Ghost of Joe McCarthy

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This is actually the essay that attends the definition of “communism” that I offered earlier:

Joe McCarthy could crawl out of his grave tomorrow, brush off his suit, and march into Republican headquarters demanding to see the communist conspiracy destroying America.

They would hand him a proposal to lower insulin prices.

McCarthy would stare at it.

“That’s the communist plot?”

“Well, yes,” a Republican staffer would explain. “The government is trying to help people.”

Poor Joe. He spent his career hunting imaginary Soviet agents in Hollywood, universities, labor unions, and probably the State Department cafeteria. Now communism has apparently been reduced to affordable groceries, school lunches, rent assistance, and the dangerous idea that Americans should be able to visit a doctor without selling a kidney.

Republicans have simplified political science for the rest of us. If the government helps a hungry child eat lunch, that is Marxism. If the government gives billions to a politically connected corporation, that is the free market spreading its majestic wings.

Please try to keep up.

Joe might notice that the same party warning us about government control has been using public money to invest in favored industries, acquire stakes in private companies, recruit Wall Street bankers, and steer contracts toward businesses it considers important.

“Isn’t that government interference in the economy?” he might ask.

At that point, security would probably escort him out for asking a left-wing question.

The Republican economic philosophy is not difficult. Government must stay out of business unless business needs cash, contracts, protection, subsidies, loans, ownership guarantees, special treatment, or someone to clean up the wreckage after a billionaire drives the company into a ditch.

A struggling mother receiving grocery assistance is dependency. A struggling corporation receiving ten billion dollars is economic strategy.

A child gets a free sandwich and suddenly Lenin is kicking down the cafeteria door. A defense contractor gets a mountain of taxpayer money and the bald eagle starts singing “God Bless America.”

That is not socialism, you understand. Socialism is when ordinary people receive something. When rich people receive it, that is investment.

The real genius of the modern Republican Party is that it can accuse Democrats of communism while building a system where political power and corporate power climb into bed together, divide the public treasury, and then lecture everyone else about personal responsibility.

Nothing says rugged individualism quite like a corporation standing outside the Pentagon with its hand out.

Then there is the Saudi nuclear deal, because apparently this story needed a subplot rejected from a Bond movie for being too ridiculous.

Republicans warn that affordable health care could destroy American liberty, but a massive nuclear agreement benefiting private corporations and an authoritarian monarchy is celebrated as a commercial victory. Public money, private profit, limited oversight, and a ruler who has openly discussed obtaining nuclear weapons if Iran does. What could possibly go wrong?

Probably nothing. These people are famous for thinking ahead.

The same party terrified by an uncomfortable history book is remarkably calm about nuclear technology moving through a deal without the strongest international safeguards. A teacher mentioning racism is a national emergency. A crown prince mentioning nuclear weapons is a promising business opportunity.

This is where the old communist accusation becomes completely absurd.

Republicans do not object to government power. They object to government power being used for anyone outside their donor list. They are perfectly comfortable with a muscular state when it is enriching friendly corporations, intimidating critics, punishing opponents, deploying troops, or protecting the leader.

But suggest that Medicare negotiate a drug price and suddenly they are hiding under their desks from Chairman Mao.

McCarthy would eventually understand. There are no communists to find. The word no longer describes an economic system. It is simply the alarm Republicans pull whenever someone asks why groceries cost so much, why rent keeps rising, why health care remains unaffordable, or why another billionaire needs public assistance.

“Communist” now means a Democrat with a calculator.

It means anyone rude enough to notice that Republicans preach free markets while quietly constructing a private welfare state for corporations and wealthy insiders.

Their platform is clear: government should own nothing, regulate nothing, and help no one, unless one of their friends needs a few billion dollars, a guaranteed contract, or a taxpayer-funded rescue operation.

Communism is not government control anymore.

Communism is when the money reaches someone who actually needs it.

open.substack.com - Joe mccarthy returns and finds the

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