Politics and Ideas

Newt Gingrich is being hailed as a man of big ideas. What a load.

Newt is a thinker who can't think. Something occurs to him and he has to spew it out. Then he doubles down. Let's turn back the clock and put children to work! Yeah, that's a good idea. Let's repeal the laws that protect children from being exploited and let the poorest of the poor children learn their place in our society. They're the toilet cleaners - the untouchable caste. But they sure do have a great work ethic!

Let's be frightened of the Electromagnetic pulse - an unproven danger that no one but Newt thinks is a danger.

Let's do again what we did before that didn't work. Less regulation. Fewer taxes for the rich. If those are such good ideas, how come they didn't work in the ten years they were in force? How come the Bush residency brought us low low taxes on the rich (which didn't have to be paid for) and no no jobs? Except the ones we shipped overseas (or to that 52nd state, the Mariana Islands).

Then there's Herman Cain. Praised by Newt and praised by CNN. Such great ideas - 999 - more like Nein, Nein, Nein. In the interview broadcast this AM on CNN the interviewer asked Cain what he meant calling the work of Jesse Jackson and Julian Bond "a sham." Cain responded "you can call it a sham or you can call it . . ." The point isn't what we might call it, it's what did you mean when you called it that!

At the end of his speech he again quoted Pokemon, the Movie. This time he acknowledged that he got the words from Pokemon, but that he didn't know who was the original author of the line. Sloppy thinking! I certainly wouldn't give high marks for credibility to any student who did that in a speech.

The quote itself is actually rather banal. The fact that it's from the tag tune to, as John Stewart said, get you the f*** out of the theatre so the staff can come sweep up the popcorn, makes it even less intellectually stimulating.

This is not thinking at any depth. This is thinking in the shallows of life and calling it thinking. To call Newt an idea man and credit Herman Cain with bringing big ideas to the campaign is to debase what can be thought about the political situation in which we find ourselves.

Newt is the perfect representative of the Hegemon. Cain the perfect illustration of Gramsci's theories concerning Cultural Hegemony.