Why We’re Doomed

This piece in National Journal is a good example of why America is doomed. It’s not that Gingrich is a festering carbuncle of man or that he is a moral nullity. Politics, going back to the Alcibiades, has been populated with loathsome parasites. It’s that people like Gingrich are now the bets the ruling class can offer. He’s not some unusual character that appears from time to time. he is the norm. Now society can last when it is ruled by people who write things like this.

Within a year, nine out of 10 Americans could be dead. And whatever causes the national apocalypse—be it North Korean malice or the whims of the sun—the downfall will ultimately be our own fault.

That’s the fear of Newt Gingrich and other members of a high-profile coalition who are convinced that our fragile electrical grid could be wiped out at any moment.

Their concern? Electromagnetic pulses, the short bursts of energy—caused by anything from a nuclear blast to a solar flare—that can wreak havoc on electrical systems on a massive scale. And the coalition believes it’s coming soon.

“I think we’re running out of time,” said Peter Pry, a former CIA officer and head of a congressional advisory board on national security. And if the worst happens? “This gets translated into mass fatalities, because our modern civilization can’t feed, transport, or provide law and order without electricity,” he said.

While some see the coalition as alarmist—and others dismiss them as out-and-out quacks—the coalition boasts some prominent and influential names. Pry and Gingrich are joined by former CIA Director James Woolsey.

“It wasn’t difficult persuading them” to join the coalition, Pry said. Gingrich “has known about EMP and cared about it for many years.”

Last year, Gingrich told members of Congress that an EMP attack “could be the kind of catastrophe that ends civilization—and that’s not an exaggeration.”

What does Gingrich know about physics? The answer is nothing. He was a history instructor at a strip mall college and he likes dinosaurs. There’s nothing wrong with history. Lots of people are history buffs. It’s that history is not science, so even if you are a well regarded historian, your opinions on science are no better than the guy who mops the floor at the university. In fact, in this case, the guy mopping the floor has the good sense to know this material is out of his reach.

The fact that the nation takes seriously a guy like Gingrich on anything, much less issues he is uniquely unqualified to discuss is far more worrisome than solar flares or an nuclear attack. Gingrich is a crank and not the funny entertaining type either. He is the weird guy who lives at the end of the lane type of crank. The guy parents warn their kids to avoid. His ideas are mostly nonsense, but he believes them with the intensity of a fanatic. This is not a guy who should have power over others.

2 thoughts on “Why We’re Doomed

  1. Take it from someone with real experience with electrical grids and electronic device design. Regardless of how big a useless douche-nozzle Gingrich is, a real ‘Carrington Event’ in the US would make for something all those ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ movies look tame in comparison.

    Not that it’s time to panic – far from it. But, it is always time to be prepared.

  2. Now that you’ve got your ad hominem out of the way, how about talking about the point of the article? I do have a history degree or two, but also an advanced technical degree and a background in weapons. A flare/emp event might be a long-shot, but it’s hard to discount the damage that could be done. Wiki ‘Carrington event’ and ‘Starfish Prime’ to see.

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