Strictly speaking nothing matters cuz we're all just rando's typing on the internet. But since we were having a discussion I thought I'd chime in with some vaguely relevant points...
Btw I think it would've been quite dangerous indeed to call someone a communist during mccarthy era, and indeed one should've been wary of that back then.
I think the parallel stands. A lot of the egregious political abuse of mental illness in the US dates back to 50-100 years ago[1]. You don't hear about public figures being involuntarily committed over accusations of mental illness in recent years. The worst you get is accusations of senility against some of America's older politicians.
