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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nAs of this moment Newt Gingrich has overtaken Herman Cain, November’s front runner for the nomination, replacing him as polling \u00a0highest among the current slate of Republican candidates. Cain’s popularity deflated with the revelation of a long-term affair <\/a>and the alleged hush money he paid to keep it from his wife.\u00a0For those of our readers who were too young or not around for American history during the mid-1990’s, Newt Gingrich is an asshole. Far from the primary days of George W. Bush, who ran against Al Gore on the platform of “compassionate conservative’, Mr. Gingrich prides himself on being a compassionless conservative<\/em>.<\/p>\n
He was instrumental in the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, \u00a0enabling too big to fail banks\u00a0to underwrite and trade instruments\u00a0that contributed to the\u00a0Global financial crisis of 2008\u20132009.\u00a0He wants to privatize Social Security, an idea whose time should end given the rapacity of Wall Street and big banks in general, and he can’t seem to keep his mouth shut when it comes to punishing the poor, especially poor women and children. While on the campaign trail, Gingrich proposed poor kids (mainly African-Americans) learn about job skills by working as janitors — mentored by parental peers if not parents themselves in the skills behind pushing a mop or cleaning a toilet.<\/p>\n
With the help of conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Newt helped build a firewall blocking the people who needed government assistance the most, and the corporate lobbyists who have berthed themselves on the perimeters of the Capitol Building with keys to gain access after-hours.\u00a0After being disgraced by charges of ethics violations<\/a>, he resigned from Congress, parlaying his post-congressional career into a money-making business entity.<\/a><\/p>\n
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This is a standard we find operating today by former politicians and their staff.\u00a0Government and big business have been in bed together a long time in Washington. Newt followed an inevitable trajectory, building a career as a TV pundit, a lobbyist and “ideas man”. Out there again on the campaign trail as Newt “Recycled” Gingrich, what is it that makes someone\u00a0who already has a track record of being the ultimate Washington insider so appealing for an anti-government, pro-states rights constituency like the Tea Party nation, the leading faction of the Republican Party?\u00a0Unfortunately, the answer is too simple as Joan Walsh wrote this last weekend in\u00a0Salon:<\/a><\/p>\n
If Gingrich is nominated, it won\u2019t be because of his ideological clarity \u2013 he\u2019s Flip to Mitt Romney\u2019s Flop. It will be because he\u2019s seen as the most likely to bully and humiliate Barack Obama. And that\u2019s what GOP politics has come down to today.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Not to say it’s directly responsible, but with each passing day of the Occupy Movement’s growing resistance, their call to government accountability, and the current state of global financial instability, having one of the more blatantly heartless and corrupt politicians foisted up as a potential standard bearer would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic. The current interest in Newt’s candidacy boils down to its potential as a wrestling format. They need somebody — anybody — who has the potential to sadistically defeat their nemesis, the Black President. And that’s the real problem, which is much deeper than party politics or racism.<\/p>\n
In Erich Fromm’s “Escape from Freedom”, there are those who “escape to” freedom (positive freedom or authenticity) and those who “escape from<\/em>” freedom (negative freedom). People escaping from freedom substitute individual authenticity through submission to an authoritarian system to eliminate their feelings of uncertainty.\u00a0According to Fromm, there are three behavior types formed by those escaping from freedom in order to provide a kind of certainty during times of uncertainty: “the authoritarian, who wishes to gain control over other people in a bid to impose some kind of order on the world, and also wishes to submit to the control of some superior force which may come in the guise of a person or an abstract idea; there’s the destructive personality who wishes to destroy something it cannot bring under its control; and the conformist\u00a0–\u00a0<\/strong>people who unconsciously incorporate the normative beliefs and thought processes of their society and experience them as their own, avoiding genuine free thinking, which is likely to provoke anxiety.”<\/p>\n
These types can sum up a large number of Tea Party members, and Newt fits neatly into the niche as a spokesman for the “from escapees”. As Nancy Waterman of Starlight News<\/strong><\/em> wrote:<\/a> \u00a0“With four planets in Gemini and an Aquarius Ascendant, Gingrich lives in the world of ideas, and is an inordinately successful orator and writer.\u00a0 However, his Sun (26Gemini02) is opposite the Moon (25Sagittarius10), together making a T-square with Neptune (29Virgo17), pushing Gingrich toward a lifetime of hyperbolic phrasing designed more to agitate than to inform rationally.\u00a0<\/em>He’s a destructive and self-destructive bombast, a perfect tool for puppet masters seeking to control that which seems to be tugging hard, tearing at their leash. He is the spokesman on behalf of “Freedom From…”, just like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter.<\/p>\n
It’s not the puppet who is dangerous, but those who pull the strings. Right now it’s obvious on whose side the right wing is on. A\u00a0President who wants bi-partisanship until it hurts, a\u00a0White House weakened by too many players who’ve had a hand in allowing big money interests free reign, and a Supreme Court that gave corporations personhood may possibly be the last straw. Ultimately what we need to happen will have to come from “outside”: the Occupy Movement and a groundswell of popular uprising questioning the status quo and the business-as-usual of big money in politics.\u00a0This is just to fight out of the political quagmire we’re currently in, and it seems to be the only backhoe we’ve got. We need that backhoe to build a moat to protect this frail democracy from becoming a 21st century Weimar Republic and its aftermath.<\/p>\n
Perhaps I have just answered the question as to why I have put myself at a distance from present-day electoral politics. It’s not about electing a leader, an idea, or even hope. These are irrelevant. \u00a0It’s not about elections at all. It’s about something that the current electoral system cannot provide.\u00a0It’s about battling the\u00a0nothing\u00a0<\/em>that has replaced leadership. That gap needs to be filled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For some reason unknown to me other than my gut instinct, I’ve been putting a distance between myself and American electoral politics.\u00a0It hasn’t been exactly clear what I’ve been seeing, let alone understand with the ever-shifting trends of conservative public opinion about the current slate of challengers to President Obama. As of this moment Newt … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1740],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}