This is one of those days when I started a post only to decide that I didn’t really like it and it wasn’t going anywhere, and I should start over. So here I am, and where we will go, nobody knows.

Remember when someone called Barack Obama (now known as Barack Hussein Obama if you listen to the current president) an Arab, and John McCain interrupted the caller and said something like, “No, Ma’am, he isn’t an Arab”? I admit to having a mixed reaction to McCain. While he was courageously responding to a false description of his opponent (strange that this simple correction could be construed as “courageous”, but that is what it was), he was also, I thought, doubling down on the idea that calling someone an Arab was an insult, identifying them with a lower rung of humanity. Maybe I am reading McCain’s remark incorrectly, but that was (and is still, I think) my reaction. After all, McCain’s response included the words: “he’s a family man and an American citizen”. As if an Arab could be neither.

Now the woman who called Obama Arab so long ago would not have done so had she not heard, in her right wing circles, others say similar things. And of course, Obama’s father (but not his mother) was Muslim (but not Arab), and he spent some of his early years in a Muslimv(but not Arab) environment. But it was clear that he was not a Muslim, unless he was a deeply hidden Muslim which, I believe, as Islam is such a public religion, would be pretty much impossible. But in any event, many of Obama’s opponents had no second thoughts about calling him a Muslim, just as they had no second thoughts to keep them from claiming, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama was born, not in Hawaii, but in Kenya, his father’s home country.

You would expect that leaders of major American political parties would speak out against this, as John McCain did (he also spoke out against the Kenyan “birther theory”), and some did, but many did not and of course one of those who did not was Donald Trump who, in fact, was the originator and main propagator of at least the “birther theory”. And even today, Trump cannot mention Obama without throwing in his middle name, because he believes that identifying Obama with the name Hussein somehow taints all Democrats. And, for some, it does.

Today, it looks like nothing has changed. In fact, perhaps things have grown worse, as the MAGA world, while not overtly referring to Democrats as Muslim or Arab (although Mayor Mamdani’s Muslim faith does provide them with an opportunity), are now referring them as Communists. And of course, members of the Democratic Party, even left wing members of the Democratic Party, are no more Communists than Obama was an Arab.

Just last night, in a 2:30 a.m. rant, the Man Who Can Not Sleep said that he would never let the United States become a Communist country. And just yesterday, at a rally in deepest Pennsylvania, I heard Donald describe Democratic candidates as not just socialists, but full blown Communists (he especially noted “that guy” in Maine with the “Nazi tattoo”, the Nazi tattoo somehow being proof). And on my Facebook feed, I get posts on a regular basis from a site (manned by members of the right wing, or manned by Russian bots, I do not know) called simply “Democrats are Communists”, which posts some of the more outrageous posts possible not about some Democratic politicians, but about all Democrats.

This is not really new. In scrolling on my phone, I see that in 2012, then Congressman Allen West (how did he ever get elected in the great State of Texas?) said that “I believe there’s about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party….it’s called the Congressional Progressive Party”.

Again, you would expect that true leaders of a party would denounce such a statement. I don’t know if anyone did at the time, but I am sure that today, Donald Trump probably would have agreed completely. You are either with him, or you are a Communist.

The 1917 takeover of Russia by Lenin’s Bolshevik Party was an extraordinary event. Even today, with everything known about the weakness of tsarist Russia, it seems impossible. In fact, at the time, Communism seemed more likely to take over countries in central Europe, countries such as Germany, and the potential takeover of Germany by the Communist Party was as great a factor in Hitler’s rise as was his antisemitism. But the Communist Party has never posed a threat to the American government and today, where Communism of the 20th century variety hardly exists anywhere (certainly not China, not Vietnam, maybe a bit in Cuba), it poses less of a threat to this country that at any time within the past 100 years.

Nevertheless, you say “Communist” to those in what Hillary Clinton described as part of the “basket of deplorables”, and they shiver and shake and hate and fear any of their neighbors who dare to question the lunacy of MAGA.

We are stuck with this, one way or another, until the next presidential election, although hopefully the midterms in November will provide some respite. And thrown into this Time of Troubles (an illusion to a much earlier Russian period when no one knew who the tsar really was), is the 250th anniversary of the United States. In fact, July 4 is just about 10 days from now.

Trump has planned all sorts of festivities, I guess, and – although much is behind schedule or off schedule – he is making many physical changes to the city of Washington. It would be nice for this important day to be celebratory, but I am not in a celebratory mood, and will ignore it all. I know there is a Jewish tradition that external circumstances should not keep you from celebrating celebratory holidays, but it is a tradition that I can not embrace. For me, and for many, July 4, 2026 will be a sad day. Hopefully, July 4, 2029 will be different, and hopefully I will be able to  then to celebrate accomplishments without  fear or dread.