Losing My Perspicacity, September 16, 2025

Good morning and Happy Tuesday! Thanks for starting your day with me today.

If you’re wondering why you’re getting this in your inbox today, it’s because LMP is free all week for subscribers. It’s not something I really thought much about, but it’s something I feel an obligation to do as I watch talented journalists, professors, and others get fired or disciplined for telling the truth. Given that I am my own employer (for now), I can say things that others can’t, and I feel a responsibility to do so. Today, it felt like all I did all day was scroll through news stories about people losing their jobs for quoting Charlie Kirk to those who want to pretend he was someone else.

On the other hand, not having an employer comes with its own set of difficulties, like not making a living wage and not having a social safety net (like unemployment wages) when things go south. I truly believe that a free and independent media is more important now than it has been in decades, and I hope you agree. That’s why I’m asking you to consider becoming a paid subscriber of LMP. A self-sustaining newsletter gives me the freedom to say what I believe to be true without worrying about management’s reaction to what I post on social media or write in my columns.

Help independent media remain independent.

I’m going to do today’s newsletter a little differently. Instead of running through several stories, today, I want to talk about what it means for Americans to start reporting and censoring other Americans’ speech.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which was founded in 1938 for the sole purpose of rooting out Americans perceived to be “disloyal” to the United States. HUAC was founded by rabid anti-communist Hamilton Fish III (R-NY) to investigate communist activities in the United States. As you can probably guess by his politics and timing, Fish’s disgust with all things “communist” made him a pretty easy target for the Nazis in the 1930s, and he was the subject of multiple foreign influence campaigns by the Germans. He was later implicated in the America First Committee’s “franking” controversy, where the AFC set pre-paid envelopes (or franked envelopes) on fire, ostensibly to hide that they bore the names of members of Congress and were being used to spread Nazi propaganda on Capitol Hill.

(This is where I stop to recommend Rachel Maddow’s excellent podcast Ultra, which gets into all the elected officials the Nazis were using to spread word of their “cause.”)

Just like today, conservatives working in government had a keen eye for “communism,” but not so much for fascism, which was staring them right in the face and, in some cases, funneling money into their bank accounts. Also like today, 90 percent of those anti-communist evangelicals probably couldn’t accurately describe communism if you paid them to, which, again, the Nazis were definitely doing in some cases.

Anyway, HUAC became a standing committee in 1945. Again, it was hyper-focused on communism while deciding against opening an investigation into the KKK, and how familiar does that feel? It would take 20 more years — and the loss of confidence from the American people — before HUAC would take on the Klan.

(Here again, I have another podcast recommendation, this time it’s You Must Remember This from the fantastic Karina Longworth. In 2016, she did an entire season on the Hollywood Blacklist, and the whole thing is riveting and so very worth your time, especially in light of where we find ourselves today. I can’t recommend it enough.)

In 1947, HUAC started investigating alleged communist propaganda in Hollywood, which ultimately led to the Hollywood Blacklist. Everyone who was anyone was subpeonaed by HUAC and accused of being a dirty commie, including Lucille Ball, Humphrey Bogart, Paul Robeson, Katherine Hepburn, Dalton Trumbo, and many others. As Longworth points out in her podcast, if you were an American who was pro-union, pro-civil rights, and anti-facsim in Europe in the 1930s, the Communist Party was really your only political option. For that reason, a lot of progressives at least dabbled in “communism,” often well before WWII.

The infamous “Hollywood Ten,” as they were known, were those working in the film industry who refused to testify before HUAC, some of whom were imprisoned on the charge of contempt of Congress, before being blackballed from the industry. The 10 were Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner, Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott, and Dalton Trumbo. Others, like Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles left the United States to work in Europe for several years. Eventually more than 40 people from the film industry’s rank and file were called to testify before HUAC, and many careers were permanently ended.

If you think Americans have largely forgiven those who cooperated with HUAC and gave them names (people like The Hollywood Reporter founder Billy Wilkerson, studio head Jack Warner, and future President Ronald Reagan and his then-wife, Jane Wyman), I give you the reaction to director Elia Kazan’s honorary Oscar Award in 1999.

Notice how many people refused to stand. Ed Harris and Amy Madigan are livid, and I love them for it. Nick Nolte also looks pissed. Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw look torn. I don’t know what the hell Kurt Russell was doing. The point is that much of Hollywood still wasn’t over Kazan’s snitching 50 years later. Americans ratting out other Americans to keep their jobs are the lowest of the low. They didn’t do it to stay alive or to keep their families safe, they did it so they could keep their cushy careers among the Hollywood elite.

Of course, the federal government did far more to terrorize American’s with progressive political views under J. Edgar Hoover than just investigate Hollywood stars. The FBI targeted leaders of the Civil Rights, anti-war, and pro-labor movements. They infiltrated student groups and dug up “dirt” on anyone they deemed a threat, including John Lennon, MLK, Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, and Muhammad Ali).

Here’s a snippet of an NPR interview with Hoover’s biographer, Beverly Gage:

I guess what I’m getting at here is that America has been down this road before: neighbors tattling on neighbors, friends ratting out friends, and the federal government spying on all of us to punish those with beliefs different from those of the current administration.

I bring it up because today I logged on to social media to see the Attorney General of Indiana, Todd Rokita, doxxing a private citizen for posting a pretty tame and toned-down truth about Charlie Kirk.

As one Bluesky poster pointed out, Rokita included the woman’s picture in the hopes that it would help garner the kind of harassment and political violence he was looking for. You might also notice that this woman’s FB post was set to “friends only.” Unless she’s FB pals with Rokita, it sure looks like someone she considered a friend ratted her out.

It’s probably worth pointing out that Rokita has not one, but two disciplinary complaints about his conduct before the Indiana Supreme Court. That was before he started urging his constituents to tattle on those who dared to tell the truth about Charlie Kirk’s politics.

You know how social media trolls are always screaming that people responding to their racist/sexist/bigoted comments are violating their First Amendment rights? Well, Rokita’s actions actually violate the First Amendment. The state government causing you to lose your job because they doxxed you for disagreeing with their views? Straight to 1A jail.

I’d like to think that America has evolved in every way since the HUAC of the 1940s and 50s. I’d like to believe that we know better than to start tattling on our neightbors and coworkers for “bad speech.” While the right is calling out political violence and “rhetoric” from the left, this is the kind of thing their party members are doing on social media. Meanwhile, a certain segment of Americans are gleefully selling out their colleagues and familliars for…what? A bunch of rage-bait clicks and some shitty comments from Joanne in Nashville?

We can’t have it. We can not go back there. We must push back.

Turning in your friends is what Nazis do. Don’t be a Nazi.

The High Note

Each Day, I do my best to leave you with a smile on your face, a song in your heart, and the will to fight another day.

If you’re looking for something to do in the evenings or weekends that does not involve the news or politics, I can’t recommend HBO’s series Somebody, Somewhere enough. It’s a hilarious, heart-warming, sometimes heart-breaking gem of a show for anyone who has ever felt stuck in life. I am not afraid to say I watched much of it through tears — happy tears, sad tears, tears from laughing so hard.

Here’s Jeff Hiller’s supporting actor win last night at the Emmys. He’s just one of the reasons that show is so special to so many people.

A reminder that it’s never too late to start again.

Hey, survive and advance out there today, kids. Don’t let the bastards get you down.