A Decade Of Fear Critical Analysis

Sam Robert in the article, A Decade of Fear, argues that Americans turned against each other because of McCarthyism. Robert supports his claim by explaining, contrasting, and demonstrating the effects that McCarthyism had on humanity. The author’s purpose is to persuade in order to convince the reader that McCarthyism sparked betrayal and fear among Americans. The author writes in a tone for his educated audience. I strongly agree with Robert’s claim. McCarthyism resulted in Americans turning against each other because of politicians greed for power, paranoia, and the fear of communist infiltration.
Clearly, Senator McCarthy’s greed for political power led to American citizens’ unrest. In Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, John Proctor dealt with the corruption of power in his town when Abigail Williams and many other girls accused those, who were innocent, of witchcraft. Similarly, americans were being blacklisted by McCarthy because they believed these people may have

People lived in constant anxiety of America falling to Communist control. The fear of infiltration rose when Mao Zedong led Communists to take control of China as well as the Soviets detonating the atomic bomb. This caused the anxiety and fear to increase because even some American Scientists didn’t believe that the Soviets had the expertise to do so. American citizens began to believe that communist spies had been able to steal American technology. The detonation of the bomb started drills throughout America. Roberts wrote, “Anxiety over a possible Soviet nuclear attack manifested itself in many ways, from talk of apocalyptic nuclear devastation to weekly air-raid drills that sent schoolchildren cowering under their desks or into fallout shelters,” (Roberts 2). Fear of Communist infiltration as well as the nuclear attack caused people to take precautions. People believed that no one was safe from soviet spies in