One of the most successful political strategies deployed by the right over the last century has been to stir up "moral panics," like the one that immediately followed World War I, which led, among other things, to the "Palmer Raids" that saw more than 500 "radicals" lose their nationalized United States citizenship and get deported (all told, about 6,000 were arrested).
Many of the deportees (249 in total) were placed on board a ship, the USAT Buford, which the press dubbed the "Soviet Ark;" and after 29 days, they arrived at their ultimate destination: Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
This witch hunt became known as the "First Red Scare" — with a "Second Red Scare" to follow immediately after World War II, led by Joseph McCarthy, the U.S. Senator from Wisconsin who drunk himself to death at the age of 48 in 1957.
Now, fast-forward to the 1990s, when a "Third Red Scare" broke out: Communique, a twice-a-month newsletter published by the American Life League, a little pressure group eerily reminiscent of AWARE, Inc., the vicious cabal that smeared John Henry Faulk in the 1950s and paid dearly for it, went after Disney of all targets, claiming that in the 1994 Disney movie The Lion King, there was a scene in which the letters "S-E-X" were spelled out by clouds in the background — and in its March 1994 issue, Movie Guide, an Atlanta-based "Christian" (i.e., low-church Protestant fundamentalist) movie review magazine, claimed that there was a scene in Aladdin in which the eponymous character said to the Princess, "All good teenagers, take off your clothes" (his actual line was "Scat, good tiger, take off and go"). Another totally false accusation was that there was a minister in The Little Mermaid who had been portrayed in a state of sexual arousal.
As we have already seen this year, even the Olympics are not immune from these moral panics. As if the rhubarb over what happened at the opening ceremonies wasn't bad enough, now there is the "controversy" over the "transgender" boxer, Imane Khalif, who is now guaranteed a medal (as there are no bronze medal matches between the losers of the semifinals in Olympic boxing) after winning her quarterfinal bout over Hungary's Luca Hamori by unanimous decision on Saturday.
And it turns out that "Ms." Khalif is not the only female boxer whose femininity can be questioned who is competing in this year's Games: Taiwan's Lin Yu-Ting won her quarterfinal match on Sunday, thus also guaranteeing her a medal.
There is speculation over whether Khalif either has a chromosomal irregularity such as XXY Syndrome (a 1993 Law & Order episode, Born Bad, dealt with XYY Syndrome, XXY's opposite number) or is naturally predisposed to having an abnormally high testosterone level, for which she was declared ineligible to participate in last year's World Championships because her testosterone level exceeded the legal limit. Whether this was due to "cheating" on her part or the fact that her natural testosterone level is simply higher than the normal range for a woman (the adrenal gland produces both testosterone and estrogen in both men and women) has yet to be determined.
(And does anybody really think that Algeria, where both homosexuality and transgenderism are against the law, would permit a member of either of these communities to compete for them on a stage like the Olympics?)
In any event, conservatives are in full-blown panic mode over this, trying to use it to score political points for Donald Trump in the upcoming election, just like they did to try and exploit what they thought was the blasphemy of the Last Supper at the opening ceremonies.
It looks as if economic issues like taxes and Social Security are going to fade out of the 2024 election picture altogether. From here on, the race will be between the saints and the sinners — and sports be damned.
Can we handle a "Fourth Red Scare?"
It looks as if it has already started.
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