What I have not finished reading

Rivendell, East Sussex, July 2024

For the first time in the whole lifetime of this blog (more than 17 years) I haven't finished a book in the last month. The main reason is because the books I'm reading are long and dense - the Penguin History of the USA is really a textbook so I can't manage much more than half a chapter in one sitting. Spotify stopped me continuing with the immense Stephen King book because of its limitation on monthly audio book listening hours, and the Booker prize-winning Ben Okri audio book is 'literary', as most prize-winning books seem to be. 'Literary' here is a euphemism meaning 'very atmospheric but not much plot'.

I have never been a student of history - I gave up the subject as soon as I was allowed to at school - but have long wanted to learn about North American history, hence buying this textbook written by history professor Hugh Brogan. I have read about early settlement and immigration, farming, slavery, industry, the American Revolution, the Civil War and the founding of the Republic and its Constitution. I'm still a bit vague on the first half of the 20th Century (the Depression, Prohibition, First World War), but I've now reached the years after the Second World War and Senator Joseph R. McCarthy appears, launching his communist witch-hunt. This textbook was first published in 1985 with a second edition in 1999, but these extracts from paragraphs introducing McCarthy are chillingly familiar. 

"His genius lay in a certain hot, instinctive cunning which told him how to win power, headlines and a passionately loyal following by manipulating the worst impulses and most entire weaknesses of his fellow-countrymen. He was a liar on a truly amazing scale, telling so many lies, so often, and in such a tangled fashion ... new falsehoods sprouted faster than old ones could be rebutted ... [he] was able to see that the penalties for defying these shibboleths were small, the possible rewards enormous.

"He lied his way into his first public office ... he lied his way into the Senate ... he passed himself off as a wounded war hero (having injured his leg when falling downstairs, drunk, on a troopship) ... Once in the Senate he pursued his favourite interests, chiefly boozing and gambling, and financed them by taking bribes from corporations."

Here's one whole paragraph transcribed almost verbatim:

"McCarthy knew nothing about communism or the State Department, but he did know that mud sticks, especially if you throw a lot of it. It is doubtful that he ever thought he was doing much harm. He spent his days largely in the company of petty crooks and swindlers, and having no scruples, no respect for law and no concern for reputation (otherwise he would hardly have swaggered so conspicuously as a foul-mouthed, drunken, mendacious brute) probably could not believe that others might have different attitudes, or genuinely suffer if they were traduced. As for the point that his conduct undermined democratic processes at home and fanned hostility to the United States abroad (... Richard Rovere says, 'he was the first American ever to be actively hated and feared by foreigners in large numbers'), he ignored it completely. For him it was enough that he had secured his re-election, that money flowed in from anti-communist enthusiasts that he could spend as he pleased, and that he could keep the entire political establishment of the United States in perpetual uproar. He had fun."

The day after I read this, I heard in a podcast that Roy Kohn, whom I already knew of as the unscrupulous lawyer who was Donald Trump's mentor, was Senator Joseph McCarthy's chief counsel in 1954. Makes sense.