12.12.11

Newt, chief of the Cult of EMP Crazy, covered by the Times

Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle at 2:56 pm by George Smith

Today William Broad of the New York Times put Newt Gingrich’s role as one of the chieftains of the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy, into that high button newspaper.

DD blog touched on it last month, along with Gingrich’s numbing videos for the electromagnetic pulse doom lobby, here.

Indeed, I’ve covered the Cult of EMP Crazy, and the spectacularly loathsome Gingrich’s regular shilling, for it for years.

A bit, requoted:

Now that Newt Gingrich is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame atop the heap of horrid GOP presidential hopefuls I can use it as an excuse to show him back when he was basically the famous person for a group of relative nobodies (but persistent nobodies) in the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy.

Here are three videos of Newt on Youtube, doing his EMP doom tap dance. Two of them are for the [far right] lobbying group, EMPAct America.

The third is for Fox News where he advocated for starting a war with North Korea back in 2009. (This was subsequently pulled by its poster after I linked to it.)

Gingrich’s robotic script on the subject, completely in line with everyone else in the lobby, is that electromagnetic pulse doom is easily achievable and that it will end US civilization. It is not. But to argue it gives the people who own the script way too much he said/she said stage time. It’s what they live for.

This is frequently extended to encompass the collapse of the entire western world. The passing of the United States from the world scene takes down all Anglo civilization.

This is always coupled to pleas for more spending in ballistic missile defense and recommendation for preemptive sneak attack on Iran. And it is delivered in a stream of movies, seminars, op-ed pieces and straight news stories, one which has flowed steadily for a decade. At least.

And why special attention for Iran?

Because in all the common electromagnetic pulse doom scenarios peddled by the lobby, it is either a potential Iranian nuclear bomb, or an Iranian-made one given to terrorists, launched from a barge off the coast of the eastern US, which brings on the second coming of the Dark Ages.

It is a persistent lobby with no constituency anywhere but in the far right.

And like a large bit of dog dung festering in the sun attracts green bottle flies, over the years the story of electromagnetic pulse doom has also attracted fundamental Christian super-church preachers who believe and sermonize that the attack will herald the second coming, a final battle between good and evil, their natural ascent into heaven, and the damnation of everyone else.

In addition, it has also inspired a small congressional caucus of worthless and demonstrably incompetent nobodies — most notably the ancient Republican Rep., Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland who made it one of his life’s causes. More recently, Bartlett’s Cult of EMP Crazy leadership baton has been taken by a GOP politician from Arizona, birther and believer that sharia law is permeating the precious bodily fluids of American justice, Trent Franks.

This continuing story line of electromagnetic pulse doom has been peddled for years so extensively that is has also percolated into and further pickled the already perturbed minds of the bug-eyed survivalist fringe (including frightened white middle-aged American housewives in heartland Pennsylvania), is that it will throw the country back to the time shown in the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

Surviving EMP Doom will come by rule of the gun and those who have prepared themselves (the new Tom Doniphons) for it in the countryside, preferably with lots of pemmican, jerky, gold and silver, canned foods, stockpiled gasoline, underground dugouts full of ammunition and a corral of horseflesh or lovingly maintained old cars not reliant upon chip technology.

A far right Christian religiosity runs through electromagnetic pulse attack mythologizing . It’s the good and Godly in a struggle for what’s left of America principles and pieties against the ravening, formerly fat and lazy Democratic liberal hordes, spilling out of the cities like the zombies in AMC’s The Walking Dead.

Broad touches upon it briefly, as taken from the central book of electromagnetic pulse doom mythology, William Forstchen’s One Second After (also a Gingrich co-author):

The book describes an electromagnetic pulse attack on America, conjuring a world in which cars, airplanes, cellphones and refrigerators all die, and gangs of barbarians spring to life.

Despite being blown off by almost everyone (except the lunatic right and the repellent homophobe and Gingrich presidential competitor, Rick Santorum), — “Mr. Gingrich’s warnings remain persistently urgent,” writes William Broad for the Times.

Which, honestly now Mr. William Broad, just doesn’t quite describe the entire flavor of the matter.

“Some people praise Mr. Gingrich as an atomic visionary,” reads the Times piece. Near the end.

The piece at the New York Times.


Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy — alpha to omega — from the archives.

Mirror search of subject — from Google direct.

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