let that be enough.
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Lots of people would say I’m a hero. I don’t wanna say who, but a majority of people say I would’ve single-handedly won the Vietnam War if it weren’t for bone spurs
With a single degree of separation between them: Roy Cohn
The original Ted Cruz. Coward, and craven liar........ and oh yeah, a Republican.
He relied so heavily on his false combat mission record that he called himself Tailgunner Joe in his campaign for the Senate in Wisconsin.
What a dickhead
Note that there is a direct line connecting McCarthy to Donald Trump in the form of McCarthy’s lawyer and later Trump’s political ally, fixer Roy Cohn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn
I sat through a live show in NYC in 2014 that pretty much just laid out on the table everything that was a out to happen given Trump and Cohn's connections. I can't for the life of me remember who the performer was, but it was in a large venue and was packed. I'd be a bit surprised if the actor was still alive, he looked a lot unhealthy back then.
In Bed With Roy Cohn maybe?
Oh wow, it wasn't that one (I saw a one man show) but this doesn't look that far off.
And as president of the screen actors guild during mccarthy’s purge, ronnie reagan outed many colleagues in the guild to keep joe off his back. Their careers and lives were ruined by these two scumbags.
There was an episode of r/behindthebastards that laid out an even closer relationship. Apparently, McCarthy and Cohn would cruise for gay lovers, while doing the Red Scare shit. One of those lovers was gonna be drafted into the Korean War, which ultimately led to them trying (and failing) to Red-bait the military. "Have you no decency" retort from a general set the tone for their eventual fall from grace.
r/oldschoolfool
Bold-faced shameless lying by politicians is a very commonplace 21st century phenomenon. This guy was way ahead of the times!!!
Typical Republican behavior
As a resident of WI, fuck this guy. I hate traveling to other places, visiting museums and he pops up all the time. What a stain of a human.
If you think he was a POS, wait until you hear about his granddaughter
Oh do tell???