10.28.10
Cult of EMP Crazy: To USA Today
Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist notes a piece on electromagnetic pulse doom in the current issue of USA Today here.
J. notes it’s a more balanced piece than usual. That’s very true. But only in comparison with what has been the general procedure with such things.
It still starts with the cliche lede on the matter:
The sky erupts. Cities darken, food spoils and homes fall silent. Civilization collapses.
End-of-the-world novel? A video game? Or could such a scenario loom in America’s future?
There is talk of catastrophe ahead, depending on whom you believe, because of the threat of an electromagnetic pulse triggered by either a supersized solar storm or terrorist A-bomb.
Here’s the same idea from the same newspaper, from September 2009:
“It sounds like a science-fiction disaster: A nuclear weapon is detonated miles above the Earth’s atmosphere and knocks out power from New York City to Chicago for weeks, maybe months. Experts and lawmakers are increasingly warning that terrorists or enemy states could wage that exact type of attack, idling electricity grids and disrupting everything from communications networks to military defenses.”
The Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy splits into two basic camps.
A tamer wee side concerned with solar ejections, one which has fueled apocalyptic angry sun and end-of-the-world stories this year. A couple of examples are cited here.
Contrary to the idea that there hasn’t been enough public warning about this, nope. There has been no shortage of news, if only because it also provides an opportunity to engage in end-of-the-world scenarios with clips from the movie, The Road.
The other part of the Cult of EMP Crazy is the rich cast of GOP characters pushing missile defense and many other bad ideas.
And USA Today mentions one of its chieftains in the top of the story — Newt Gingrich — without adding the disreputable nature of his work. It includes one of the man’s stock quotes on the issue.
Over the past couple of years, using anthrax-denier GOP crackpot Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, the Culf of EMP Crazy has turned electromagnetic pulse attack on the US into a cottage industry.
It’s for the selling of a book, regular congressional hearings featuring the same people over and over always saying the same thing, a yearly festival, the prediction of imminent catastrophe, regular astro-turfed pushes into the mainstream newsmedia and promotion of white male Tea Party survivalism fantasies.
They’ve even made movies and commercials no one cares to see.
This piece, from DD blog last year, summarizes its membership:
Next up, a survey of all the press the GOP electromagnetic pulse crazy lobby placed over the last ninety days, in excerpts. (Minus larger opinion pieces placed directly by the EMP Crazy lobby members, covered earlier on this blog. And since this blog has already covered all the major GOP politicians and celebrities involved with it — Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Curt Weldon, Trent Franks, Roscoe Bartlett, Pete Hoekstra, etc — their contributions can be more finely delved in the link at the very foot of the piece.)
Readers again notice it’s exclusively the property of the crank GOP right, now the great norm of the party …
The acute observers of Congressional nuisance nobodies will also note it encompasses the same people constantly pushing Islam-o-phobia. And a handful of people who think the president is a secret Muslim.
And DD noted this as recently as Monday, when citing The Tennessean newspaper’s story of ‘national security experts’ in the business of making money of the latter here.
Indeed, one sees the stink of this wafting into USA Today lede, one insinuating terrorists might bring on EMP doom with an A-bomb.
That’s the message of the Islam-o-phobes in the bunch.
In other words, the Cult of EMP Crazy is largely a vile-smelling potpourri of characters with bad intents and political agendas completely at odds with anything that would actually benefit the American middle class.
It cannot be emphasized enough. Reasonable people consider this exclusively GOP cult rotten to the core.
So it’s almost purely coincidence that Cult of EMP Crazy stories now rope in a small number of real scientists who speak of solar storms and ejecta in 2010.
To the old hardcore who make up the cult, this is a gay convenience, another handle for mouthpiecing the group’s standard toxic bullshit into the mainstream media.