Bauhaus is incredible because of it's functionality. In a way, it reminds me of apprropriation art it that it took a modern day object (say, a chair) and turned it into something much more, making people look at chairs, shelfs, tables, in a totally different way. That's what Duchamp and Man Ray achieved with there pieces, but they never tried to make it functional.
Art as life. Sitting in art, making tea with art, putting your books on art. This idea overwhelms me with it's simplisty and it's beauty.
McCarthyism, on the other hand, overwhelmes me with it's absolutely stupidity. It's not even anything I can fathom -- that someone could cause such chaos by saying so little (not to mention he was an obvious nut job.) How people listened to him, and ruined peoples lifes -- it seems so science-fiction to me. The fact that there was no real evidence, is astounding. But people were so terrified of this abstract idea that they didn't even care. It's like the salem witch trials, which even in the McCarthy era I'm sure seemed arcyan.
But even know things like that happen; people who travel feared anyone who looked remotely Muslim after 9/11, despite proper proof.
I've watched footage of the trials, and it seems like a circus. Here's a clip:
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