Am I the only person here who wondered what on earth this was all about, and who was somewhat bemused to find it was from an article from 1995 discussing the then new speaker of the house Newt Gingrich?
I put it there to bemuse you.
My understanding is it is one of the turning points that helped create this insanity, when Gingrich started making the right cultish through the use of controlling language and big lies. It started the decoupling of the right from reality. It ties in to the previous post about Norm Orstein tying Gingrich to our current situation. I used to hear Norm on public radio (he was local) and he had a lot of interesting things to say: he was always good about reading between the lines and reading past the dog whistles.
Not sufficiently familiar with it to understand your implied reference, certainly, nor sufficiently curious to be bothered to try to think what it might be, I'm afraid.
You really should read up on it. A lot of what we've been seeing for the past 20 years began with Gingrich's memo. It's significant enough you should at least be aware of it ... it likens unto both New Speak and the Big Lie.
Thanks. Now I get the reference, yes, I see what you mean.
And in that vein of stripping away nuances and richness, in early 1995 Newt Gingrich had the GOPAC distribute instructions to all incoming Republican congressmen to use words that exaggerated the differences between themselves and Democrats--though I find one reference to a similar document from Gingrich in 1990.
