There is probably no more eviscerated committee birthed by the House of Representatives than the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It has become synonymous with the anti-communist overreach of Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) and his brief domination of American politics in the early 1950s. But few people know that the committee was established in 1938 […]
There is probably no more eviscerated committee birthed by the House of Representatives than the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). It has become synonymous with the anti-communist overreach of Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) and his brief domination of American politics in the early 1950s. But few people know that the committee was established in 1938 to monitor the activities of Americans who showed a fondness not just for communism but fascism and Nazism as well, as those potent political forces were just as feared and just as relevant in world affairs at the time. The committee outlived the height of the Cold War and limped to its eventual demise when detente with the Soviet Union was the political fashion, in 1975.
Along the way, of course, a lot of reputations were smeared and a host of people were put on a blacklist that prevented them from ever working again. We only hear about the people in Hollywood because the actors squawked the loudest about having to testify. Some of them chose to name names of communists they had worked with. Some chose not to and were cited for contempt. Award-winning director Elia Kazan cooperated with the committee and when he accepted a lifetime achievement award it took the endorsement of Warren Beatty to prevent a protest from liberals at the Academy Awards gala.
We always hear about poor Dalton Trumbo having to work under assumed names but we rarely ever hear how Trumbo promoted Stalinist Russia.
This is not to justify the invasion of civil liberties that HUAC often could be. But in terms of being an obtrusion to democracy and a complete irrelevance to the state of the union, the January 6 Committee hearings that are currently sucking up an inordinate amount of oxygen and time are fast overtaking HUAC as the worst example, the most destructive example, the most nefarious example of what the House is capable of doing to undermine our democratic way of life and destroy reputations – all for absolutely nothing.
It gave a bunch of losers some primetime glow.
Just what is the point of this thing anyway? Have you asked yourself that? Well, obviously to put former President Donald Trump in jail, or, at the very least, to ensure that he never again runs for president. The Democrats hate Trump with a passion that is almost undefinable. It’s almost homicidal, like the insane kind of animosity that some kind of bigots have for a chosen ethnicity. They are damned and determined to demonstrate that Trump engineered an insurrection even though there is absolutely no evidence that he lifted a finger to do so.
Look, here is a billionaire who is used to getting a job done successfully and the best that he could do was get together an unarmed rabble who wanted to take selfies of themselves in the Speaker’s chair? The mob never for a moment posed a serious threat to the federal government or democracy and this sham committee knows that, but they are keeping up this pretense anyway and somehow doing so with a straight face. My God, it must be difficult at times. But when you have people like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) infecting the proceedings, you’re dealing with people who are immune to guilt. Schiff maintained the Russian hoax lie for years and even said he had evidence to prove it and the bug-eyed prevaricator probably never lost a night’s sleep over it because he is nothing but a propaganda machine.
No police officers died during this riot. One innocent bystander, Ashli Babbitt, was inexplicably shot in cold blood. Explain that one Schiffless.
That first night’s hearing promised so much with ABC News producer James Goldston behind it. But he wasn’t pushing too hard, because it came across like some uninspired civics lecture with an occasional but very subjective foray into American history that seemed to be written by Black Lives Matter. Maybe the committee should have sought the contributions of liberal filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who might have added some sparkle to this dismal affair. All that was missing from this Stalinist show trial were the sorry victims being brought up from their torture chambers to confess to all their crimes against the state as the judges hectored and abused them. They used to do the same in the notorious “People’s Court” of Nazi Germany where communist turned Nazi Roland Freisler would rant and rave at the “accused” until he felt he had sufficiently dehumanized the “traitor.”
Let us hear Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume’s reaction to the committee’s work. Hume is what I call a traditional journalist. He’s not there to work for a political party, like about three-quarters of journalists are today. He doesn’t write the story before he experiences the event. And he quite simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing from this blasted committee:
“This one last week was absolutely extraordinary because the normal way in which you conduct a hearing, whether in court or in the halls of Congress, is that you have members of both sides of different viewpoints. And the witnesses are put on to do their testimony, and then their testimony is challenged by cross-examination. There were no such witnesses last week except for a couple. What there was, was really kind of a televised press release with soundbites. I've never seen anything quite like it in my life, and I certainly never imagined back in the day when I was working for one of the broadcast networks' news divisions, that such an event would ever be put on primetime television by one of the networks. And in this case, it was done by all of them. Quite remarkable.”
Quite remarkable indeed.
What’s also remarkable is that the House Speaker has managed to not be a witness before this committee. This mob invaded her House after all. There was ample warning that a potential riot was on the way. Even turncoat Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) acknowledged that. So why didn’t Pelosi plan for anything? Why didn’t she ensure the police forces were prepared to meet the threat? Do you suppose she was welcoming the opportunity for a fake insurrection?
Cheney, of course, is signing her retirement papers by being on this committee, if she hadn’t already done so. And it’s sad to see her embody Benedict Arnold for such a beastly cause. She’s going out in such a ghastly way, not just defaming Trump (who she always hated) but aiding and abetting the Democrats in their old shell game of keeping the people’s eye on a lie so they can steal another election. It really is abominable that she’s either insouciantly allowing herself to be used or has become a victim of political Stockholm syndrome.
All the major media outlets and cable news stations carried the first committee hearing live – except Fox. As bad as it was. As meaningless as it was. As much as a sham as it was. If this was an insurrection, was a pretty bad attempt at one and it obviously failed, because the last time I looked Joe Biden is still president, doddering around, spending billions on a war in Ukraine that could last as long as the First World War, telling the oil companies to produce more oil–when he’s the moron who shut off the pipelines and claiming his spending trillions has nothing to do with the escalating inflation. The Democrats still control Congress and we still have a vice President named Kamala Harris, who is so inept she just wanders from assignment to assignment giggling and telling people to work together. So it seems if there’s any threat to democracy, it didn’t happen on Jan. 6 but on Jan. 20 when this increasingly senile Biden was inaugurated.
When HUAC was investigating communism at the beginning of the Cold War, communism was actually a threat to America. The Soviet Union had stolen the nuclear bomb through treasonous dupes like Klaus Fuchs and Soviet defector Igor Gouzenko had revealed the copious extent of Soviet spying in North America. Communism was still controlled by the Soviet Union and it was targeting America. HUAC was relevant. Did it overreach its authority? Yes.
But the January 6 Committee is not even relevant. What happened on Jan. 6 is a mere cipher in history. It was an embarrassment that should be forgotten, not endlessly examined under a microscope. But with people like Schiff involved, this committee could last as long as HUAC did, in an inert effort to try to keep the attention away from the dozens of other issues that Americans are actually worried about.
Is there a committee dedicated to inflation? To high gas prices? To the border crisis? To urban crime? To Joe Biden’s impeachment? To energy independence? To all those riots in the summer of 2020?
No, and you’re not likely to see one.
It is comical that the former Attorney General has the gall to suggest there is no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. Maybe not enough fraud to declare Trump the victor but holy hell, no evidence of substantial fraud? Where did this leftover from the Bush-era do his investigation? Mars?
The only good news from this fraud committee as it continues this week is that it won’t work. The Biden administration is imploding under the weight of bad government, an open border, stagflation, unsafe streets, a nutty president, an increasingly dangerous foreign war, and sheer chaos.
A phony insurrection can’t undo all that.
