20 years from now, will history look at the Bush era like McCarthyism?

[Gothic Sponge]

If we are still alive in 20 years, do you think mainstream history will look at the Bush years as a dark time in American history? Like McCarthyism, or will Bush get the Ronald Reagan revisionist treatment?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. It took a much shorter time after the actual MCCarthy era

but yes, I think 20 years from now, people will look back on these times and view our response to 9/11 with shame. I also think many things will be declassified and shed much more light than is visible today.

[ugarte]

2. You're assuming we'll have a free press in 20 years

I think it could go either way. Academia will damn Bush, the corporate media will try to Reaganize him.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

3. Funny you should bring this up...

I was watching the movie "Chaplin" last night, and as you probably know, he was accused during the McCarthyism days as well. I said to my girlfriend, "Why does this seem to happen every fucking time Republicans take over Congress?!?"

[zbdent]

4. Why do I get this feeling about the following two scenarios?

Scenario 1:

John Kerry is elected to President in November 2004.

A few years from now, a time traveller will come back and warn us about the horrendous error we made in voting him in.

Scenario 2:

George W. Bush is elected to President in November 2004 (for the real first time).

No time travellers show up to tell us about the "horrendous error we made in voting him in". Mind you, most scientific advances have been abandoned due to lack of funding, or for being dismissed as "faulty science".

[pbg]

5. Stupid foreign adventure

I think it might go something like this:
"With the demise of the Soviet Union, a brief era of good feeling ensued, with presidents GHWBush and Clinton emphasizing international alliances. That period came to an end with the dubiously-elected president GWBush as, using terrorist attacks on the US as a rationale, he engaged in a disastrous 'preemptive war' on the nation of Iraq over the objections of the international community.
The decline of the United States as an international power may be considered to have begun at that point.."

[Ready4Change]

6. If we're lucky.

McCarthyism didn't get the chance to launch wars or destroy the long term economy for short term personal gain.

I think "Bushism" is potentially far more harmful and further reaching than McCarthism managed to be. That's why it needs to be nipped in the bud ASAP. (After the 2000 bud, actually.)

[mikehiggins]

7. It'll be seen as the closest we've come to fascism since the

Great Depression.

These people make me long for the halcyon years of Richard Nixon.