This Is How We Got Where We Are

[Obscurity]

The nastier the conservatives get, the less credibility their policies will have in the eyes of the average voter. So long as they don't get violent en masse, this country will be fine and they will be the reason (just not in the way they expected).

With the current rhetoric, I would be MASSIVELY surprised if they don't do somehting.

 

[Slartibartfast]

With the current rhetoric, I would be MASSIVELY surprised if they don't do somehting.

I am worried as well. Sadly, I don't feel I will be personally in danger because I am a straight middle aged white male with a good job ...

 

[What if...?]

Gingrich gerrymandered Georgia (and other places). Didn't take some linguistics trick.

The articles are in post 14.

The topic is not about power and winning.

It is about openly adopting sciemce based manipulation as a tactic to obtain and maintain power.

If you read the articles its nigh unto impossible to avoid the conclusion that this course newt put the republican party on has lead to where we are now. He says so in the second article. There are posts in this thread from before I got the links up that unintentionally illustrated the point of the OP.

 

[What if...?]

First of all, all three citations are the exact same article "trump impeachment Updated on Sept. 30, 2019 The Impeachment Process Explained: What Happens to Trump Now? By Ed Kilgore." The article has nothing to do with your OP.

Second of all, not being able to review your "evidence" the assertion that we are where we are today thanks to "Newt Gingrich" is hard to credit.

Thirdly, power politics has been an ongoing process long before Mr. Gingrich took any office. IMO You give him too much credit, whatever your evidence.

The methods of propaganda and the perversions of public information have their roots long before any recent politician, starting with the yellow journalism of early printed reporting, through Goebbels' Ministry, through today's manipulation of the internet and other media by those who control it.

Moreover, opinion has it that radical changes in direction effected by socialist involvement in our educational system in the 60's, 70's, and 80's molding the minds of our youth and therefore society as a whole were/are also in play.

We used to be "better" because despite all it's faults we had a strong belief in our basic socio-political systems and the ideals uniting our nation. Now we have radical divisions separating us in ways more insidious and less obvious than the old racial divides.

We have grievance "pseudo-science," identity politics, political correctness, globalism, a hierarchy of oppression, gender dysphoria, etc., etc., ad nauseum being fed to our youth. Youth indoctrinated who then become adults pushing this divide amongst us. A divide clearly reflected in current politics.

So no, without having a chance to review your basis, I see nothing that shows the current "divide" can be lain at the feet of "Newt Gingrich."

The articles are up in post 14.

If you read them you will see that you essentially illustrated my point.

Some of your reply could have been lifted directly from meat's Playbook.

 

[What if...?]

Oh, waa, waa. Those mean ol' Republicans just ruined the wonderful tea party the Dems lived by. Boo, friggin' hoo.

By the way, there never was a Nixon impeachment.

PS: maybe it's me but all three links appear to link to the same article, and it doesn't appear to be about New Gingrich.

This post perfectly illustrates the point of the OP, supported by the articles that are now posted in post 14.

This was not an attack on conservatives per se. The left does this too now.

The OP was to point out the acknowledged goal of Gingrich, the tactics he adopted and the divide he intentionally set out to create. It's in the second article which is an interview where newt lays it all out.

 

[What if...?]

Ima stop you right there

The republicans only had control over a single congress (80th 1947-1949) from 1932 until 1994 when Newt took over and their highest numbers post 1960 were in the 97th congress (1981-1983) long after Nixon was gone

So you will need to go back to the drawing board with your conspiracy theories

My comments on the political realities of the time are in the articles (post 14) many from gingrich's own mouth. This was not a secret.

The OP is addressing the stated intent to create our current divide to cement republican power.

They also cover why the Republicans only held the majority for four years, and that their loss was due at least in part to Gingrich playing his game too vigorously

None of this is conspiracy. There was no "breathing together". The period has been extensively studied explicitly examining the change in tactics and their degradation of the compromise and bipartisanship that had grown commonplace in DC.

The open hostility and need to reply without ever seeing the supporting material is precisely what Gingrich set out to achieve. Our current divide was his goal.

He turned our politics into war. Encouraged conservatives with great success to consider the left their enemies instead of fellow Americans. That we are the enemy and our goal to destroy America.

So either newt beat Nostradamus hands down or he had a plan, implemented it, and it worked out the way he wanted.

 

[What if...?]

this is the kind of stuff that the Democratic party has been unable to counter.

REDMAP - Wikipedia

Its the kind of thing they could only pull off after declaring the left an existential threat to America.

This "us versus them to the death" crap started with Gingrich and worked because he used weaponized speech in concert with other Republicans.

(The articles I tried to post are up in post 14, if I didn't tell you already)

 

[What if...?]

The original post with a flat out lie why should I read the rest of anything posted?



Gingrich didnt start hyper partisanship. It started in the 70s and finalized near the turn of the millennium.

The polarized Congress of today has its roots in the 1970s | Pew Research Center

parties switched from being regionally aligned to being ideologically aligned, when you get democrats and republicans that vote with each other 90% of the time its hard for anything to pass without a "majority of the majority"

These elements are also discussed in the articles I posted in post 14.

 

[What if...?]

Gingrich and the contract with America was our answer to Alinsky and Cloward-Pivin. Republicans had been in the minority for 50 years and started rebuilding in 1992. You could say now that the parties have parity though the Democrats are headed toward a winless season. Impeachment is a hail Mary from their own endzone.

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

My OP is calling for rejection of these methods as opposed to what Gingrich set out to accomplish.

Open conflict with other Americans where any compromise is a sign of weakness to be exploited to its fullest extent.

The country can't survive this way.

And the fact that is was cynically initiated should cause someone who lives their country to reject it.

I am not the characature your media paints me as. The values your media tells you are mine, are not my values. Nor are yours the ones my media tells me they are.

I don't want to manipulate my fellow Americans for any purpose.

I don't want to see anybody dancing at the end of puppet strings.

 

[Bullseye]

This post perfectly illustrates the point of the OP, supported by the articles that are now posted in post 14.

This was not an attack on conservatives per se. The left does this too now.

The OP was to point out the acknowledged goal of Gingrich, the tactics he adopted and the divide he intentionally set out to create. It's in the second article which is an interview where newt lays it all out.

Huh? Did you read your own first sentence? How exactly does this equate as "not an attack on conservatives per se"?

 

[What if...?]

CT forum is further down. I believe there is also a bar section where you can post after drinking your fermented kool aid.

You might want to refrain from replying to an OP with broken links before you post your rejection of it.

You might find that the supporting material predicted your response with delightful parity.

 

[Bullseye]

this is the kind of stuff that the Democratic party has been unable to counter.

REDMAP - Wikipedia

Only the majority party gets to draw the lines, so it has to win at least one election under the old districting somewhere near a census year to even stand a chance of any redrawing.

 

[What if...?]

I disagree. I think Liberals need to face this head on. I tire of seeing the vapid and hate filled right wing using such insane terminology to basically encourage civil war. The dehumanizing rhetoric has essentially made conservatives not see liberals as legitimate citizens of the union.

You need to hit these people on the nose. They don't understand anything else.

Actually propaganda in general has an Achilles heel. They call it the "gag point" where basically you overuse your techniques and you target audience becomes aware that they are being manipulated. And the backlash can be intense.

Right now they are exposed. The matrix is glitching. People are noticing the 24hr lag between when trump does his latest fumble and "so what had happens was" explanation.

The independents are evidently close to the gag point.

We should do what we can to administer ipecac.

 

[Helix]

Its the kind of thing they could only pull off after declaring the left an existential threat to America.

This "us versus them to the death" crap started with Gingrich and worked because he used weaponized speech in concert with other Republicans.

(The articles I tried to post are up in post 14, if I didn't tell you already)

Yeah, the Gingrich era was the beginning of the latest failure of our two party system. I believe that this system is fundamentally and fatally flawed.

 

[What if...?]

I am worried as well. Sadly, I don't feel I will be personally in danger because I am a straight middle aged white male with a good job ...

Get a MAGA hat.

Perfect camo for the civil war!

 

[Helix]

Only the majority party gets to draw the lines, so it has to win at least one election under the old districting somewhere near a census year to even stand a chance of any redrawing.

Hopefully a future SCOTUS will have the courage to throw out all partisan gerrymandering.

 

[Drawdown]

The articles are in post 14.

The topic is not about power and winning.

It is about openly adopting sciemce based manipulation as a tactic to obtain and maintain power.

If you read the articles its nigh unto impossible to avoid the conclusion that this course newt put the republican party on has lead to where we are now. He says so in the second article. There are posts in this thread from before I got the links up that unintentionally illustrated the point of the OP.

Math doesn't require articles. He manipulated the math. He had more mad manipulation skills than you. Sorry.

 

[What if...?]

Math doesn't require articles. He manipulated the math. He had more mad manipulation skills than you. Sorry.

The thread isn't about any battle.

The thread is about the weapons and the harm they are causing to the fabric of our society.

 

[Thoreau72]

I had an idea recently born of another poster's suggestion that there be an entity like consumer reports to review content for manipulative content. It comes from multiple disciplines and includes psychological and cognitive "exploits", as I'm sure you know.

The trick is how to address it. Its perfectly protected by the first amendment so can't be regulated. The media won't educate, because their advertisers use these techniques.

But a light bulb went off.

It should be possible to design an app that parses speeches, articles etc and lists their persuasive content and it's weight contrasted with the factual content.

Marketed to parents initially.

So they can see how much their kids are being exposed to.

We need to do something.

I think the only thing "we" can do is have each and every individual practice "buyer beware" when reading or watching statements from politicians and the government they have created, and of course the media that enables them.

Healthy skepticism of all statements made by those people is all "we" can do.

As others have pointed out, manipulation of the public perception has been around for a very long time, even before the expert Goebbels. Newt understood how it worked, and practiced it.

Here is how Edward Bernays put it sometime in the last century: "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of."

And Orwell noted that once the language is corrupted, once the meanings of words is corrupted, what follows naturally is the corruption of thought processes.