Looking for a succinct primer for those politically disengaged folks who are tuning out because "both sides have gotten so mean". Obviously the contradictions are heightening but how do you ease in a materialist perspective when someone is already so exhausted by "bias"
The cold war open collaborationism was an odd, not the rule.
The simple thing to focus on is that political strategy changed around the fall of the USSR. It changed these things:
The alignment of capitalist interests against socialist countries via the state. Instead, it was free reign to privatize and force concessions from states that no longer had their trade network, which created an even bigger split between national and international bourgeoisie, both based in the US.
The State Department and intelligence no longer needed to keep media narratives going for cold war things and were in a transitional period.
Neoliberalism was increasingly impacting white cishet dudes and this created the need for political explanations other than, "well in communist Russia they have to eat bland mush every day, we must be unified against the nuclear threat".
Bill Clinton and his faction won by taking over the entire previous "center" space, which is itself a result of the above. The left had been destroyed by the cold war and the "far right" hadn't been stoked to resolve contradictions. Jesse Jackson was the last chance to have a center-left do anything for people and both parties, and therefore capitalists, plus the deep state and so on, made sure he ate shit. This allowed triangulators to take over and have the consent of all of the above.
Gingrich et al are a reaction to Clinton that had limited tools and no resistance from capitalists or the state because of the end of the cold war.
Heightening contradictions reinforce the "anti-Democrat" politics of Gingrich and the culture wars. Neoliberalization's impacts have continued. It's taking a fashy turn.