Finishing up Gingrich's new book

Breakout

I cannot whole-heartedly endorse this book.  Even though it contains great stuff that I am drawn to like a moth to a flame.  But the flame consumes the moth, and that is not so good for the moth, yet the flame is enhanced.  I really hate to be negative about this book.  But I must.

Gingrich is a politician.  They in general, and he in particular are like that flame, we are like the moths.  The flame that can incite millions to follow them.  Yet the millions who flock to them are going to be consumed while the flame gets bigger.  A politician incites people against other people in order to defeat them.  Politicians generally do not solve problems, except for one:  how to acquire and keep power over the people.  They are masters at defeating one group of people at the expense of another.  In the end, all are consumed by that flame.

Getting to specifics, his approval of self-driving cars worries me.  I drive for a living.  Such an invention leaves me without a job.  His rather glib ideas on getting retrained for a new job don't reassure me.  I didn't choose driving as a career.  I had other ambitions which didn't pan out.  Thus, driving for a living became my safety net.  What happens when the safety net is removed?  It is hard for me to imagine what my life would have been like if I didn't have this to fall back position to rely upon when my plans didn't work out.  If Gingrich had his way, my safety net would be pulled out from under me.  This doesn't reassure me at all.

Besides that, he uses a rather emotionally charged "prison guard- prisoner" psychological structure to manipulate the reader emotionally.  The emotions are like the flame.  I know because that is what I felt when I read this stuff.  I hated the guards.  Don't you just hate the guards?  It is quite natural to resent those who inhibit your progress.  Little did I suspect that I was a guard too, because I don't want one of these ideas---self driving cars--- to succeed.  That's how you get consumed.  You become what you hate.

I don't consider myself to be a Luddite.  Seriously, do we really a society that depends so much upon machines?  What happens if the machines are so sophisticated that we no longer need people?  This is not so far-fetched if cars can drive themselves.  The activity of driving is not a trivial exercise.  Only people can drive.  Monkeys cannot drive a car.  What kind of world would it be if it were only fit for robots and their owners?