Ever since I participated in the Economic Policy Semester at American University in the Fall of 1980, I have been interested in the role of government in American society. As a 21-year-old college student, studying in Washington during the 1980 elections was an exciting time. As one of several hundred students from around the country with politically diverse viewpoints, I engaged in many lively conversations that continue to resonate with me today. My classmates and I debated the social worth of government, the importance of regulatory agencies, the benefits of public housing, job training, and poverty programs, the need for U.S. foreign aid, and whether myriad other federal programs benefited society.
Forty-five years ago, Republicans and Democrats were frequently but not always on opposite sides of these debates. The two parties each had a healthy mix of liberals, moderates, and conservatives so the lines were not always clearly delineated. Most of the arguments were between self-identified liberals (including me), who believed that the role of government was to facilitate a better and more equitable society while protecting individual liberties, and conservatives, who wanted less government and advanced the virtues of unfettered free markets and rugged individualism.
In college, these liberal-conservative debates were mostly about the means to achieving common goals that we all shared. Although a few classmates on the left wanted to overthrow the chains of capitalism and a few on the right wanted to dismantle the federal government and return to an agrarian economy of the 1700’s, most of us fell within a reasonable centrist sphere of liberal to conservative thought.
Of course, American politics has always had fringe elements on the Right and Left. Other than the first three years of LBJ’s Great Society in the mid-1960s when the governing coalition leaned left on social and economic issues, since World War II, American presidential administrations from Truman to Carter have governed from the pragmatic center. During most of this era, conservative public intellectuals ranging from William F. Buckley, Jr., to George Will and Irving Kristol, and publications like The Public Interest and The National Review, protested from the sidelines what they viewed as the excesses of the New Deal and Great Society. They argued for a smaller, less bloated federal bureaucracy and advocated private solutions to the nation’s ills. And yet, they understood and did not dispute that government provided many essential services for people in a complex and dynamic economy.
As President Kennedy stated at a 1962 press conference, although Americans had been “conditioned for many years to have a political viewpoint—Republican or Democratic, liberal, conservative, or moderate,” most of the nation’s problems are “technical problems, administrative problems” that “do not lend themselves to the great sort of passionate movements which have stirred this country so often in the past.” When it came to preserving and protecting the institutions of our democracy, the Liberal Establishment was a pretty conservative bunch.
Back then, the Republican Party expressed concern for fiscal responsibility and used phrases like “sensible limits,” “shared sacrifice,” and “common ideals.” They discussed the balance between “mutual obligation” and “individual responsibility.” But that is no longer true. Today, so-called conservatives are mostly silent on these concepts – in fact, it is not unusual for the Right to accuse as socialist anyone who utters “common ideals” or “shared sacrifice.” In President Trump’s recent address to a joint session of Congress, we heard no such phrases and instead listened to boastful praise for the massive dismantling of the federal government led by Elon Musk and his band of 20-year-old technocrats. How did we get here?
In The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences (Random House 2010), Sam Tanenhaus asserts that today’s increasingly polarized politics and radical rightward shift within the Republican Party that led to the rise of the Tea Party (where his book ends)—and, by logical extension, to Trumpism—originated during the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940s, when talk of the “enemy within” and congressional witch hunts into allegedly “secret” Communist cabals within the federal government were the regular subject of news reports.
Starting in 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led a series of high-profile investigations into the Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a failed attempt to expose subversive elements in the upper echelons of government, including the U.S. Army, State Department, and CIA. Along with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which investigated subversive elements in Hollywood and among the ranks of American artists, professors, writers, and intellectuals, a lot of people were harmed and some ruined with scant evidence of Communist infiltration. By the time McCarthy had been exposed as a drunkard and a fraud, the John Birch Society (JBS) picked up where McCarthy left off, even accusing President Eisenhower of being a Communist agent. On the day President Kennedy visited Texas in November 1963, former General Edwin Walker, a prominent JBS member, printed and distributed thousands of leaflets all over Dallas accusing the President of treason against the United States.
Although they lacked legitimate power, McCarthy’s and the Birchers’ true accomplishment was to fuel the Right’s antigovernment crusade and hatred of “Washington bureaucrats” that continues to this day. That the government was perceived as the “enemy” of the people would increasingly become a staple of Republican politics over the next half-century. Respectable conservatives like Buckley, Will, Kristol, and other philosophically minded types understood that such denunciations primarily came from “crackpots” and amounted to an attack on America itself. Indeed, Buckley tried to purge the Birchers from the conservative movement and, post-McCarthy, thoughtful conservatives rejected extremism and sought a more pragmatic and realistic examination of government.
Politicians who attempted to upset the consensus politics of the time did not fare well. When Barry Goldwater was nominated as the Republican candidate for president in 1964, the outcome proved that far-right conservatives were out of touch with most Americans. Through his book, The Conscience of a Conservative (ghostwritten by Brent Bozell, a strong supporter of Joseph McCarthy and a member of the John Birch Society), Goldwater promised a total dismantling of the welfare state. “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size,” wrote Goldwater. “My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.” Voter’s rejected Goldwater’s candidacy by huge numbers. Lyndon Johnson won the 1964 presidential election by a landslide, winning 44 states to Goldwater’s six (the electoral college tally was 486 – 52 in favor of LBJ) and the popular vote by 61.1% to 38.5%. (Unlike 2024, that was an actual landslide and mandate.)
Goldwater’s humiliation at the polls temporarily moderated the Republican Party and helped elect Richard Nixon in 1968. Nixon came to fame during his HUAC days and was known for playing dirty politics. But as William Safire noted, Nixon was a politician “willing and even eager to surprise with liberal ideas” in the tradition of former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, a Conservative Party leader who outmaneuvered his opposition by governing with liberal innovation. As Tanenhaus explains, “Nixon consistently departed from movement antigovernment doctrine.” He created the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, instituted affirmative action programs, and endorsed expansionist Keynesian economic stimulus programs, all things that are anathema in Republican circles today.
Ironically, Nixon’s downfall at the behest of Watergate may have helped spark the Right’s burning suspicion of the “dark liberal forces” and media elites arrayed against Nixon. “The argument that political power emanated from an alliance of liberal government bureaucrats and a sympathetic press,” writes Tanenhaus, “became a favorite theme in the movement’s next phase.”
Over the next decade, a growing antigovernment animus broadened within the Republican Party that reached a pinnacle in the Reagan Revolution of the 1980s. Reagan was the first president in my lifetime who ran and won on an explicitly antigovernment platform. Photogenic with an amiable personality, Reagan preached that government was the enemy and not the solution. He represented a strain of conservatism that wished to upset the New Deal coalition that had retained power for the previous 50 years.
Reagan gave voice to a long-standing belief among the more conservative wing of the Republican Party that an elite corps of salaried, mid-level managers and government administrators had amassed unprecedented authority and shifted power from private business interests to an unelected administrative state. It would not be long before terms like “good vs. evil” began to emerge on the Right when discussing social programs, environmental regulations, foreign aid, and many areas of federal governmental action. Reagan was particularly skilled at exploiting a pent-up anger towards government programs that Reagan charged took money from hardworking Americans and re-distributed it to the undeserving poor through entitlements and welfare programs.
But although Reagan promoted an antigovernment philosophy, he did not actually govern that way. As David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, has noted, “not one major spending program was abolished during the Reagan presidency.” Although Reagan promoted the virtues of the private sector and free markets, he understood, as George Will has written, that government, “unlike an economic market, has responsibilities” that included aiding those for whom the market does not provide through “policies that express the community’s acceptance of an ethic of common provision.”
According to Tanenhaus, “conservatism entered its most decadent phase” during the 1990s, when the Right went all in on the “culture wars.” Rush Limbaugh replaced George Will as a spokesperson for the conservative cause. Republicans started to place loyalty to the “movement” above civic responsibility. They began rejecting notions of the common good and consensus politics. Republican politicians who dared to compromise or find common ground with the “enemy” were shunned. When the country elected Barack Obama in November 2008, Republicans made it their mission to limit Obama to one term (it failed) and uniformly opposed his major initiatives, even though many of Obama's proposals adopted conservative ideas.
The Right’s shared disdain for government, combined with a distaste for compromise, has only metastasized with the rise of Trump. They are more interested in destroying, rather than conserving, the institutions, traditions, and mutual obligations of civil society. As recently as three decades ago, moderate Republicans formed a sizable and influential segment of the party. Today, the party’s House and Senate caucuses are firmly committed to the politics of polarization and destruction – a pro-Trump orthodoxy that does not allow dissent or independent thought.
“Therein lies the paradox of the modern Right,” writes Tanenhaus. “Its drive for power has steered it onto a path that has become profoundly and defiantly un-conservative—in its arguments and ideas, in its tactics and strategies, above all in its vision. . . . Classical conservatives have all either deserted the Right or been evicted from it.” This has become most prominent in the resurgence of the John Birch Society and its legacy of conspiracy theories that has become a dominant strain on the Right. Opposition to big government has become opposition to government itself, and the social institutions that sustain democracy. The current White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, has publicly equated federal workers with “radical left Communists” and “criminal cartels.”
Although Trump personally has no firmly held political convictions other than a fervent belief in his own aggrandizement, the movement he leads has finally, after many decades in the political wilderness, attained true power. While most of its proponents identify as conservative, the policies being enacted are anything but conservative in the classical sense. Trumpism is a non-ideological movement, consisting of right-wing evangelicals, isolationists, America Firsters, Christian nationalists, an assortment of libertarians, and a large collection of conspiracy theorists and alternative reality types who reject traditional news reporting. They perceive the institutions of democracy, government, education, media, and international diplomacy as hostile forces out to destroy the “real America,” which under Trump's worldview includes only Trump loyalists.
In just six weeks, Trump and Elon Musk have sought to eliminate dozens of long-standing and essential federal programs and agencies. Little thought is put into the proposed cuts other than personal revenge. The whole purpose seems to be to radically dismantle the federal government and reverse all the progress we have made over the last 100 years in civil rights, the environment, workplace safety and health, the social safety net, diplomacy, and the building of the post-War alliance.
Trump also seeks to impose a rigid orthodoxy within government that puts fealty to Trump above the Constitution. He is radically eviscerating the independence of all executive branch agencies. He has openly politicized and imposed loyalty tests on traditionally non-political, independent institutions such as the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the CIA. He fired 18 Inspectors General whose job was to independently monitor federal agencies and ferret out actual waste, fraud, and abuse. Although the courts may yet have their say, the Trump administration intends to eliminate the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Education Department, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, and numerous other departments. He has fired thousands of government workers in every agency throughout the government and has vowed to drastically reduce the size of the IRS, the Social Security Administration, and the Veterans Administration. He repeatedly attacks the country’s most elite universities and wishes to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives from public and private life.
None of these actions have included careful study and debate, for they are designed to produce random chaos and destruction. The result will predictably wreak havoc on the economy and detrimentally impact the lives of millions of Americans, many of whom voted for Trump.
We have always had strands of far Right, antigovernment extremism on the fringes of American society. As a lone senator, McCarthy could only do so much damage and the Eisenhower faction soon controlled the Republican Party. The Birchers, the conspiracy theorists, and other peripheral elements made noise, but they existed on the sidelines. That is no longer the case. The antigovernment extremists are currently in power, and the damage they are doing to the country, the economy, and the social fabric of America, is profound and potentially unlimited. We are living in dangerous times.
The need for responsible government, which used to be a high ideal of conservative philosophy, has never been greater. The current crop of spineless Republicans who used to claim allegiance to our democracy now slavishly support an authoritarian patriarchy akin to monarchy. Now is the time for true conservatives to stand up to speak. It may be the only hope we have to preserve the Constitution and the foundations of our Republic.
Hi Mark,
ReplyDeleteWell once again, out of a sense of mental self-preservation, I will limit myself to one topic that highlights the Left's love of rewriting history. I refer, of course, to “congressional witch hunts into allegedly ‘secret’ Communist cabals within the federal government…” And, of course, the whipping boy, McCarthy, is trotted out as if he were the only one concerned about the very real threat emanating from the Evil Empire. In fact, as anyone who has read a book (below are two you might want to crack), far from a “failed attempt to expose subversive elements in the upper echelons of government,” with “scant evidence” of Communist infiltration, the evidence of Russia’s nefarious actions is overwhelming. (It's fascinating that you can be ignorant of actual Russian interference in the FDR Administration and then so gullibly taken in by the Russian Hoax against Trump. It’s almost as if you only believe what you want to believe.). In any event, the reality is that communist agents had infiltrated the highest levels of the White House, with some, such as Alger Hiss, possibly moving the lever of world events to the benefit of the commies when he participated in the Yalta conference.
So, the suggested readings are, “The Secret World of American Communism” by Klehr, Haynes, and Firsove, and “Witness” by Chambers. The latter is a must because not only is it a great history lesson, but it’s beautifully written: “My children, when you were little, we used sometimes to go for walks in our pine woods. In the open fields, you would run along by yourselves. But you used instinctively to give me your hands as we entered those woods, where it was darker, lonelier, and in the stillness our voices sounded loud and frightening. In this book I am again giving you my hands. I am leading you, not through cool pine woods, but up and up a narrow defile between bare and steep rocks from which in shadow things uncoil and slither away. It will be dark. But, in the end, if I have led you aright, you will make out three crosses, from two of which hang thieves. I will have brought you to Golgotha—the place of skulls. This is the meaning of the journey. Before you understand, I may not be there, my hands may have slipped from yours. It will not matter. For when you understand what you see, you will no longer be children. You will know that life is pain, that each of us hangs always upon the cross of himself. And when you know that this is true of every man, woman and child on earth, you will be wise.”
As for the rest of the essay, I had a friend read it over and his summary was very good: “Oh, what a surprise! The Republican Party has apparently transformed into a band of radical extremists, hell-bent on dismantling democracy and plunging the nation into chaos, all because Trump and Elon Musk are on a personal vendetta to destroy everything good and decent. It's a dire situation, folks, where only the brave ‘true conservatives’ can save us from the impending doom that Trump's policies will unleash on the economy and the lives of millions of innocent Americans. Better buckle up, because we're on a slippery slope to disaster!”
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
DeleteFirst, let me extend my appreciation for the fact that you take the time to read and comment on many of my essays. Although you frequently fail to see the forest for the trees, I commend your willingness to engage.
Of course, my main point about McCarthy in this essay was merely to point to what can reasonably be considered the origins of the current anti-government extremism that has infected the Republican Party, which has been overtaken by a radically right-wing and authoritarian contingent. It is anything but “conservative” in the mold of Buckley, Will, Kristol (you can go back to Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, take your pick), all of whom wanted to “conserve” the institutional safeguards of democracy and, despite their conservatism, understood that government was needed to do the many things that the private sector alone could not effectively handle. There was a time when you took seriously the positions espoused by those conservative thinkers, all of whom would (or do) find Trumpism distasteful.
I do not dispute that there were some cases of Communist influence in the U.S. Government. There has always been a need for internal security oversight and investigations. But Senator McCarthy was not known for his meticulous examination and use of evidence but for his publicity-seeking tactics of recklessly accusing thousands of government employees and U.S. citizens of being Communists without any legitimate evidence. And he did so while ruining the lives of many good people who had done nothing but serve their country honorably and others who expressed political viewpoints McCarthy and his allies disliked.
By the time of the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954, after which McCarthy was taken to task by Army counsel Joseph Welch and subsequently censured by the Senate and admonished by Edward R. Murrow and President Eisenhower, among others, “McCarthyism” became the label for the tactic of undermining political opponents by making unsubstantiated attacks on their loyalty to the United States. Indeed, the American Heritage Dictionary defines McCarthyism as: “The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and… The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.”
McCarthy’s reach extended to the overseas library program of the State Department, in which card catalogs were searched for works by authors McCarthy deemed inappropriate, to the hunt for "sexual perverts" (i.e., gay and lesbian Americans), which resulted in over 5,000 federal workers being fired, and thousands more harassed and denied employment. In the film industry, unofficial blacklists led to more than 300 actors, authors, and directors being denied work. Because of the overzealous actions of HUAC and McCarthy combined, blacklists also existed in universities, the legal profession, and many other fields. Some notable people blacklisted or persecuted during the Second Red Scare included: Leonard Bernstein, W.E.B. DuBois, Lucille Ball, Charlie Chaplin, Langston Hughes, Danny Kaye, Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Robeson, Pete Seeger, and hundreds of others. Do you really want to defend that? (And none of it addresses the main topic of the essay).
Mark
ReplyDeleteIf I had to pick the one thing that drives me the most bonkers in our exchanges over twenty-plus years, it is this: When I refute you, I first quote you (see above), while you refute not what I said, but what you infer I meant. Please provide direct evidence in my comments that suggest I was “defending” Joe McCarthy. There is none. You and the Left use him as a stalking horse to advance the silly idea that Communist infiltration into the top reaches of the US government was a myth or hysteria or a “witch hunt.” This avoidance is likely because a Democratic Administration, at best, turned a blind eye to the Communist danger or, at worse, had no problem with it. The Left has always had a love affair with the Red Menace, to the point that FDR had a pet name for Stalin and great faith in him to be precisely what he wasn’t. I then introduced you to Alger Hiss, a name that, if you were acquainted with, would have precluded you from going off on the McCarthy tangent since Joe had little if anything to do with Hiss’ unmasking (it was the sometimes great Republican Richard Nixon, who did the heavy lifting as well as the courageous Whitaker Chambers. To further my point, I provided two books to back up my claim. I hope you read them.
So, despite the fact that I never defended McCarthy, you nevertheless spent 475 words to dispute what I never said without addressing what I actually did say. The one good thing is that it made me reflect on a general rule that has become cemented in my head over the last ten years since Trump came down the escalator: The Left lies about everything. Russian Collusion, Hunter’s laptop, China labs, covid lockdowns, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, masks, and dozens more. This, in turn, reminded me of a book I always wanted to read because the Leftist lies haven’t been limited to the Trump era of US politics. And so I’ve ordered “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies.” It would be a fascinating experiment if you read it, too. Although I’ve never been a McCarthy supporter, it may be because I bought the Left’s lies back when I was young and naive. Maybe not, but I’m not afraid of new information. As you must recall from all the emails I sent you, there was a time when I belonged to the Never Trump movement, so sure was I that the best thing to say about Trump in 2015 was that he would destroy the country only slightly slower than Hillary would. You know how I hate to admit I was wrong, but I was. Maybe we both are wrong about McCarthy. Care to test your beliefs?
Regards,
Rich
Rich,
DeleteYou are being ridiculous. You accuse me of not directly addressing what you said while you completely miss the point of what I wrote. You are indeed defending McCarthyism, if not the man himself, by your own words (e.g., "The Left has always had a love affair with the Red menace..." "The Left lies about everything."). Why did you ignore what I wrote about the Hollywood blacklists, the 5,000 fired federal workers, the Army-McCarthy hearings, etc.? I know all about Alger Hiss, so what? I acknowledged that there was indeed some Communist influence during the Cold War and prior. Of course, the Second Red Scare was not all about McCarthy, but my point in citing him was to help explain what I believe are the origins of the current anti-government extremism (as argued by The Death of Conservatism by Sam Tanenhaus) that is eviscerating dozens of federal agencies and engaging in the mass firings of federal employees. The essay further addressed how the radical movement conservatives of today (and of Tea Party fame) are a long way from the classical conservatives whose ideas and theories I used to debate. Those true conservatives (Buckley, Will, Kristol...) are almost no longer relevant. Will and Kristol are strongly opposed to Trump, and I have to believe that Buckley would be appalled with Trump. You and the current crop of Trump loyalists are not anything like those conservatives and in fact share much more with conspiracy theorists, the Birchers, and the old-time McCarthy apologists. Unlike many conservatives with which I have disagreed and debated, you make it difficult to have a rational dialogue, and that is unfortunate. I have no interest in getting bogged down in a back-and-forth about McCarthy, but thanks for the offer.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteJust so we're clear here, your evidence that I am defending McCarthy or McCarthyism is that I wrote, "The Left has always had a love affair with the Red menace..." and that, "The Left lies about everything." I think we need a ruling on that! And when we do, we will include my full quote (a typical tactic of the Left!): "The Left has always had a love affair with the Red Menace, to the point that FDR had a pet name for Stalin and great faith in him to be precisely what he wasn’t." That is an absolutely true statement with absolutely nothing to do with McCarthy. If you'd like the evidence, I will oblige. And what I find sad, although not unexpected, is the rejection of information (dé jà vu all over again!). You have strong feelings for McCarthy, while I'm noncommitted and open to more details, and I suggested we take in more information to see where the truth may be. But despite once describing yourself as "passionately curious," you have no interest in having your beliefs challenged, even if those beliefs serve as the bedrock for your current essay! The culturally important "Witness," I'm sure, like Evans' book, will go unread. So be it. One final thought. I did not miss the main thrust of your essay; I just found it silly. A man who was seeking to remove communists from the government, regardless of his flaws, motives, or success, is the beginning of a Republican "anti-government" movement? I haven't a clue what to do with that. I could spend 10,000 words alone demolishing the idea that any Republican in the history of the republic is "anti-government," but we've had this tiff before.
Regards,
Rich
Just so we are clear, you took a couple of half sentences out of context and accused me of stating things that are untrue. Here is what I wrote, in relevant part:
Delete" Sam Tanenhaus asserts that today’s increasingly polarized politics and radical rightward shift within the Republican Party that led to the rise of the Tea Party (where his book ends)—and, by logical extension, to Trumpism—originated during the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940s, when talk of the “enemy within” and congressional witch hunts into allegedly “secret” Communist cabals within the federal government were the regular subject of news reports." [These things were indeed the regular subject of news reports, and use of the term "enemy within" was a term frequently used at that time]
"...Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin led a series of high-profile investigations into the Truman and Eisenhower administrations in a failed attempt to expose subversive elements in the upper echelons of government, including the U.S. Army, State Department, and CIA." [McCarthy's investigations into Truman and Eisenhower administrations were indeed mostly bluster, though I am sure even he hit a few singles]. "Along with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which investigated subversive elements in Hollywood and among the ranks of American artists, professors, writers, and intellectuals, a lot of people were harmed and some ruined with scant evidence of Communist infiltration." [I explained in my prior comment what this is referring to] "By the time McCarthy had been exposed as a drunkard and a fraud, the John Birch Society (JBS) picked up where McCarthy left off, even accusing President Eisenhower of being a Communist agent." [True] "On the day President Kennedy visited Texas in November 1963, former General Edwin Walker, a prominent JBS member, printed and distributed thousands of leaflets all over Dallas accusing the President of treason against the United States." [True]
"Although they lacked legitimate power, McCarthy’s and the Birchers’ true accomplishment was to fuel the Right’s antigovernment crusade and hatred of “Washington bureaucrats” that continues to this day. That the government was perceived as the “enemy” of the people would increasingly become a staple of Republican politics over the next half-century." [As stated in a March 12 news report on the wire services: "Since returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has focused much anger on political rivals, former allies, government officials, and even investigators who looked into his affairs -- all of whom he now considers "the enemy from within." Let's also not forget about Trump's bogeyman the "Deep State" and calling the press the "enemy of the people". It is all in the same vain, in my view.]
You took the above and claimed I was ignorant of past Russian abuses, implying that most of the above stated allegations were true. That seems like a defense of McCarthy, since my words were directed at McCarthy's abuses and his (and the Birchers') tendency to accuse without evidence in many instances. That is why McCarthyism has a bad name. It has nothing to do with whether other investigations or allegations in past years were true or not. If you agree with me that McCarthy's tactics and investigations were abusive and un-American, then you have my apology. If not, you are defending him, even if you don't realize it.
Keeping the HMS Andrea rule in mind, as much as I'd like to shred your response into enough confetti to put to shame MacArthur's '51 parade through New York City, I will refrain. Besides, I expect “Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies” to be delivered today (Amazon and capitalism, what a team!). And get off social media!!!! And take me with you!
ReplyDelete