Where have all the real progressives gone? | READER COMMENTARY

How times have changed! Letter writer Linda Cades cites her youthful support for the Presidential candidacies of Senators Gene McCarthy (1968) and George McGovern (1972), to promote a present day mobilization to defeat Donald Trump and elect Joe Biden (“Biden isn’t perfect, but he’s our only hope,” July 18). But she misses the huge yawning gap between what constituted progressivism then and now.

Then: Activists marched against the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Now: In 2016, one candidate staunchly supported the atrocity of the Iraq War, while the other called it the biggest mistake in American history. When the U.S. bombing strikes of 2011 led to the overthrow and assassination of Libyan ruler Qaddafi, and plunged his nation into an unspeakable nightmare of chaos and bloodshed, one candidate could only chortle: “We came, we saw, he died!” The other insisted that the post-9/11 regime change wars had cost America thousands of lives and trillions in treasure, while accomplishing no discernible good. Yet when the anti-war candidate defeated his war-loving opponent, most erstwhile peaceniks were morbidly despondent.

Then: Liberals and progressives bristled when Cold War enthusiasts amped up the rhetoric against Russia and China, often as a pretext to stifle legitimate dissent here at home. War hero Sen. McGovern was tarred with the label “soft on communism” for his refusal to go along with this contrived hysteria.

Now: President Trump’s stated intent to normalize relations with Russia has caused him to be cast as President Putin’s poodle by these same liberals, even as virtually the entirety of Russiagate is now being exposed for the sham that it always was. Many Gene McCarthyites of the ’60s have morphed into the Joe McCarthyites of today!

Then: Progressives had deep, well-founded contempt for the FBI’s tactics of infiltrating and spying on peace and civil rights organizations, and their dirty operations against Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, among others.

Now: These great civil libertarians blindly cheer on any intelligence agency abuse, no matter how unconstitutional — as long as it’s directed against Donald Trump.

Then: People of conscience were outraged by the U.S. government’s repeated role in overthrowing elected governments and replacing them with fascist-leaning “friendly” dictatorships, as in Chile 1973.

Now: When the Obama Administration engineered the ouster by physical force of duly-elected Ukrainian President Yanukovych and installed the modern-day followers of 1940s Hitler ally Stepan Bandera in power in 2014, the opponents of tyranny were nowhere to be found.

If this is anyone’s idea of progress, then yes, Joe Biden is indeed your candidate. But as for this long-standing anti-war and civil rights proponent, I’m not having any, thank you.

Doug Mallouk, Baltimore

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