Oh yeah - politics always reminds me of kids in a playground who go home stropping that such-and-such isn't my friend any mo-ore..., and then they're really mean to them. Admittedly nukes are bit extreme for the playground, but six year olds can be really horrid!

Sometimes I think perhaps McCarthyism worked in the opposite direction later on - it made the whole communist plot thing so ridiculous that no one really believed in it any more, it just made really romantic, and cool... *g*