I’m taking a few days off from the usual gang of misogynists to explore other terrible people out there in the world being terrible. Today, let me present to you Newt Gingrich, who is still alive and just as terrible as ever.
He thinks that American civilization, if it can be called that, is crumbling before our very eyes, and has written up a little rant on the subject for his Gingrich 360 website. Let me bring you the highlights, by which I mean, as always, the lowlights.
“We are now in a crisis of American civilization fully as dangerous and real as the crisis of the US Civil War or World War II,” he begins. “Today, we face combined internal and external threats which are as great or greater.”
Gingrich offers up a few thoughts on China that are not particularly interesting before moving past this international frenemy to focus on what he sees as the real threats to American from within.
However dangerous the foreign challenges are they fade away when compared with the domestic threats to American civilization.
Consider these indicators that our civilization is beginning to fall apart.
Ok, well, let’s consider them.
One, riots up in Minnesota.
Several days of looting and rioting in Minnesota have occurred even as a trial of a former policeman is underway proving the rule of law works.
Two: No-Go Zones
As a result of riots in Seattle, Portland, and Milwaukee, Gingrich claims, there are now
no-go zones similar to those in France have been created which are effectively localized secessions from the United States.
Portland continues to be attacked nightly by anarchists. Despite pious statements by public officials, no effective action is underway to restore law and order.
Newt — may I call you Newt? –do you remember why these protests are taking place? Maybe the rise in innocent men and women getting killed by the very people who are supposed to be protecting us from violence is the real threat to civilization, or at least one of them.
Newt evidently disagrees, because he thinks the real problem iis …
Three, the “war on police.”
There is a war on police underway with 264 killed in 2020, a jump of 96 percent over the previous year. In New York City, hostile forces use Molotov cocktails to set police cars on fire. Murder rates are skyrocketing around the country with 2020 the biggest one-year jump in homicides in American history – 36.7 percent.
I’m not quite sure how the rising murder rates of people who are not police officers is proof of a “war on police.” If anything, it weakens the case; there may be more cops getting shot because there are more people getting shot overall.
Four, aggravated shoplifting. No, really.
In San Francisco, the declaration by the communist district attorney that theft under $900 will not be prosecuted has led to so much shoplifting that Walgreens is closing all 10 of its drugstores in the city.
For what it’s worth, it’s not clear that the stores actually closed due to shoplifting. Walgreens says the closures were part of a nationwide shutdown of 200 stores in what the company called a “transformational cost management program,” whatever that means. The S.F. police, for their part, say larceny is actually down. Oh, and there are still Walgreens stores operating in San Francisco; they haven’t all been shut down.
Five: “Woke” corporations that don’t want their employees and customers losing basic democratic rights.
Woke CEOs who refuse to condemn genocide and police state tyranny in China are quick to attack Georgia – even though President Joe Biden was just plain wrong (perhaps lying) about the state’s new election law.
Six, some CNN guy on a fake date set up by corruption-fabricator James O’Keefe bragged that CNN’s pro-Biden coverage had cost Trump the election.
I’m not going to bother rebutting this one because Trump and his media enablers (Fox, OAN, Newsmax and many others) spewed out so many lies during the election that the basically truthful news sources outside of the Trump camp could barely keep track. Trump is still lying about the election on a daily basis.
Also, did I mention that O’Keefe is a scammy hack? You can read some of the gory details of O’Keefe’s “sting” operation against CNN here.
Seven: Trump and some of his people have been banned from Twitter for egregiously breaking the social media site’s rules.
[T]he internet giants … are increasingly acting like Russian oligarchs. They are trying to erase a leader who was supported by more than 75 million Americans with a ruthlessness worthy of Soviet tyranny and the Chinese Communist Party.
Strangely, Trump has not been exiled to Siberia but has rather relocated to one of his country clubs in Florida, and he can get on Fox to complain about whatever he wants to complain about pretty much any time he wants.
Eight: Racism (against white men)
Overt racism through race-based reparations, school quotas, and anti-white and anti-male curricula are a return to government-fueled discrimination and segregation.
Nine: California is making students worship an Aztec god?
I have to admit I missed out on this one but, according to Gingrich,
the state of California is considering requiring students to chant every day to an Aztec god who was the center of a human sacrifice cult … .
Snopes dismisses these accusations as “mostly false,” pointing out that the program is a voluntary option and, well, go read their thing on the subject because it’s sort of too complicated for my brain to process after reading this much nonsense from Newt.
Anyway, these are the things that are destroying America, according to Newt. Your mileage may vary.
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Newt’s a mediocrity trying too hard to be relevant.
My neighborhood Walgreen’s, conveniently right across the street, went out of business last year right at the beginning of U.S. pandemic shutdown—providing a beautiful example of “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille” timing.
Newt did more to destroy the US government than anyone else- even Reagan and Trump. He needs to be remembered only as a cautionary tale.
I am under the understanding Walgreens (as well as many other chains), is suffering overall and not in a good state of health anyway.
Regardless, if what he claims is true and Walgreens did in fact shut down those specific stores because all the metrics show they are losing more money than they are making (a common enough reason for closing stores), then what’s the big deal to someone like Newt?
Isn’t he one of them Conservatives that raves about the free market and capitalism? Wouldn’t that simply fall under some heading like “Adapting to market forces” or something fancy like that?
Awww, trans people didn’t make the list? Gonna have to try harder then
A decade or so ago, I made a list of 5 conservative pundits and politicians who had too much influence over US politics, in a dangerous way, and needed to disappear, like, yesterday. (“Disappear” does not mean died/killed. It’d would be just as good, maybe better, if they just retired and faded into obscurity.) My list back then was Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Tucker Carlson.
Limbaugh is now dead. Gingrich and Cheney are still around, still politically involved, but well past their prime in terms of power and influence. Carlson and Hannity are still going strong, and if anything Tuck might be a bit more dangerous. Mitch McConnell would definitely be on that list if I had made it even a few years later, so let’s include him as an honorary 6th. Trump will hopefully prove to be just a 4-year flash in the pan, more of a symptom of the influence of people like them than a real power mover, so I won’t include him for now.
So, 1 down, 5 to go. Gingrich’s passing or fading into obscurity would be more symbolic than transformative at this point, but it is still something where we’d all be better off when it does.
@Snowberry
I can’t tell you all here how happy I am that I’m not the only person who despises Tucker Carlson. 😀
I dunno, one could argue Gingrich belongs in some sort of gang of misogynists or another.
When I learnt Latin in high school one assignment was cursing people. Latin curses are very formulaic in structure, but with room for invention and there are many examples full of general gruesomeness, which the Latin teacher thought children would enjoy.
I was thinking I’m glad Gingrich et al. never found out – and then I remembered learning Latin is associated with rich white people, so they wouldn’t care. They’d be fine with literally summoning demons if there was exclusive entry to the rites and all the sacrifices were poor.
Police? We don’t, or shouldn’t need those fuckers. I’ll explain more after my temporary work
No go zone in France ? Theses bozos have no ideas what they talk about.
I am litteraly in one of the area that american TVs have labelled “no go zone” at an infamous news round. The city is pretty big, with half being pretty rich white people zone, and me inhabiting the center, who is also relatively rich because it’s an university and a bunch of student. There’s also a pretty big genetic research center closeby.
The bad part of the city are quite a bit bad, let’s say it. But I do routinely cross it ; by day and after 11:00 PM or so there’s no problems. I have had my fair share of panic when around 19:00 tho. There’s rackeeters, and there’s a lot of very bored, very unemployed people looking for … I am not sure what. Feeling of power is my guess.
Ironically, the part with the actual criminals are pretty calm. It’s mostly drug dealing, and the dealer make way too money from students buying their wares to allow racketeers to do too much problems.
@Ohlmann:
The first I’d heard of “no-go zones” was in reference to London. If I remember right, it was anti-immigrant propaganda meant to be heard by people who live in the UK, but not in or near London, that muslim immigrants were creating dangerous high-crime, pro-sharia zones where even the police feared to tread – and if you didn’t support anti-immigrant policies, then this would spread to the rest of the UK as well. (This is an outsider impression; I do not live in the UK.) I don’t know if that’s where it started, only that the general idea of it seems to have spread to other parts of Western Europe – or more often spoken about other parts of Western Europe, by people who don’t live there. There’s always at least a hint of white purity involved, if not outright white supremacism. It also probably says something that no one seems to “care” (in an equivalently racist manner) about Eastern Europe… and if anything there seems to be an uptick of racism against Slavs.
Regardless, if Londoners or Français or whoever lives in the place they’re speaking about say it’s nonsense, I tend to believe them.
…Sigh. Late-night mass shooting at Indianapolis Fedex Hub, because of course this crap never ends.
@ snowberry
Yeah; it’s all bollocks.
I lived in London for 15 years and am frequently back up there. There are no ‘no go’ areas, muslim or otherwise.
The usual suspects though made noises about ‘creeping sharia’ pretty much based on some street signs being bilingual.
The Brick Lane area is colloquially known as Banglatown. But for a no go area; it isn’t half packed with people buying vintage clothes and artisan coffees.
https://essentialldn.com/2020/07/24/londons-brick-lane-vintage-market/
Alan – Amusingly, in Finnish “ei” means no. Bilingual street sign indeed 🙂
AFAIK East European cities usually either don’t have large Muslim populations, or if they do, it’s from centuries old conversion rather than recent immigration. Though probably cultural affinity (in US media) to Western Europe and particularly UK does play a role.
@Lumipuna : also, east europeans are often depicted as raging conservatives in the US. I am not saying it’s false ; I am saying the US media are much more concerned about making liberal countries look weak than authoritarian and conservation countries look weak.
Ohlmann – Good point. Hence all the bullshit especially about Sweden’s “immigrant problem”.
If fascist fossils like Gingrich are shitting their pants in terror, that says to me we’re on the right track. Keep checking under the bed every night for Antifa, Newty!
This wart of an individual looks so quaint and outdated by the standards of the 2021 right wing hate machine. With his desperate over use of reactionary buzzwords like “woke” and “cancel culture” he looks like he’s just cosplaying at being a neofascist at this point. Terrible people have moved on since you were relevant, Newt. You’re going to look very silly sharing frog memes and talking about doctor Seuss.
It’s always wild hearing the American right talking about Europe as if we’re an inscrutable, faraway land about which they can lie with impunity.
@Alan:
Wait till they see how far sharia has crept in Wales!
@ moggie
Indeed; as seen here.
Although as I’m sure everyone knows by now, the Welsh bit says:
“I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated”.
TIL that men are a race.
I’d say the war is on non-cops, especially non-cops of color.
The rest is all complete bullshit.
The US has problems, to be sure, some of which are damned recalcitrant, and ugly as hell, but what they aren’t is new. But honestly, we are doing fine. All the fear-mongering, mostly from the right, is bullshit. Yes, many in our country are suffering right now, more than usual and including demographics that don’t usually suffer all that much, but global pandemics do that. We are getting closer every day to getting control of that and returning to the previous state of affairs where the rich can do what they like and what they like is to trick the poor into fighting each other instead of grouping together to fight the real enemy.
Which isn’t China.