Just when you thought it might be safe to watch the news again, Newt Gingrich is back, and he’s whipped out one of his party’s favorite tools – taking what’s happening to one party or person and directing it onto someone else. Psychologists call it “transference.” I call it the same old Republican nonsense.
This time, it’s Newt, with the ridiculous claim that members of the Jan. 6th Committee, could be thrown in jail, once and if, the Republican Party is back in power. As with all cases of transference, he has presented reality in reverse. It’s the Republicans who are threatened with jail time, not members of the Committee.
Republicans have used this technique time and time again, and it’s getting old, just like Gingrich’s attitude. It is time for both to go away. It is also time for the press to give their readers and audience a heads-up every time this technique is used. Please. A little analysis would be nice as opposed to just reporting what one side is saying and the other side is responding with while acting as though nothing underhanded is going on.
The problem, is that transference can so confuse an issue that it ends up working by feeding the Republican base. Unless the press starts calling them out for using it.
WHAT’S UP WITH THE RUSSIANS? That question has been on my plate for several weeks now. The best analysis I’ve heard, is that Putin is determined to create chaos in the Ukraine, because a safe and prosperous and democratic Ukraine, will make Russia look bad by comparison, which could lead to the Russian people wanting what the Ukrainians have. And that might mean the end of Putin’s dictatorship. We can only hope he doesn’t drag us into World War III in the process.
Doesn’t it feel like the Europeans are struggling to move forward, into the 21st Century with the rest of us, while Putin and his Russian oligarch friends are using the centuries old tactic of whipping up a war to direct the Russian people’s attention away from domestic issues and onto an impending and unnecessary conflict? Doesn’t it feel like Putin, is trying to drag the world backwards into an earlier time when monarchs and tyrants settled regional issues with regular warfare rather than diplomacy? Couldn’t this be why Putin opposes the European Union and Democracy? Because self-determination is better than the tyranny of a dictator, who rigs elections and murders or jails his opponents and threatens war simply to shift the focus away from his shortcomings as a leader?