Without defending Bush in any way (Nobody deserves a bashing more than George W. Bush.), I see clearly that the raw meat and red pepper that flavor Gore's narration will impress uncritical readers with the idea that the Bush administration is some sort of an aberration, a freak hatched from a cuckoo's egg nefariously laid in democracy's otherwise un-fouled nest. My heart is with the partisan Left when I say it's too bad things are not so. But a longer, more informed view of history recalls Gore's caveat and calls us also to the helpful realization that the Bush administration is a symptom, an outcome - a fruit, if you will - borne by the tree of a republic that was poisoned over the course of two centuries by greed, corruption, dirty politics, bad legislation, stupid policy, monopoly capitalism, racism, jingoism, Red baiting, militarism, war, secrecy, a piss-poor education system, and a host of other toxins. The Internet (See Chapter 9.) will not save America from the sum of those evils, and one doesn't annul the effect of a 270-page, anti-Bush rant by tacking two pages of airy rhetoric about Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King on the end. (See Gore's Conclusion.)
With this book, with his indictment of television, Gore could have led readers to see that getting rid of George Bush and Dick Cheney is merely the necessary first item on a large list of urgently needed, long overdue, systemic reforms. Gore failed to do so. Others can say what they will: I say The Assault on Reason crashes on the rock of that failure.
When I was a young man, I found that going alone for two or three days into the vastness of the Arizona desert deepened my understanding of my self and helped me get along in the world. Countless others, better minds by far than my own, have realized personal growth through immersion in solitude. Jesus, for one, spent 40 days in the wilderness and came back preaching the long view: "Repent," he cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. 4:17) Al Gore, by comparison, spent four years in the political wilderness after his Y2K defeat and now comes back preaching: "The last two centuries have demonstrated the superiority of free market economies over centralized economies and the superiority of democracy over forms of government that concentrate power in the hands of a few." (Assault, p. 100)
There it is: Al Gore is incapable of the long view because he can't see out of the whale. One hopes for original thought and creative ideas from a mind like Gore's as one hopes to walk on water. America was clearly wrong to elect George W. Bush president in the year 2000, and America was even more wrong to reelect Bush in 2004. On the other hand, America was right to reject Al Gore. For all he's a champion of environmentalism and technology, The Assault on Reason clearly shows Gore is not the man who could or would lead this nation to a democratic republican renaissance.
1 No scholar myself, I arrived at a similar conclusion intuitively and threw the television out of my house in 1974, in the middle of the Watergate hearings. My first exposure to literature about television's insidious intellectual toxicity was Jerry Mander's excellent Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (New York: William Morrow, 1978).
With this book, with his indictment of television, Gore could have led readers to see that getting rid of George Bush and Dick Cheney is merely the necessary first item on a large list of urgently needed, long overdue, systemic reforms. Gore failed to do so. Others can say what they will: I say The Assault on Reason crashes on the rock of that failure.
When I was a young man, I found that going alone for two or three days into the vastness of the Arizona desert deepened my understanding of my self and helped me get along in the world. Countless others, better minds by far than my own, have realized personal growth through immersion in solitude. Jesus, for one, spent 40 days in the wilderness and came back preaching the long view: "Repent," he cried, "for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." (Matt. 4:17) Al Gore, by comparison, spent four years in the political wilderness after his Y2K defeat and now comes back preaching: "The last two centuries have demonstrated the superiority of free market economies over centralized economies and the superiority of democracy over forms of government that concentrate power in the hands of a few." (Assault, p. 100)
There it is: Al Gore is incapable of the long view because he can't see out of the whale. One hopes for original thought and creative ideas from a mind like Gore's as one hopes to walk on water. America was clearly wrong to elect George W. Bush president in the year 2000, and America was even more wrong to reelect Bush in 2004. On the other hand, America was right to reject Al Gore. For all he's a champion of environmentalism and technology, The Assault on Reason clearly shows Gore is not the man who could or would lead this nation to a democratic republican renaissance.
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