Stau Big (dusty)

*Staubig» or dusty was the first word this morning at half past five. But I got distracted by my freshly brewed coffee, accidentally hit the spacebar—and so “stau big” was born. Then again, the political traffic jam really is big, i.e., large. Because right now, so much is piling up on humanity’s mental highway that “large” hardly cuts it anymore. But that’s a story for another morning.

Dusty came to mind this morning as I recalled yesterday’s article by Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian and professor at Boston College.
While reading her very long piece, the word “dusty” kept surfacing. I noticed how many so-called “new” terms politicians use to fill their speeches with hate and incitement, stirring up public sentiment. Yet these terms are neither new nor more appealing. As early as 1916, lawyer Madison Grant wrote The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History. This racist tract, it’s said, was once called “my Bible” by a certain Austrain painter named Adolf Hitler.

The mustiness of racist ideas is resurfacing in 2026’s world politics—stronger and dustier than ever. Does anyone still remember the communist witch hunt led by a U.S. senator named Joe McCarthy?

Heather Cox describes how, in 1950, Senator Joe McCarthy claimed to possess a list of 205 communists in the U.S. State Department, thus launching the political climate of the “Red Scare.” Evidence? McCarthy didn’t need any—he gained massive media attention and, with that, power through incitement. His tactics were lies, exaggerations, and insinuations of a secret communist conspiracy—and they found fertile ground in the United States.

After McCarthy faded from the U.S. political spotlight in 1954, right-wing circles adopted similar narratives and spiced them up with racism: the demand for civil rights for Black Americans was slandered as “socialism.” In the 1980s, the film Red Dawn mirrored this fear of a communist invasion—including the betrayal of one’s own government.

Today, this mindset lives on in the “Great Replacement Theory”—a conspiracy theory claiming that elites (often coded as Jewish) are replacing the white population with non-white immigrants. The article shows how the current U.S. president and his supporters have embraced this ideology: through racist rhetoric, lies about migrants (e.g., the false claim that they eat pets, as alleged in Springfield), and the fanatical blocking of immigration reform. The piece warns that lies once confined to the fringes are now shaping official policy—much like in McCarthy’s time. 

Wasn’t it said that “history repeats itself”? I’d rather these stories finally overtake each other—so the dust can settle, and the world might come to its senses.

And what then?
How about impartial cooperation instead of division, a humanistic outlook instead of racism, and rhetoric grounded in respect? 
Only then could we truly confront the real and genuinely large threats: climate catastrophe, warmongering—and while we’re at it, ending hunger and restoring democracies.

Yes, I know—I’m a dreamer. But I’m not the only one.
Dreamers open up horizons and possibilities that realists still can’t see.
Thanks, John Lennon.