Since it was established in April of 2018 The Dystopia Report has been alerting its readers to the existential crisis Donald Trump and the MAGA political class he created poses to America.
Melding personal stories with historical events, along with recognition of the devastating role Fox News and AM talk radio have played in warping the basic world view of millions, the Dystopia Report’s 300+ essays expound on the many dangers of the “Make America Great Again” moniker.
At The Dystopia Report, we are excited to join forces with Politics Code Blue at this critical moment in our history, with America’s very democracy hanging in the balance. BC
–– –– –– –– ––
The wording of the US seditious conspiracy statute is broad and expansive enough that anyone with the agency and bad faith can abuse it. Back in the early 1950s, an alcoholic Republican Senator from Wisconsin, who up to that point was perhaps the body’s most inconsequential member, did just that. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, supported by a soulless young lawyer named Roy Cohn, who would eventually mentor Donald Trump, pandered ruthlessly to the country’s worst civic elements, fomenting anti-communist hysteria. By the time Joe McCarthy’s lies were recognized, and his efforts disgraced, the damage his gratuitous bullying caused was extensive and lasting.
The lessons history taught us about McCarthyist-persecution were good ones; common sense, really. Foremost was for the public to have more faith in essential government institutions, like the State Department. McCarthyism happened because too many were primed to accept innuendo and rumor, third-hand accounts and stray puzzle pieces to boost a narrative supported more by fear than facts.
Another important moral to the Un-American Activities Committee debacle was that bad faith by lawmakers interested only in their own fortunes is far more of a threat to our way of life than the ghosts they tell us to be deathly afraid of.
Now another craven pol, ironically also named McCarthy, is running interference for a criminal demagogue, also using red scare terminology. Repeating cries of “witch hunt,” he aims to discredit long overdue efforts to prosecute misdeeds, mining the depths of similar fears and ignorance to maintain the power he sold his soul to attain. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy no longer leaves anything to the imagination as to whether he, like the monster he buoys, is willing to end the game rather than lose it.
Now another craven pol, ironically also named McCarthy, is running interference for a criminal demagogue, also using red scare terminology. Repeating cries of “witch hunt,” he aims to discredit long overdue efforts to prosecute misdeeds.
This tale of two McCarthys is steeped in dangerous irony. Seven decades ago, one created and exploited hysteria about a domestic security threat that hardly existed. Now, Trump and MAGA constitute exactly the existential menace to our way of life McCarthyism falsely trumpeted. However, the namesake Speaker of the House provides all the cover and credibility to totalitarian demagoguery his office can muster.
Unlike 70 years ago, when way too many Americans were ready to believe in an imaginary “menace” exploited for nothing more than relevance and political power, this McCarthy’s embrace of genuine sedition is constantly reinforced and impelled by a multi-media juggernaut that Cold War muckrakers could only have dreamt of. Worse, this time around, in the face of overt MAGA attempts to disable US democracy, consequential swaths of the body politic simply don’t want to be bothered, and shrug that it’s merely now how Republicans see things.
From the start of the Trump Presidency, the critical question was twofold. First, would the institutions he was entrusted to lead succeed in modifying the unprecedented ugliness of his 2016 campaign? And if not, would he be successful in spawning a political class beholden to him and fully dedicated to normalizing his efforts to demolish the standards he inherited?
McCarthy and the House caucus he leads are the ruinous answer to those questions. The priorities it pursues are in full lockstep with Trump’s rabid efforts to avoid accountability for past and present transgressions.
That Kevin McCarthy has somehow avoided scrutiny for his part in permeating the Big Lie with the credibility his position enables is mystifying. It gets no more craven than the timeline of the Speaker’s positions since November of 2020.
Not 36 hours after the polls had closed, with millions of votes still to be counted, McCarthy parroted Trump’s lie that the fix was in:
“President Trump won this election so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. We need to unite together. You don’t need to be a Republican. If you believe in every legal vote needs to count, you believe in the American process, join together and let’s stop this.”
Not 36 hours after the polls had closed, with millions of votes still to be counted, McCarthy parroted Trump’s lie that the fix was in.
In the immediate aftermath of the failed January 6th coup McCarthy figured Trump was toast. He couldn’t jump ship fast enough, telling a group of Republican leaders – including Liz Cheney – that “I’ve had it with this guy…What he did is unacceptable.” McCarthy assured all that he wanted Trump to resign in disgrace before Inauguration Day. That was until it became clear the GOP base felt very differently, and Fox/AM shifted into deflection mode. With the change in wind direction, McCarthy flitted off to Mar-A-Lago hat in hand, prepared to supplicate over a poolside lunch.
Blasted for bending the knee to a disgraced seditionist less than a month after 1/6, McCarthy feigned incredulity and protested he was simply “in the neighborhood” and dropped by to discuss the GOP’s future. “I can talk to anyone… just as I can go talk to Joe Biden if President Biden wants to talk…I don’t quite grasp why we’re now challenging people that they can’t talk to one another.”
However, his official statement after posing with Trump more than hinted on the horse he was now prepared to bet his future relevance on. “Today, President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022…For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” From there the greased slope led to fully opposing impeachment, and then first obstructing the formation of a House Committee to investigate 1/6 before totally disavowing and ceaselessly trying to discredit it.
Since then, McCarthy’s Twitter/X feed hardly differs from the rest of the MAGA zealots, except his tweets carry the legitimacy of his office. At every opportunity he employs his position in government to erode public confidence in its existence, slandering virtually every agency of note, either to protect Trump from legal accountability or burnish the Republican platform of opposing any effort by the Biden Administration to make significant progress on more vital issues.
GOP messaging now just regurgitates MAGA catch phrases like “two-tiered justice” and “socialist redistribution of wealth.” The party’s “platform” translates into precisely what McCarthy meant after he sought Trump’s forgiveness in late January of 2021: any and all measures, including sedition, must be employed to prevent the radical Democratic agenda. The end justifies the means.
McCarthy now heads a pack of hyenas, a caucus that demands a willingness to overcome any pang of self-respect and basic human decency as a prerequisite for job security. Anyone who doubted this need only have witnessed the recent censure of Adam Schiff, carried over the finish line by Trump’s Truth Social threat to primary anyone who didn’t support the measure.
Forget “accountability,” a reckoning is coming. Almost 70 years ago, America finally came to its senses and called out McCarthyism for the empty rubbish it was. Its Senate ringleader was appropriately ostracized and rendered irrelevant. Now, Trump’s continued political relevance, fully abetted by the caucus this McCarthy leads, has the existential threat of sedition embedded within our borders. If he doesn’t meet the same fate as his predecessor, democracy in America will.
Since it was established in April of 2018 The Dystopia Report has been alerting its readers to the existential crisis Donald Trump and the MAGA political class he created poses to America.
Melding personal stories with historical events, along with recognition of the devastating role Fox News and AM talk radio have played in warping the basic world view of millions, the Dystopia Report’s 300+ essays expound on the many dangers of the “Make America Great Again” moniker.
At The Dystopia Report, we are excited to join forces with Politics Code Blue at this critical moment in our history, with America’s very democracy hanging in the balance. BC
–– –– –– –– ––
The wording of the US seditious conspiracy statute is broad and expansive enough that anyone with the agency and bad faith can abuse it. Back in the early 1950s, an alcoholic Republican Senator from Wisconsin, who up to that point was perhaps the body’s most inconsequential member, did just that. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, supported by a soulless young lawyer named Roy Cohn, who would eventually mentor Donald Trump, pandered ruthlessly to the country’s worst civic elements, fomenting anti-communist hysteria. By the time Joe McCarthy’s lies were recognized, and his efforts disgraced, the damage his gratuitous bullying caused was extensive and lasting.
The lessons history taught us about McCarthyist-persecution were good ones; common sense, really. Foremost was for the public to have more faith in essential government institutions, like the State Department. McCarthyism happened because too many were primed to accept innuendo and rumor, third-hand accounts and stray puzzle pieces to boost a narrative supported more by fear than facts.
Another important moral to the Un-American Activities Committee debacle was that bad faith by lawmakers interested only in their own fortunes is far more of a threat to our way of life than the ghosts they tell us to be deathly afraid of.
Now another craven pol, ironically also named McCarthy, is running interference for a criminal demagogue, also using red scare terminology. Repeating cries of “witch hunt,” he aims to discredit long overdue efforts to prosecute misdeeds, mining the depths of similar fears and ignorance to maintain the power he sold his soul to attain. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy no longer leaves anything to the imagination as to whether he, like the monster he buoys, is willing to end the game rather than lose it.
Now another craven pol, ironically also named McCarthy, is running interference for a criminal demagogue, also using red scare terminology. Repeating cries of “witch hunt,” he aims to discredit long overdue efforts to prosecute misdeeds.
This tale of two McCarthys is steeped in dangerous irony. Seven decades ago, one created and exploited hysteria about a domestic security threat that hardly existed. Now, Trump and MAGA constitute exactly the existential menace to our way of life McCarthyism falsely trumpeted. However, the namesake Speaker of the House provides all the cover and credibility to totalitarian demagoguery his office can muster.
Unlike 70 years ago, when way too many Americans were ready to believe in an imaginary “menace” exploited for nothing more than relevance and political power, this McCarthy’s embrace of genuine sedition is constantly reinforced and impelled by a multi-media juggernaut that Cold War muckrakers could only have dreamt of. Worse, this time around, in the face of overt MAGA attempts to disable US democracy, consequential swaths of the body politic simply don’t want to be bothered, and shrug that it’s merely now how Republicans see things.
From the start of the Trump Presidency, the critical question was twofold. First, would the institutions he was entrusted to lead succeed in modifying the unprecedented ugliness of his 2016 campaign? And if not, would he be successful in spawning a political class beholden to him and fully dedicated to normalizing his efforts to demolish the standards he inherited?
McCarthy and the House caucus he leads are the ruinous answer to those questions. The priorities it pursues are in full lockstep with Trump’s rabid efforts to avoid accountability for past and present transgressions.
That Kevin McCarthy has somehow avoided scrutiny for his part in permeating the Big Lie with the credibility his position enables is mystifying. It gets no more craven than the timeline of the Speaker’s positions since November of 2020.
Not 36 hours after the polls had closed, with millions of votes still to be counted, McCarthy parroted Trump’s lie that the fix was in:
“President Trump won this election so everyone who’s listening, do not be quiet. Do not be silent about this. We cannot allow this to happen before our very eyes. We need to unite together. You don’t need to be a Republican. If you believe in every legal vote needs to count, you believe in the American process, join together and let’s stop this.”
Not 36 hours after the polls had closed, with millions of votes still to be counted, McCarthy parroted Trump’s lie that the fix was in.
In the immediate aftermath of the failed January 6th coup McCarthy figured Trump was toast. He couldn’t jump ship fast enough, telling a group of Republican leaders – including Liz Cheney – that “I’ve had it with this guy…What he did is unacceptable.” McCarthy assured all that he wanted Trump to resign in disgrace before Inauguration Day. That was until it became clear the GOP base felt very differently, and Fox/AM shifted into deflection mode. With the change in wind direction, McCarthy flitted off to Mar-A-Lago hat in hand, prepared to supplicate over a poolside lunch.
Blasted for bending the knee to a disgraced seditionist less than a month after 1/6, McCarthy feigned incredulity and protested he was simply “in the neighborhood” and dropped by to discuss the GOP’s future. “I can talk to anyone… just as I can go talk to Joe Biden if President Biden wants to talk…I don’t quite grasp why we’re now challenging people that they can’t talk to one another.”
However, his official statement after posing with Trump more than hinted on the horse he was now prepared to bet his future relevance on. “Today, President Trump committed to helping elect Republicans in the House and Senate in 2022…For the sake of our country, the radical Democrat agenda must be stopped.” From there the greased slope led to fully opposing impeachment, and then first obstructing the formation of a House Committee to investigate 1/6 before totally disavowing and ceaselessly trying to discredit it.
Since then, McCarthy’s Twitter/X feed hardly differs from the rest of the MAGA zealots, except his tweets carry the legitimacy of his office. At every opportunity he employs his position in government to erode public confidence in its existence, slandering virtually every agency of note, either to protect Trump from legal accountability or burnish the Republican platform of opposing any effort by the Biden Administration to make significant progress on more vital issues.
GOP messaging now just regurgitates MAGA catch phrases like “two-tiered justice” and “socialist redistribution of wealth.” The party’s “platform” translates into precisely what McCarthy meant after he sought Trump’s forgiveness in late January of 2021: any and all measures, including sedition, must be employed to prevent the radical Democratic agenda. The end justifies the means.
McCarthy now heads a pack of hyenas, a caucus that demands a willingness to overcome any pang of self-respect and basic human decency as a prerequisite for job security. Anyone who doubted this need only have witnessed the recent censure of Adam Schiff, carried over the finish line by Trump’s Truth Social threat to primary anyone who didn’t support the measure.
Forget “accountability,” a reckoning is coming. Almost 70 years ago, America finally came to its senses and called out McCarthyism for the empty rubbish it was. Its Senate ringleader was appropriately ostracized and rendered irrelevant. Now, Trump’s continued political relevance, fully abetted by the caucus this McCarthy leads, has the existential threat of sedition embedded within our borders. If he doesn’t meet the same fate as his predecessor, democracy in America will.