OPINION: Trumpism will end like McCarthyism

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 24, 2026

McCarthyism died when America finally saw the con in broad daylight.

Trumpism is headed for the same grave, for the same reason. When a movement turns suspicion into doctrine, loyalty into currency, and vengeance into policy, it stops serving the republic and starts feeding on it.

This is no ordinary clash of ideas. It is a contest between constitutional government and personal power, between public duty and private devotion.

History has run this play before.

Joseph McCarthy rose by weaponizing fear. He accused first, proved nothing, destroyed much.

Careers collapsed.

Reputations burned.

Institutions bent.

His power looked unstoppable until the Army-McCarthy hearings pulled back the curtain and exposed the machinery: intimidation, fabrication, spectacle. Soon after, the Senate censured him, and his empire of accusation crumbled.

That is how political contagions die. Exposure. Resistance. Collapse.

Trumpism follows the same script, only bigger, louder, more dangerous.

It began with the lie that every check on Donald Trump was illegitimate. Courts were corrupt. Elections were rigged. Prosecutors were enemies. Facts were optional. From there it evolved into a governing philosophy where obedience is rewarded, independence is punished, and oversight is treated as treason.

Not policy. Not principle. Power.

And in Trump’s second term, the pattern has sharpened.

In late January 2025, Trump fired 17 inspectors general in one sweep, gutting the very offices charged with exposing fraud, waste, and abuse. More removals followed.

By fall, watchdog groups reported approximately 75 percent of presidentially appointed inspector general posts sat vacant.

That is not bureaucratic housekeeping. That is clearing the crime scene before the investigation begins.

Inspectors general are the nerve endings of government. They feel corruption before the public sees it. They catch theft before taxpayers pay for it. They sound alarms before rot becomes collapse. Remove them, and the signal is unmistakable: stay quiet, stay loyal, stay useful.

Three commands. Three warnings. Three wounds to democracy.

The same corrosion now spreads through law enforcement.

Trump and his allies have turned the Department of Justice into a battering ram aimed at critics and opponents. The old principle was simple: no one is above the law. The new principle is simpler: friends are protected, enemies are pursued.

That inversion is the whole game.

McCarthyism worked the same way. It made fear patriotic and dissent suspicious. It trained Americans to look sideways at one another, to whisper instead of speak, to obey instead of question. It poisoned the bloodstream of government until institutions finally fought back.

Trumpism has deeper pockets, broader media reach, fiercer cult loyalty.

But it has the same fatal weakness.

It cannot survive scrutiny.

It promises order and delivers chaos. It promises justice and delivers favoritism. It promises patriotism and delivers submission.

That is contradiction made policy.

Its defenders insist this is disruption, not corruption. They argue that broken institutions deserve to be smashed. Fair enough. Americans have reasons to distrust elites.

But reform repairs. Capture corrupts.

There is a difference between fixing the engine and setting the car on fire.

Others argue the McCarthy comparison goes too far. McCarthy was a senator with a microphone. Trump is a president with command authority.

Exactly.

McCarthy could ruin careers. Trump can reshape agencies, purge watchdogs, redirect prosecutions, and bend the machinery of government toward personal ends. The scale is larger. The reach is wider. The damage cuts deeper.

Democracies rarely fall in one thunderclap. They erode like cliffs under tidewater, grain by grain, wave by wave. A loyalist here. A firing there.

A retaliatory investigation. A silenced watchdog. A frightened civil servant. Each act looks survivable alone. Together they form the architecture of fear.

And fear is the oldest currency of political fraud.

McCarthyism ended when Americans recognized the pattern and refused to keep pretending it was normal. Trumpism will end the same way, but only if Americans stop mistaking domination for leadership, intimidation for strength, chaos for patriotism.

McCarthyism died when America saw the con in broad daylight. Trumpism will die there too.

Van Abbott is a 36-year resident of Alaska having worked in Ketchikan, Fairbanks and Anchorage as a municipal, financial and utility manager. He resides in Ketchikan and is currently a freelance writer. He served as a Peace Corps teacher in the 1960s. See his website: politicalwinds.org.