Dear Editor:

The anti-woke dictator in the White House comes by his contempt for justice honestly.

Two generations ago, the shameless liar and chief of political witch hunts, “Tail-Gunner Joe” McCarthy, began a four-year reign of terror in the U.S. Senate. Baselessly accusing liberals in every aspect of public life of being agents of Soviet communism, he began by attacking the CIA and the State Department, extending his disinformation campaign to the Truman administration and the U.S. Army. This “Red Scare” resulted in the firing and defaming of thousands of federal officers and private citizens.

Diverting Congressional resources and tying up courts in baseless accusations, his slanders cast the pall of his personal vendettas over governmental, military, and artistic institutions. Himself a closeted homosexual, his smear tactics amplified the persecution of gay men and women in the “Lavender Scare” that blighted our federal government until 1973.

Who was McCarthy’s chief counsel, ultimately disbarred for fraud? Roy Cohn.

Who was the father figure and mentor of Donald Trump? Roy Cohn.

The bloodline from 1950s paranoia, persecution, and perversion of justice (when America was Great) runs straight through to our current Chief Executive. Purging the “Deep State” of suspected liberals; ignoring court orders; arresting people for exercising their right to free speech; deporting asylum seekers without due process; decapitating the FBI, the Justice Department and the Department of Defense; suspending the Constitution in a deeply corrupt self-coup, Donald Trump is showing himself to be the true grandson of Joe McCarthy.

And now, to crown these abuses of power, Trump declares that white people here are in danger of persecution and racial murder, as he falsely claims they are in South Africa: his “Black Scare.”

To quote Joseph Welch, the Army’s lead attorney against McCarthy in 1954, “Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Bill Hammond

Boothbay