{"id":5824,"date":"2020-10-20T18:13:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T18:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=5824"},"modified":"2020-10-20T18:15:19","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T18:15:19","slug":"word-of-the-day-trumpery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2020\/10\/20\/word-of-the-day-trumpery\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Trumpery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Wordsmith (\u201ca worldwide online community of people who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature . . . founded in 1994 by Anu Garg\u201d [https:\/\/wordsmith.org\/awad\/about.html]), is trumpery<\/em>. The noun means \u201csomething showy but worthless,\u201d \u201cnonsense or rubbish,\u201d or \u201cdeceit; fraud; trickery.\u201d This may surprise some of you, but the word does not derive from the name of the current president of the USA. According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, the word first enters the English language in the \u201cmid-15c., deceit, trickery,\u2019 from Middle French tromperie<\/em> (14c.), from tromper<\/em> \u2018to deceive,\u2019 of uncertain origin (see trump<\/strong> (v.2), which has influenced the spelling in English). Meaning \u2018showy but worthless finery\u2019 is first recorded c. 1600.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1947, the House Committee on Un-American Activities began to investigate the prevalence of communism in Hollywood. This committee, part of the USA House of Representatives, was first established in 1938 \u201cto investigate alleged disloyalty and rebel activities on the part of private citizens, public employees and organizations suspected of having Communist ties\u201d (https:\/\/www.trumanlibrary.gov\/education\/presidential-inquiries\/house-un-american-activities-committee<\/a>), though it also looked at people who had Fascist sympathies. It was initially chaired by Howard Dies (D-TX), and at first it was not a standing committee. But in 1945 it became a standing committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1947, the HUAC (House UnAmerican Activities Committee), now under the chairmanship of Edward J. Hart (D-NJ), began investigating Hollywood. Eventually, some 300 actors, directors, producers, writers, and others would have their reputations and careers damaged because of the testimony before HUAC and the response of the studios. Most of the studios, meanwhile, starting making hyper-patriotic and anti-Communist films and documentaries to try to live down the reputation they\u2019d gotten as hotbeds of communism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1948, the committee began an investigation into allegations that Alger Hiss, a former government official, was secretly a Communist. The chief witness was Whitaker Chambers, a former member of the Communist Party and a senior editor at Time Magazine<\/em>. Hiss denied the charge, but he was eventually found guilty of perjury (lying to an official agency) and spent time in prison. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, papers were discovered that proved that Hiss, for all his denials, was indeed a member of the Communist Party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the end of the Eisenhower administration, the HUAC had fallen into a kind of disrepute. Harry Truman, who was president during the committee\u2019s investigations of both Hollywood and Hiss, denounced the committee as the most un-American thing in America. Part of the fall from grace was the committee\u2019s associations with Joseph McCarthy, for whom is coined the word McCarthyism, \u201cthe practice of making accusations of disloyalty, especially of pro-Communist activity, in many instances unsupported by proof or based on slight, doubtful, or irrelevant evidence,\u201d or more broadly, \u201cthe practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism\u201d (https:\/\/www.dictionary.com\/browse\/mccarthyism?s=t<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph McCarthy claimed, in 1950, that he had a list of 57 (some claim 205, but he later wrote 57\u2014nobody recorded the speech in West Virginia, so it\u2019s hard to know precisely what he said) names of people in the US State Department who were working for the Soviet Union. The claim led to hearings of the Senate\u2019s Tydings Committee, a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which investigated the loyalty of government officials. Millard Tydings (D-MD) believed that he could embarrass McCarthy, with whom the Democrats were angry for implicating members of Truman\u2019s administration. One result of the clash of the two was, however, that Tydings was defeated in the November 1950 election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

McCarthy clearly used the claim of Communism to smear opponents who were probably not Communists. It was an effective approach. But the Democrats, and the media, vilified McCarthy for his tactic\u2014indeed, the term McCarthyism was invented within month of his first accusations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the thing: the Republic McCarthy used his government position to try to punish people who were avowed Communists, people who were antithetical to all that the USA stands for, and yet the HUAC is hardly remembered at all for doing the same thing. Nobody ever talks about Diesism or Hartism even though the leaders of the House committee were doing the same thing that McCarthy\u2019s committee was doing, and doing it first. In fact, I would be willing to bet that most Americans, if presented with the names \u201cHouse UnAmerican Actitivies Committee\u201d and \u201cJoseph McCarthy\u201d would think that McCarthy was the person who headed up that committee, even though McCarthy never even served in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important for us all to know our history. The real history of the HUAC and Joseph McCarthy reveals that both the Democrats and the Republicans in the USA unfairly punished people for their views, no matter how horrible the Communist ideology is. But somehow it is only one party that is remembered for having done so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When we do not know the history, we risk becoming the victims of other people\u2019s tricks. The deceit may come from con artists and criminals, but more often we will be deceived by politicians and journalists. They are the true experts in the art of trumpery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image today is the cover of a book published by Charles Rivers Editors. According to the author page on Amazon.com, \u201cCharles River Editors is a digital publishing company that creates compelling, educational content. In addition to publishing original titles, we help clients create traditional and media-enhanced books.\u201d No author for the book is listed. But it is clear from the cover and the title that we are expected to understand that Joseph McCarthy and the House UnAmerican Activities Committee are one and the same thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Wordsmith (\u201ca worldwide online community of people who share a love for words, wordplay, language, and literature . . . founded in 1994 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5825,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[312,184,313,311],"class_list":["post-5824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-democrats","tag-politics","tag-republicans","tag-trumpery","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5826,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5824\/revisions\/5826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}