Newt Skywalker: A Man of Vision?

[Lakhota]

By Alex Seitz-Wald

It’s not often that moon bases play a key role in presidential politics, but when Mitt Romney sought to draw a contrast with front-runner Newt Gingrich during Saturday’s ABC debate, he explained: “We could start with his idea to have a lunar colony that would mine minerals from the moon.” The comment drew laughter from the audience, but Gingrich is serious. “I’m proud” of the idea, Gingrich said. “I grew up in a generation where the space program was real, where it was important.”

Indeed, Gingrich has had a long fascination with ideas that most Americans would probably consider science fiction. Gingrich’s top five science fiction ideas, beyond moon bases:

1. EMP attack: As the New York Times notes today, Gingrich has a unusual phobia for outlandish doomsday scenarios like an electromagnetic pulse attack, even though most nuclear experts dismiss the threat. He even wrote the foreword to a 2009 sci-fi thriller based on an EMP attack.

2. Space mirrors: Gingrich has proposed a “a mirror system in space [that] could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.”

3. Space lasers: Gingrich has flirted with several variations of orbiting death rays. For example, in 2002 he called for “directed energy weapons and laser pulsing systems that could actually [shoot down missiles] from space.” “If you go to a space-based system, we can almost certainly build a workable system,” he said in 2009.

4. Geo-engineering: Gingrich has suggested that instead of actually stopping global warming from happening (this was when he believed in global warming), we should use geoengineering to ameliorate its impact. “Geo-engineering holds forth the promise of addressing global warming concerns for just a few billion dollars a year,” Gingrich said in 2008. Geo-engineering is the process of artificially altering the climate in fundamental ways and is considered so dangerous that it faced a ban from the U.N.

5. A better life through video games: Gingrich made a political speech to Second Life in 2007 in which he said that the “3-D Internet in all of its various forms” will help create a better “parallel country.” “It’s a parallel that enables us to do things that would be much more difficult to do in the real world.. [It's a] world that works.” Second Life has basically failed.

Gingrich’s “futuristic proselytizing” even earned him the nickname “Newt Skywalker” among the local press in his home state of Georgia in the 1980s and ’90s, Politico notes today.

More: Moon Bases And Beyond: Newt Gingrich's Top 5 Sci-Fi Policy Proposals | ThinkProgress

 

[Lakhota]

The return of Newt Skywalker - POLITICO.com Print View

 

[occupied]

It's all just crap to pass himself off as a visionary. Most of his sci-fi ideas are plot set ups for bleak dystopian tales where the technological world has become a cage.

 

[editec]

I really don't think Newt is all that smart, folks.

Perhaps in comparison to the other GOPer's he looks that way, but seriously, his grasp of history seems pretty weak to me.

 

[Lakhota]

I don't think Newt is all that smart, either.