I also have watched Newt Gingrich since he was a freshman congressman in 1979, when I was a congressional correspondent for the Associated Press. Though I have met many politicians in my career and know they can be an egotistical bunch, Gingrich's burning ambition his readiness to do whatever was necessary stood out even then.
Unlike many other congressional Republicans of the time, Gingrich cared little for constructive governance but a great deal for political gamesmanship. He was already plotting his route to national power and was ready to use whatever tactics would advance his personal and ideological cause.
However, America's decoupling from reality and its disappearance into the swamp of unreality began in earnest with the rise of actor and ad pitchman Ronald Reagan, who crafted a host of get-something-for-nothing policies that appealed to a nation that was struggling to adjust to a more complex world.
Reagan promised that tax cuts tilted to the rich would generate more revenue and eliminate the federal debt; that this money also could finance a massive military buildup which would frighten America's enemies and restore national prestige; that freeing corporations from government regulations and from powerful unions would herald a new day of prosperity; that the country could turn its back on alternative energy and simply drill for more oil; that whites no longer had to feel guilty about the plight of blacks; that traditional "values" i.e. rejection of the "counter-culture" would bring back the good old days when men were men and women were women.
Despite the appeal of Reagan's message to many Americans, it was essentially an invitation to repudiate reality. Before joining Reagan's ticket as his vice presidential nominee, George H.W. Bush had famously denounced the tax-cut plan as "voodoo economics." Early in Reagan's presidency, his budget director David Stockman acknowledged that the tax cuts would flood the government in red ink.
But tax policy wasn't Reagan's only ignore-the-future policy. While rejecting President Jimmy Carter's warnings about the need for renewable energy sources, Reagan removed Carter's solar panels from the White House roof and left the nation dependent on oil. Reagan also led campaigns to break unions and to free corporations from many government regulations.
Scaring the Public
In foreign policy although the Soviet Union was in rapid decline Reagan put ideological blinders on the CIA's analysts to make sure they exaggerated the Soviet menace and justified his military buildup.
Reagan achieved this "politicization" of the CIA by placing in charge his campaign chief William Casey, who, in turn, picked a young CIA careerist named Robert Gates to purge the analytical division of its long tradition of objectivity. Gates arranged the scariest intelligence estimates possible.
Reagan also credentialed a group of young intellectuals who became known as the neoconservatives the likes of Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle and Robert Kagan who emerged from an elitist tradition (advocated by philosopher Leo Strauss) that it was their proper role to manipulate the less-educated masses and guide them in certain directions.
After Reagan gave the neocons oversight of his Central American policies, the neocons worked with seasoned CIA propagandists, like Walter Raymond Jr. who was moved over to the National Security Council, to develop what they called "perception management" strategies for controlling how the American people would see and understand things.
The neocons used fear, exaggeration and outright lying to get the American people behind Reagan's support for brutal military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala and the contra rebels seeking to overthrow Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government. Truth was subordinated to policy.
Perception management operatives targeted honest journalists, human rights activists and congressional investigators who dug up unwanted facts that challenged Reagan's propaganda. To discredit truthful messages, the neocons "controversialized" the messengers.
These techniques proved very successful, in large part, because many senior executives at leading news outlets from the AP where general manager Keith Fuller was a Reagan enthusiast to the New York Times where executive editor Abe Rosenthal was himself a neocon sided with the propagandists against their own journalists. [For details on "perception management," see Robert Parry's Lost History.]
Meanwhile, the American Right began building its own media infrastructure with wealthy foundations footing the bills for a host of political magazines. Far-right religious cult leader Sun Myung Moon poured billions of mysterious dollars into the Washington Times and other media operations.
By contrast, the American Left mostly under-funded or even de-funded its scattered media outlets. Some, like Ramparts, were shuttered, while other formerly left-of-center publications, such as The New Republic and The Atlantic, changed hands to neocon and conservative owners. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Left's Media Miscalculation."]
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