Good post! Nothing like a bit of factual concertinaed history. Yessiree. Today Gingrich plays the statesman by having a go at Gaetz. Uh uh.
"Instead, Mr. Gingrich’s triumph in 1994 in wresting the House from a Democratic majority for the first time since 1952 was the starting point for the zero-sum brand of politics that mutated into the Tea Party movement, the grievance-based populism of the Trump era, and what was garishly displayed on the House floor in a raucous four-day speaker battle that ended in the small hours of Saturday. [...] “They’re employing the old Gingrich argument that you don’t get any benefit from cooperation or compromise, only from confrontation,” said Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, until recently the Democrats’ House majority leader. Mr. Hoyer, who was sworn into office in 1981, two years after Mr. Gingrich, recalled the Georgia congressman “playing to the anger and disaffection of people who Nixon called ‘the silent majority’ a few years earlier.”
“Those feelings predated Gingrich,” Mr. Hoyer said. “But he took extraordinary advantage of them, just as Trump did later and just as this crowd’s doing now.”
It was Mr. Gingrich, after all, who as a congressional candidate in 1978 told an audience, “One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty.” A decade later, Mr. Gingrich coached his colleagues to cast the opposition as “the loony left,” saying, “When in doubt, Democrats lie.”"
Note the Gaetz six justify their obstructionist bullshit by saying McCarthy cooperated too much with the Democrats. Much similar to the rationalizations of those who booted Gingrich
"Though Mr. Gingrich and his two lieutenants, Dick Armey, the House majority leader,and Tom DeLay, the majority whip, preached ruthless partisanship, in the end, Mr. Gingrich was forced out of power by his fellow Republicans in 1998after agreeing to a budget deal with Mr. Clinton. The party lost the House majority in 2006, “though frankly, even before then, the Gingrich faction did not feel that they had won when George W. Bush won, because they weren’t interested in his ‘compassionate conservatism,’” Mr. Hoyer recalled."
And never forget from where the Tea Party raised it's ugly ultra-partisan confrontational head, the Caucus Room restaurant meeting:
"The election of Barack Obama in 2008 thrust Mr. Gingrich back into relevancy. On the night of Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the former speaker gathered at a Washington steakhouse with a small group of desultory Republicans that also included a second-term congressman from California, Kevin McCarthy. It was Mr. McCarthy who, consulting his inner Gingrich, urged a hyperaggressive approach to Democratic control in Washington.
“We’ve got to challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign,” he told the steakhouse group that night.
Mr. Gingrich left the dinner feeling much encouraged. “You will remember this day,” he said to the others.
The seeds of the Tea Party movement were sown by discontents among a threatened white majority, or what Mr. Trump later called “the forgotten men and women of this country.” Initially framed as a nonpartisan call for fiscal discipline, the Tea Party avatars returned the Republicans to power in the House after the 2010 midterm election and quickly reverted to Gingrichian partisanship.
“The Tea Party movement was more about fighting the Obama administration, Pelosi and Reid,” said a member of that class, Representative Jeff Duncan, Republican of South Carolina."
"From Gingrich to McCarthy, the Roots of Governance by Chaos Mr. Gingrich began the zero-sum politics that mutated into the brand of the Tea Party and Trump M.A.G.A. Republicans and that presaged the raucous speaker battle in the House. [...] In contrast, Mr. Gingrich said of his own speakership, which sought a revolt in the Republican Party and the way Washington does business, “We weren’t just grandstanders. We were purposeful.” He would be glad to show the current rebels how to do it, he said. “But anything that takes longer than waiting for their cappuccino, I doubt they’re interested in.” P - History does not precisely remember it that way. It is true that Mr. Gingrich’s tenure from 1995 through 1998 produced several legislative accomplishments, including two balanced budgets signed into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. But to both Democrats and Republicans, the jut-jawed intransigence of House Republicans opposing Representative Kevin McCarthy’s ultimately successful bid to be speaker did not materialize out of nowhere. P - Instead, Mr. Gingrich’s triumph in 1994 in wresting the House from aDemocratic majority for the first time since 1952 was the starting point for thezero-sum brand of politicsthat mutated into the Tea Party movement, the grievance-based populism of the Trump era, and what was garishly displayed on the House floor in a raucous four-day speaker battle that ended in the small hours of Saturday. P - Those mutations have culminated in a tissue-thin Republican majority, auguring legislative episodes likely long on melodrama and short on happy endings, thanks to cameo actors such as Mr. Gaetz who have already demonstrated their zeal to seize the spotlight from the new speaker. Such actors appear to interpret their roles as opposing anything that the Biden administration might support, including sending military aid to Ukraine and avoiding a default on government obligations by raising the federal debt ceiling. [...] Though Mr. Gingrich and his two lieutenants, Dick Armey, the House majority leader, and Tom DeLay, the majority whip, preached ruthless partisanship, in the end, Mr. Gingrich was forced out of power by his fellow Republicans in 1998 after agreeing to a budget deal with Mr. Clinton. The party lost the House majority in 2006, “though frankly, even before then, the Gingrich faction did not feel that they had won when George W. Bush won, because they weren’t interested in his ‘compassionate conservatism,’” Mr. Hoyer recalled. P - The election of Barack Obama in 2008 thrust Mr. Gingrich back into relevancy."
Related: The "Republican Revolution", "Revolution of '94", or "Gingrich Revolution" are political slogans that refer to the Republican Party (GOP) success in the 1994 U.S. mid-term elections,[1] which resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and a pick-up of eight seats in the Senate. On November 9, 1994, the day after the election, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, a conservative Democrat, changed parties, becoming a Republican; on March 3, 1995, Colorado Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell switched to the Republican side as well, increasing the GOP Senate majority.[2] [...] The gains in seats in the mid-term election resulted in the Republicans gaining control of both the House and the Senate in January 1995. Republicans had not held the majority in the House for 40 years, since the 83rd Congress (elected in 1952).From 1933 to 1995, Republicans had controlled both House and Senate for only four years. From 1933 into the early 1970s, most white conservatives in the South belonged to the Democratic Party, and created the Solid South bloc in Congress. Most African Americans in the South were disenfranchised in those years, based on laws and subjective administration of voter registration practices. P - By the mid-1990s, white conservatives from the South joined Republicans in other parts of the country, leading to the change in Congress. Large Republican gains were made in state houses as well when the GOP picked up twelve gubernatorial seats and 472 legislative seats. In so doing, it took control of 20 state legislatures from the Democrats. Prior to this, Republicans had not held the majority of governorships since 1972. In addition, this was the first time in 50 years that the GOP controlled a majority of state legislatures. [...] The 1994 election also marked the end of the conservative coalition, a bi-partisan coalition of conservative Republicans and Democrats (often referred to as "boll weevil Democrats", for their association with the South). This white conservative coalition had often managed to control Congressional outcomes since the New Deal era. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Revolution
By Neeraj Chand Published Jan 2, 2023
Recently accused of sexism, does the controversial movie Fight Club still hold up as groundbreaking cinema in the modern age?
20th Century Studios
There is a general feeling among movie critics and cinephiles that modern cinema has become too watered down and mild in an effort to appeal to the broadest audiences possible and not offend anyone. In the past, Hollywood studios were much more willing to make mainstream movies that risked provoking outrage from the public. One movie that did so in spades was 1999's Fight Club .. https://movieweb.com/movie/fight-club/ .. starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter.
Helmed with an uncompromising clarity of vision by director David Fincher, Fight Club was a violent, profane, bleakly satirical take on '90s consumer culture and the disenfranchised generation of middle America entering into adulthood at the time. The movie caused a sensation upon release for all the wrong reasons , even getting heavily censored .. https://movieweb.com/fight-club-chinese-censored-ending/ .. in some places for its incendiary content. Yet over time Fight Club has gathered a passionate global following and is today regarded as a cult classic masterpiece. Let's take a look at whether the themes and ideas of Fight Club .. https://movieweb.com/what-is-the-actual-point-of-fight-club/ .. hold up more than two decades later.
The reason Fight Club got so much negative press upon release was that its main storyline seemed to be teaching all the wrong lessons to audiences. The movie follows an unnamed protagonist who works as an automobile recall specialist. Deeply unhappy with his unfulfilling life despite having plenty of money and a nice apartment filled with every modern convenience, the protagonist suffers from insomnia and a general feeling of emptiness in his life.
He finally finds a purpose after meeting the intensely charismatic Tyler Durden. Together, Tyler and the protagonist start a club where similarly lost and aimless men can beat the stuffing out of each other to feel alive in the moment. Soon the club devolves into something more dangerous, as Tyler secretly plots to destroy multiple buildings using homemade bombs in a misguided revolutionary act to level the playing field .. http://movieweb.com/best-movie-revolutions/ .. between the rich and poor of society.
Is Fight Club Sexist or a Deconstruction of Toxic Masculinity?
20th Century Studios
Many if not all of the main male characters of Fight Club exhibit traits of toxic masculinity towards each other and the rest of society. The members of Fight Club view violence as a way to find meaning and respect in life. They worship Tyler as the alpha male of the pack, and are willing to become domestic terrorists after being brainwashed into joining his cause at the expense of their own personal identities.
Apart from its main theme of alienation and violence, Fight Club contains many visual moments that would come with a trigger warning in modern times. Like the scene where the unnamed protagonist loses himself in a mental haze during a Fight Club meeting and brutally keeps punching a fellow member well past the point where the latter has lost the fight and is lying bloodied and inert on the ground.
There is also the copious amounts of profanity that every main character spews generously and frequently. Tyler himself is responsible for many of the movie's worst scenes, like relieving himself into a bowl of soup that is waiting to be ordered at a fancy restaurant, or the running gag of a male genitalia popping up on screen for a few seconds.
Is Fight Club Too Much for Modern Audiences?
Warner Bros.
The previously mentioned facts are the main reasons why Fight Club caused so much controversy when the film was first released .. https://movieweb.com/controversial-movies/ . But with the passage of a few years, audiences were able to appreciate that the movie was not a worshipful ode to male-on-male violence, but rather it had something important and relevant to say about the state of the disenfranchised in society.
In this aspect, Fight Club shares a startling similarity with 2019's Joker. Just like Fight Club, Joker was initially lambasted by critics for focusing on "white male rage .. https://www.salon.com/2020/02/08/joker-oscars-white-male-rage-win/ ." But after the film was released audiences saw that its story was not about celebrating violence and anger, but talking about the poor and mentally ill members of society who feel abandoned by the world and resort to desperate measures to feel alive and valued.
Fight Club Is Still Culturally Relevant
20th Century Studios
In the hands of lesser talent, Fight Club could have easily been a schlocky, cheaply provocative gore-fest with nothing important to say. But the world created by David Fincher and ably populated by a talented cast led by Brad Pitt and Edward Norton goes much deeper than that. Sure, Fight Club contains many shocking and disturbing moments, but they are always in service of a larger point the movie wants to make about the dangers of violence and a self-centered worldview.
In that sense Fight Club is a much more responsible action movie than so many modern blockbusters where the act of shooting or killing innumerable henchmen is treated as something the hero does all the time just to look cool and badass. It's okay to not like Fight Club's message, or how it chooses to convey that message, but there is no denying the impact the movie has had on generations of fans trying to search for meaning in their own lives.
WHY?? Because - Exposé Sinister past of millionaire Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov who is Putin's pal [...] "We don't have those kind of people here. We don't have any gays. If there are any, take them to Canada.” P - Praise be to God. Take them far from us so we don't have them at home. To purify our blood, if there are any here, take them." [...] Celebrity athletes such as Floyd Mayweather, Tyson Fury and Khabib Nurmagomedov have all been paid to attend events organised by his fight club. P - In 2016 he hosted an MMA fight, featuring three of his sons, aged 11, 9 and 8 to celebrate his 40th birthday. P - It was broadcast on a MMA station in Russia which was condemned by Russian fighter Fedor Emelianenko. He branded the move as “inexcusable” as children under-12 are banned from competing in, or even attending, MMA fights. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168375004
Let's start with Bannon being a dishonest, power-hungry far-right wing prick,... [...] We searched for other instances in which Bannon referred to himself as a Leninist and came up empty-handed. However, we did find multiple instances of Bannon’s espousing anti-establishment ideals (although there was no other instance of him saying that he wanted to “destroy the state”). P - In January 2016, for instance, Bannon was quoted by the Washington Post‘s referring to him as “virulently anti-establishment”: P - “We call ourselves ‘the Fight Club.’ You don’t come to us for warm and fuzzy,” said Stephen Bannon, Breitbart’s executive chairman and one of its guiding editorial spirits. He adds, “We think of ourselves as virulently anti-establishment, particularly ‘anti-’ the permanent political class. We say Paul Ryan was grown in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.” https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169481447
Zero Hedge is a popular batshit insane finance blog run by an anonymous founder who posts articles under the name "Tyler Durden," after Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club antagonist personality. [...] The only writer very conclusively identified is Dan Ivandjiiski, who conducts public interviews on behalf of Zero Hedge. https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=85563190
"From Gingrich to McCarthy, the Roots of Governance by Chaos Mr. Gingrich began the zero-sum politics that mutated into the brand of the Tea Party and TrumpM.A.G.A. Republicans and that presaged the raucous speaker battle in the House."
Later Thursday, before senators could even begin debate on President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue plan, they had to sit through a nearly 11-hour reading by the clerks of the entire 620-page bill.
It was only the first step in Republican moves to delay a vote on an economic package that millions of Americans so desperately need. In the time it took clerks to read the bill, meanwhile, another 900 Americans died of COVID-19.
Under the arcane rules of the Senate, allegedly the world’s “greatest deliberative body,” the GOP can now delay indefinitely a vote on the bill by introducing amendment after amendment, even though they have no intention to back the bill regardless of the amendments being introduced.
Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate are determined to block any progressive legislation. It may look like they’re behaving irrationally by keeping needed help out of the hands of their own voters, but it’s all part of a perverse plan to take back power. | Bill O’Leary / Pool via AP
GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday morning that the bill would “saddle our grandchildren with debt.” He had no such concerns when he pushed through a multi-trillion-dollar tax break for the rich when he was in charge of the Senate.
If Republicans succeed in delaying a vote on the rescue package until March 14, millions now receiving $300-a-week in federal unemployment benefit supplements will see those checks vanish.
It doesn’t matter to the GOP that its obstructionism translates into continued massive amounts of human misery. When they are not obstructing and creating more misery, they are complaining and airing grievances on television about issues that are of no importance in the lives of the people.
They are condemning Democrats for allegedly banning Dr. Seuss books for children, for example. Democrats, of course, did no such thing. The company in charge of Dr. Seuss books itself decided to no longer publish several titles on its own because they found the racist images in those titles embarrassing.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who helped lead the white supremacist charge on the Capitol Jan. 6, is making angry charges about alleged Democratic and so-called “cancel culture attacks” on Mr. Potato Head. Attempts to broaden the gender identity of Mr. Potato Head by its owner, the toy manufacturer Hasbro, are another crime allegedly being committed by progressives.
The nation faces the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression, millions more each week are claiming jobless benefits, the pandemic still rages, and the Republicans are busy either leading insurrections at the Capitol, charging that the election was stolen, or stalling recovery legislation—while distracting attention with irrelevant issues.
Reasonable people are concluding that Republican refusal to do anything to relieve the suffering of the broad majority of the American people and the constant negative GOP attacks on anyone trying to do so will backfire against them.
It is dangerous, however, for us to expect that this will be the case. Republicans are not in the business of sabotaging their own quest for power or damaging their ability to front for the ruling class. They know how to work the system, and with their attacks and obstructionism, they could well succeed in coming back to power.
Democrats in the House are passing sweeping bills that would rectify many of the nation’s big problems. These bills overhaul the electoral system, making it fair and open to everyone. They reform labor law, putting the right to organize in the hands of the workers. They finally legislate permanent protection against discrimination for LGBTQ persons and others. And, of course, the House just passed the almost two-trillion-dollar rescue package.
If they can overcome the Republican obstructionism underway now in the U.S. Senate, the rescue plan will become law.
Have they gone mad?
When that happens, millions of Americans will soon see $1,400 checks in their checking accounts or mailboxes. For all too many, these checks will be a lifesaver.
Millions will see $300 federal add-ons to their state unemployment checks continue until the end of September rather than end as originally scheduled, in the middle of this month. Millions who were not eligible for any state jobless benefits will get these federal checks.
Many children will go back to school because their school districts will have the money to reopen safely.
Millions will get vaccinations that never would have come if Donald Trump was still in the White House. We may even be able to put the COVID nightmare behind us by the end of the year.
Almost 100% of the Republicans in the House and Senate will be on record as having opposed all of these great things. So, what’s the deal?
Graffiti reading, “Where’s my money” is seen on Mitch McConnell’s front door in Louisville, Ky., on Jan. 2, 2021. | Timothy D. Easley / AP
They have made a conscious decision to oppose all of this progress and to engage in a multi-layered strategy of attacks on all Democratic plans,a racist campaign to “save” American culture which they say is under attack, a plan to pose as the new “working-class party” protecting us all from liberal elites, a plan to continue pushing the notion that the election was stolen from the people, and a plan to top it all off with a healthy dose of voter suppression.
They can win this way, they believe, without ever having to do a damned thing for the working class majority in the country. What they are doing essentially is cooking up a program of Donald Trumpism, only on steroids. It’s an approach, they hope, that eventually may not even need Trump himself. It is their hope that this strategy will result in gains for them in 2022 and perhaps a total comeback in 2024.
Their first step is to try to convince the country that they are the new party of workers. The Democrats are the party of the elite, the party of intellectuals trying to cancel the culture loved so much by the working people, the GOP and its right-wing media empire claim.
They are good at turning reality on its head. The heavy National Guard presence in Washington, D.C., for example, the barbed wire, the razor wire, and high fences are a disturbing sight to most people. It is costing hundreds of millions and draining resources away from other needed areas. But all the enhanced security is needed precisely because of the right.
The troops and fences were necessitated by the Republican-backed attempt to destroy democracy on Jan. 6 and the ongoing threats of right-wing terrorism. But we see GOP leaders today condemning Democrats for it. It’s all unnecessary, GOP Sen. John Kennedy says. “The Capitol belongs to the people, the fences should come down,” he thunders. The Democrats are keeping the people out of the House that belongs to them.
What people is he talking about? Is he saying the insurrectionist Trumpites who broke in and killed people are among “the people” being kept out by the Democrats? Kennedy questions all the fences in response to what he calls “a few nut jobs.” Those “few nut jobs” killed people and threatened the functioning of democracy.
Kennedy opposes Biden’s rescue plan, but that’s not the important thing, he says. Instead, it falls to people like him to stand up, to be a hero fighting for the rights of the people to take back their Capitol building!
The New York Times noted recently that the GOP’s obstructionism just might work for them. They wrote about how Republicans such as Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas are pushing the idea that the GOP is the working-class party now, and they wrote about how Republicans are using posturing on cultural issues to try to claim that mantle.
They do this even as they carefully avoid uttering support for a single pro-working-class agenda item because they support no such agenda.
The fake “workers’ party”
The Times pointed out that at the recent CPAC convention, neither Hawley nor Cruz came out in support of even one single pro-worker idea. No one else did, either
What they did do was stoke grievances about the alleged “cancel culture” of the Democrats. They tried to sound like angry workers by bashing bit tech companies, but they were bashing them for their alleged attacks on Trump, not for their monopolies or their attempts to stop workers from unionizing.
They claim big tech—companies like Google and Facebook—helped steal the election from Trump. Thus, the two most fascistic U.S. senators spent last weekend posing as supposed champions of the workers, opposing Big High Tech for undoing Donald Trump.
The so-called “culture wars” have ebbed and flowed in the past, but Republicans across the board today appear to have mastered Trump’s time-tested practice of grabbing hold of cultural issues and stoking anger around them. Like Trump, they top it off with racist, homophobic, and transphobic propaganda in hopes of confusing and attracting support from large numbers of white voters.
They offer these same white voters nothing at all when it comes to economic help, though. What they offer instead is a refined and improved version of Trumpist division and hatred. To some extent, they are even out-trumping Trump, hoping this will be their path to victory in the coming elections.
A few Republicans think this approach will backfire and that people will have to see the GOP doing something real for them if the party is ever going to return to power. There is no guarantee, however, that the GOP base will penalize Republican lawmakers for voting against the rescue package.
Even as Republican voters cash or deposit stimulus checks and get their vaccinations, right-wing media like Fox will not be crediting the Democrats. They will be telling people it was a good thing the GOP lawmakers allowed those benefits to come through but that they, thankfully, fought off non-existent socialist schemes that the Dems were also trying to slip in. Fox’s evening programming will focus on the leading role of Republicans in the continued fight against Kamala Harris, for instance, who it claims backs the burning of American cities. It will spotlight champions like Rep. Jim Jordan, who defends Mr. Potato Head’s non-existent genitals and leads the fight against Democrats allegedly trying to ban the books loved by your children.
The Republicans’ opposition to everything is part of their decision to continue manufacturing complaints about the horrors of socialist-leaning Democrats trying to take away everything up to and including our very humanity.
By keeping this up, they hope that the fake horrors will matter more to voters than who it was that really put money in their pockets and shots into their arms.
The approach of the Republicans is to do whatever possible to convince people that they need in office people who will fight to protect them from “illegal” immigrants, to protect them from Democrats who want to disarm the police, to protect them from Democrats who want to inflict more economic pain by raising taxes, and to protect them from liberals and from a media determined to take away everything they love—whether that be the books they love, the cars they drive, the gas in the tanks, or the hamburgers they eat.
We can’t say for sure whether this will work for Republicans as well as they hope, but it’s that’s the direction in which they are going.
And, unfortunately for the working-class majority, they have a back-up plan that they are running with simultaneously. That plan is the plot to suppress voter rights all around the country.
Suppressing votes to retake power
New voter suppression efforts are happening in numerous states. Republicans are bragging about how they will retake the House in 2022. Halting Biden’s agenda and positioning the GOP to win the White House in 2024, they admit, will be easier as the result of new gerrymandering schemes.
A Republican lawyer defending vote suppression moves by the GOP before the Supreme Court actually admitted that without the measure becoming law, Republicans would be unable to win any more elections.
To ensure the GOP obstructionism plan flops, Democrats are going to have to deliver for the people. They will have to shed their reluctance to be firm and resolute in defeating the GOP delay and sabotage tactics. There is no getting around that.
They are going to have to eliminate the filibuster. Unless they kill it off, they risk seeing all their legislative agenda going down to defeat. That same fate awaits the problematic “centrist” Democrats, too, including Sen. Joe Manchin in West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona. They can be assured that they are also eventual targets of the Republicans.
If the Democrats can prove it’s possible for government to defeat the pandemic, fix the economy, rebuild the country, and lift workers out of some of their worst misery, the GOP obstructionism machine could start to sputter and perhaps fail. No promises it will be a sure thing, but it’s the best chance we have.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, this article reflects the opinions of its author.
CONTRIBUTOR John Wojcik John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People's World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and '80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper's predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.
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