McCarthy conflates the term “Communism” with what might more accurately termed “Stalinism”—a brutal centralization of totalitarian power in the Soviet Union. McCarthy takes advantage of Josef Stalin’s unquestionably violent and inhumane dictatorship to paint all forms of Communism as inherently totalitarian. In doing so, he establishes a Manichaean framework—a battle between good and evil, with the totalitarian, Communist world on one side and the antitotalitarian “Christian democracies” of the West on the other.

McCarthy presents the bipolar parameters of the Cold War as an apocalyptic battle between two opposing ideologies, rather than a physical war of materials. Ideology refers to the basic cognitive framework of an entire society through which the world is assessed. Ideology is so firmly entrenched in a people’s way of thinking that it seems invisible or indistinguishable from reality itself. McCarthy only uses the term only once to frame the world as split between two spheres of ideas, the “western Christian world and the atheistic communist world” (829).

As scrutiny regarding the loyalty of government employees intensified in the postwar years, President Truman began to express his displeasure with the House Un-American Activities Committee’s excessive inquiries. He not infrequently referred to such inquiries as “red herrings”—a literary term referring to plot details intended to mislead or distract the reader.