Al Gore Speaks His Mind (Again) — Read it!
“The Assault on Reason” (Al Gore)
I’ve been listening to the unabridged audiobook version of Al Gore’s latest book The Assault on Reason, and it is chilling in its dissection of how our country’s democracy has been dismantled by six years of the Bush-Cheney administration. What Gore writes has been written by others in a variety of other venues; however, he has laid it all out in a logical sequence: the power of television to influence ignorant Americans; Bush-Cheney’s belief in the “unitary executive” (a right-wing political philosophy that believes that the Executive Branch of American government is and should be stronger than the Legislative and Judicial branches, and that efforts must be taken to strengthen that superiority in power); the lies that led to the Iraq war; the squandering of the world’s good will after 9/11/2001 with an unprecedented power grab all leading to an unnecessary war. The list of offenses goes on and on. As I read the book, I keep wondering how so much time was spent on impeaching President Clinton over an extramarital affair, when Bush has been caught time and again lying to the American public and breaking laws that the Congress has passed. (The unauthorized wiretapping of American citizens’ telephone calls without warrant is one vivid example.) These, I believe, are impeachable offenses.
The unfortunate fact, however, is that Gore’s book will be read by a relative few of the American populace, and of those few, almost entirely by those who are already convinced of his arguments. It reads like the political platform and exegesis of a man ready to enter the presidential race, although Gore continues to deny that he is running.
Maybe he needs to do for American democracy what he has done for climate change: a broad-based public series of lectures or slide shows about how American government works. Maybe we need a distinguished statesman-teacher to gives us an ongoing civics lesson, to teach us again the meaning of true political discourse in which reason plays a greater role than the barrage of thirty-second special interest television commercials.
Bad News, Bushie!
It’s been a bad day at the end of a bad week for George W. Bush. I can’t think of anyone more deserving. At mid-day today it was revealed that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s name, was indicting Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. Yesterday, Bush’s nominee for the Supremes, Harriet Miers, withdrew after withering criticism from the far right wing of the Republican party. The Bush administration still hasn’t gotten it together after the Hurricane Katrina fiasco, and it doesn’t sound good about the relief efforts after last week’s Hurricane Wilma in Florida.
I guess it is too much to hope that this fraying around the edges of this most disciplined of White House administrations will turn into a general unraveling. I am still hoping that Karl Rove will “get his” big time (Fitzgerald has not yet closed the book on his investigation, and he’s still sniffing around about Rove.) But the good news is that these “little difficulties” mean that Bush is no longer invincible, and his opposition likely will be emboldened, especially if Rove is out of the picture.
Maybe the Union will be saved yet.
The Catastrophe Only Gets Worse and What You Can Do
We have all watched over the past five days as the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina has unfolded, each day getting worse. Today it appears that civil society in New Orleans has unraveled, with snipers preventing the evacuation of a hospital and corpses rotting on the street. The situation becomes every day more like an apocalyptic science fiction movie (think “Mad Max”), and is clearly now a disaster of race and class. The people who are left in New Orleans are overwhelmingly black and poor. Anyone with money and/or connections is gone. There is as yet no effective response from the federal government (yet George W. Bush will have a photo op in New Orleans today to “show solidarity.”) Skip the pics, Mr. President, and get the troops in.
The pictures of the people with either nothing but the clothes on their backs or small plastic bags carrying the remnants of their earthly possessions prompted me to think (in my very middle class way) of what I would take if I had 90 minutes to get out of my house: my checkbook, a laptop computer and charger, my passport for ID, perhaps the statement of my retirement account, some family photos.
Today I have made two monetary donations as a small part of the relief effort: to the American Red Cross and to the National Disaster Fund of the United Church of Christ, of which denomination I am a member. The UCC site also has a mechanism to register as a potential volunteer in the future to help with rebuilding (volunteers are not wanted or needed right at the present). Please, if you are reading this, consider making a donation to either the Red Cross or a relief charity of your own choosing.
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