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A few weeks ago, my sister handed me an old yellowed newspaper.

It was from 1955 and the headline was

query Brock's Ties. And my father was on the city council where we lived and opponents were

challenging him, questioning if he should be in office due to his friendship

with a man who was in the Communist Party, actually a very close friend.

So my dad was a left-leaning Democrat, and he had people questioning him.

And this was the time of the Red Scare.

This was McCarthyism in its peak.

And, you know, fear was being stoked by leaders

in the media that communists were infiltrating everywhere, you know, schools, Hollywood, government,

and threatening our American way of life. So it was crazy time. You know, facts were irrelevant.

Rumors were treated like truth. You know, people were

imagining hidden enemies everywhere and careers were destroyed, lives were ruined, communities

were turning on each other, a lot of dividedness and he survived just fine. And that particular

scare, the red scare, that imagined world faded.

But our habitual trance of bad othering or vulnerability to that is of course very much intact.

And it collectively intensifies during times of uncertainty and fear.

So back then in the United States, it was communism that was the threat to our American

way of life, and now the threat is woke leftists or Maga or pro-Palestinian or

immigrants or LGBTQ, trans, non-Christians, non-whites.

...