Let the Imperial Flailing begin!

[wnylib]

18. Trump often does not make a direct statement

connection, e.g. between communism in Cuba and the people in the US that he labels as communists. He creates implications and images for people to make associations with. He uses innuendo.

There is no doubt in my mind that he is trying to set up a suggestive connection between Dems and Cuba to discredit Dems who promote social programs. Reich thinks so too. That is the whole point of his article. When you read the rest of it at the link, Reich mentions why Trump would think of using the Red Scare tactic. Trump is old enough to have remembered the McCarthy hearings of 1954. Roy Cohn was an attorney closely associated with McCarthy and the use of the Red Scare tactic. He later became Trump's mentor.

But Reich cites studies that show that younger Americans who have no memory of the McCarthy era of the 1950s are not buying into the scare tactics. I hope that they turn out in large numbers to vote because there are older voters who can be influenced by the innuendo that social programs in the US are the same as communism in Cuba.

I am a few years younger than Trump. I have a couple vague memories of the McCarthy hearings. One is of hearing kids my age in the neighborhood repeating what they heard their parents say, that there were communists in the government who want to take it over and let Russia conquer the US. At that age, I had no idea what communism was, but knew that it was something really bad. I also had a general picture of how big the US is and the distance from Russia due to educational map toys. My father and uncle were WWII vets so in a child's trust of adults, I believed that nobody could take us over. I did not believe what the kids said and told them so.

Looking back, I wonder about the gullibility of their parents. Those were children of Democratic parents in a Dem neighborhood in a very Dem city.

The other vague memory that I have is of my mother dusting off tables and knick knacks in our living room with the TV on. There were serious looking men in suits on TV raising voices in a way that was scarey to me. I did not understand anything they said but felt fear because of their tones. My mother, an FDR Dem like my father, slammed a vase down.on a table and said, "Witch hunt! Goddamned with hunt!" I was shocked at her anger and use of a curse word. She never yelled and never swore. It was many years before I learned what it was about.