History has shown that it is human nature, when an emotional and inexplicable situation arises, for people to fall prey to suspicion and fear. During these times, unscrupulous individuals can play upon a wide-spread panic, using this fear to their advantage. History is filled with many examples of this, one of the most powerful being the vengeance behind the hysteria of the Salem witch trials in The Crucibles by Arthur Miller which caused the inevitable deaths of 19-20 innocent victims, who were killed as a result of jealousy, greed, lust, and self-preservation. Again, in Rod Serling’s Monsters are due on Maple Street, the damaging power of hysteria shows its ugly face when the terrified neighborhood transitioned into a community capable of monstrous behavior just to save themselves from accusations when an unidentified object flies across the sky, and coincidently the power goes out on Maple Street. Similarly, McCarthy creates a culture of fear across the nation in the George Clooneys movie Good Night and Good Luck by drum mingup fear of Communism to such a degree
that individuals start to mistrust and judge any person thought to be a Communist without any clear evidence; even most reputed media man of the time like Edward R. Murrow is not spared. One of the famous McCarthyism cartoons Fire! by Herbert Block that came up in 1949, a time when Americans were still highly terrified of Communism clearly illustrates the message that is said in all of the above examples. The torch from the Statue of Liberty, which represents the Enlightenment and is meant to light our way to freedom, is being extinguished by a man labeled Hysteria with a bucket of water. Due to Hysteria making an effort to extinguish the fire, the cartoon demonstrates that universal panic concerning Communism that McCarthy played a role in creating is a huge threat to our freedom. It can endanger Americans right to say anything they desire to say without being discriminated for it. From all the texts and illustrations, it is indicative that public hysteria comes to evolve out of desires for self-preservation and makes people frenzy and they start to do awful things.