Past, present, or future: Which are you stuck in? | In Focus

Published 11:00 am Wednesday, July 15, 2026

When I was a kid in the 1950s, I had an aunt and uncle who got stuck in the past.

They were John Birchers who feared that Communists would take over the world. They saw Communists everywhere, especially in the U.S. government. Anyone who expressed opinions that they deemed as liberal were Communists or “Commie pinkos”— not quite Communists, but leaning in that direction. I remember the words of a song from that era: “If your mommy is Commie, then you’ve got to turn her in.”

A committee was formed called the House Un-American Activities Committee. The committee’s goal was to “root out Communist subversion.” They created the Hollywood Blacklist and the Alger Hiss perjury investigation. Hollywood actors, producers, and writers were investigated for polluting the nation and leading the nation, like Pied Pipers into Communism.

This was the age of Senator Joe McCarthy who claimed there were communists in the U.S. State Department who were working to turn America into a socialist state like the Soviet Union. Joe McCarthy, as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on investigations, accused people without proof of being Communist sympathizers. People’s careers and lives were ruined, first in the government and later in the general public.

Eventually, the fear subsided after Senator McCarthy made the mistake of taking on the U.S. Army. He was embarrassed and humiliated as people began to realize McCarthy was fear-mongering to draw attention to himself. The term “witch hunts” became the term used to describe these investigations. He was finally censured by the Senate in 1954. He died of acute hepatitis and liver failure a the age of 48 due to being a chronic alcoholic.

“The McCarthy Era”, or “McCarthyism,” became known for anyone who denied First Amendment free speech rights.

Some people get caught in the present. This was a common trait I saw the among high school students that I taught for 31 years. These students had no knowledge, interest, or understanding of the past. Their lives were stuck in what some researchers call “the intense present.”

These students didn’t consider the consequences of their actions and made major life decisions that sometimes caused their untimely deaths. One group of boys drove off campus during lunch, speeding ninety-miles-per-hour down a country road. The driver lost control and ended up killing himself and his buddies in the car as it flipped over, landing upside down in a field.

When I joined a religious cult at age 18, I got stuck in the future. I was afraid of making mistakes, so I decided to let my cult leader make decisions for me. I attended Ambassador College in Pasadena, California, fully expecting to be saved from the Great Tribulation before the return of Christ. I was totally focused on the future.

I began to be freed from the cult and its power when I went to work on a summer archaeological dig at the base of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. It was financed by the cult college. That fall I chose to stay at the sister college in England, meeting students from all over Europe, and even South Africa. Their views differed from my own, which made me realize over time that the world was full of differing perspectives. When I returned to graduate at the Pasadena campus after my father died, I was hired to work in the history department.

Pepperdine University, then in south central L.A., offered Master’s Degrees to students from Ambassador College. Those courses and teachers opened my mind to a broader view of reality and an understanding of the past. My travels overseas, my coming into contact with differing views while living in England, and my study of history at Pepperdine expanded my mind and broadened my thinking.

Scandals eventually plagued the cult with revelations that the cult leader had sexually abused his own daughters. His radio and television personality son also admitted in a ministerial conference that he had had sex with 200 female college students. By then I had become thoroughly aware of the reality of religion and politics when combined.

My life experiences taught me that being stuck in the past like my aunt and uncle had taught me was a mistake. My experiences teaching high school students instructed me in the dangers of living in the intense present. My cult experience as a teen and twenty-something made me aware that being totally focused on the future kept me from learning from human history.

I chose to live in all three time periods simultaneously, rather than getting stuck. Good lessons for me, and for you, too.

Richard Elfers is a columnist, a former Enumclaw City Council member and a Green River College professor.