I never spend money for political books for the same reason I never buy clothing with a logo on it. Thus I write this now only because my creaky old landlady rented Al Gore’s DVD, 'An Inconvenient Truth,' and watched it. That experience got her so het up that she laid out still more of her precious Social Security dollars for a copy of Gore’s latest book, 'The Assault on Reason' (New York: Penguin Press, 2007, $25.95).

Now she’s got the book, the poor woman can’t understand it. She brought it to me and said: “You read a lot. Will you read this book and tell me what you think of it? Please?”

So I read 'The Assault on Reason,' and I told my landlady what I think of it, and now I’m telling the world: She’d have done better to spend her money on a Molly Hatchet souvenir T-shirt – one of those with a kick-ass, Frank Frazetta illustration on the back. She’d look better wearing the T-shirt than carrying the book around town because, while Gore’s book arguably makes a more high-toned visual statement, the shirt would cover more and cover it to a better purpose.

Not to say that 'The Assault on Reason' is entirely Wrong. 'Assault' does in fact have a couple of good points. One is that there’s humor here. On page 35, for example, Gore explains how to hypnotize a chicken – a trick he learned while growing up on a farm in Tennessee. “There’s a lot you can do with a hypnotized chicken,” he writes. “You can use it as a paperweight, or you can use it as a doorstop, and either way, the chicken will sit there motionless, staring blankly.”

I laughed as I imagined walking into the Gores’ home and seeing hypnotized chickens act as doorstops and paperweights and performing other helpful tasks. I couldn’t figure out how I grew up on a farm in Iowa without learning to hypnotize chickens. I laughed much harder when it came to me that I never learned to hypnotize chickens because I had a girlfriend. My laughter grew hysterical when I wickedly pondered how far the story about Al and the chickens might go toward explaining Al’s relationship with Tipper.

I found more good yocks on page 95, where Gore quotes economist John Kenneth Galbraith: “Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it’s just the opposite.” (Readers shouldn’t fret if they’re not laughing with me at Galbraith's quip. That the best jokes are never funny is simply one of those ironies that put me in stitches whenever I’m reminded of them.)

Another good point about 'Assault' is that it’s built correctly. Gore divided his book of 308 pages into an 'Introduction' and nine chapters of more or less equal length. The front of the book features a 'Contents' section. At the end there is a brief 'Conclusion,' after which Gore pays his debts with some 'Acknowledgments.' The 'Notes' are informative, though I can’t say I care for the method of citation employed. The 'Index' looks good if one doesn’t actually use it. Start asking questions of the 'Index,' one finds it’s incomplete. Strictly regarding appearances, however, 'Assault' includes everything readers expect from a competent author and a respectable press.

Gore’s argument is straightforward. His contentions, stripped of the evidence with which he supports them, can be summarized in a few paragraphs --

-- America’s democratic republic, as The Founders conceived and designed it, relies upon our free press as a marketplace of ideas. It was supposed that literate, politically conscious citizens would visit the marketplace, pick over the wares, inform themselves, and use what they learn to make rational decisions about politics and government. Problems arise when our free press abandons its duty to purvey useful information. If the press devotes itself instead to blind partisanship, inanity and fear-mongering, the marketplace of ideas becomes a poisoned well that cannot sustain our democratic, republican system.

-- The problem of silly, biased, fear-mongering journalism was bad enough before television, when America got the bulk of its news from print media. Today, when America gets the bulk of its news from television, the problem is much worse. That’s because, in order to get the message conveyed by printed words, readers must engage in rational thought about what they’re reading even as they read it. Television, on the other hand, is a medium that bypasses reason and appeals directly to the gut.

-- Television advertising, in particular, is scientifically designed to play upon viewers’ subconscious fears in ways that evoke a gut response of a certain sort at a rate of about once per second. The pace is hypnotic and is meant to be so: Minds mesmerized by fear can be taught to buy things they do not need, to fear things that don’t exist, and to like things that are not good for them. Advances in psychology and neuroscience are seized upon and put to use by advertisers, pollsters and media gurus, who work as hired guns for anyone who can afford them. Just as these people can sell us things we didn’t know we wanted, they can sell us political candidates, political issues, and ideologies we didn’t know we liked.

-- In the early 1960s, television replaced print media as America’s marketplace of ideas. Now, thanks to television, citizens who visit the marketplace to shop for ideas are increasingly illiterate, politically ignorant, and suffer from a diminished ability to reason. Thanks to television, America’s marketplace of ideas has been captured and is controlled by people whose agenda (to say the best of it) is elitist and anti-democratic. Thus television as we know it, Gore tells us, threatens to destroy America’s democratic republic.

Gore buttresses his argument by citing discoveries in neuroscience that explain how fear works on the human brain, how the brain is hard-wired so reactions prompted by fear are shunted around the reasoning process. He throws in evidence from psychology and from history, and in sum he makes a pretty good case.

At the same time, he tries to soften the impact of what he’s saying on those who might be offended by its implications: “I’m not saying that television viewers are like hypnotized chickens,” he writes, “But there may be some lessons for us larger-brained humans in the experiences of barnyard hens." (Assault, p. 36)

No doubt. And no doubt there are any number of teletubers out there who’ll squawk like outraged chickens when they’re told they don’t know as much as some of the birds in Tennessee. Disregarding their objections, however, there’s nothing new or wildly controversial in Gore’s indictment of television. Scholars have argued for decades that TV makes fools of those who watch it.* The honest public knows it’s true: They don’t call it 'the boob toob' for no reason.

Having identified television as a bane of rational thought that poisons Americans’ minds, Gore uses chapters 1 through 5 to indict the medium as an accomplice in various crimes against democracy. Chapter 1 discusses 'The Politics of Fear' (use of fear to gain power and manufacture consent); Chapter 2 is all about 'Blinding the Faithful' (hijacking and weaponization of religion for political ends); Chapter 3 explains 'The Politics of Wealth' (corruption, monopoly, media manipulation); Chapter 4 names some 'Convenient Untruths' (substitution of crank ideology for rational policy, use of mass deception to justify same, use of secrecy to duck responsibility for resultant chaos); Chapter 5 describes 'The Assault on the Individual' (diminishment and/or nullification of civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution).

Readers who are not teletubers should find nothing new or wildly controversial in any of that, either. Americans who haven’t spent the last fifty years in a persistent vegetative state have seen all of those evils at play in our national affairs. And honest readers (be they sane) must also agree with chapters 6 through 8, where Gore recounts ways in which our leaders (primarily George Bush and his GOP), using television as described in chapters 1 through 5, have damaged our republic and our democracy.

That’s the last of my good news about 'The Assault on Reason.'

The first problem I noticed with 'Assault' is that it suffers for a lack of candor. On page 1, for example, Gore writes: “The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.” That’s true enough, but it overlooks the fact that, had American leadership always deemed falsehoods unacceptable as a basis for policy, the “reliance” Gore laments would never have been formed.

I also feel compelled to say that, as a reader, I’m willing to credit Gore with being a sane person and with owning a reasonably good memory. But if I do so then I’m stuck with the fact that he is lying to me: For if Gore is sane and has a good memory, then he obviously hopes readers have forgotten the things he said, the “facts” he employed, the rosy predictions he made – “even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary” – when, in 1993, he and President Bill Clinton rammed the North American Free-Trade Agreement (NAFTA) down America’s throat.

Gore commits the same crime on page 24, where he justly condemns the use of fear as a tool in American politics. And though on page 42 he writes that “the use of fear as a political tool is not new,” he somehow forgets to mention that he and his allies exploited fear without scruple when, in 1993, they gang-stomped Ross Perot in their rush to get NAFTA ratified.

Gore fudges again on page 81, charging that the Bush administration, in its 2003 rape of Medicare, used bribes and intimidation to extort “yes” votes from congressional representatives. I know he’s right. I also know that in the heat of the NAFTA haggle, the Clinton-Gore lobby twisted congressional arms and spent like drunken swabs in garnering votes to achieve their own corrupt ends. But Gore doesn’t confess that.

Of course the Democratic Party was in bygone times the leviathan of American politics. Gore lives deep inside that ancient, foetid whale** and there, in his dank, dark, “visceral prison,” may not see well enough to find his own backside. So it may be an ideologically induced purblindness and not a pathological dishonesty that causes Gore to make such oversights. But the oversights are there nonetheless, and their presence doesn’t flatter the author – even if they don’t all polish his own apple.

In his Introduction, Gore polishes journalism’s apple. There he tells us that at the time of the O.J. trial, he thought “ . . . exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the trial was just an unfortunate excess – an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time.” ('Assault,' p. 3)

“Normal good sense and judgment of our television news media?” “An early example of a new pattern?” Oh, puh-LEEZE, Mr. Gore! People have complained, scholars and even journalists themselves have written about the imbecility of television news for decades. TV news may be exponentially worse now than it was in years past, but, being nearly 59 years old myself, I don’t recall that TV news was ever such a much.

Gore shines up to journalism again on page 17, where he states flatly that “this generation of journalists is the best-trained and most highly skilled in the history of their profession. But they are often not allowed to do the job they have been trained to do.”

How’s about that one, historians? If Al Gore hadn’t told us so, we might never have known that Judith Miller is a better journalist than Ida Tarbell, that Sean Hannity is better than Ed Murrow, or that Cal Thomas is better than H.L. Mencken.

But perhaps Gore didn’t mean it that way. What seems base flattery of the sociopathic careerists who presently characterize coverage of our national news may be nothing more than an attempt to except or insulate news-media grunts from criticism, which Gore in the next few chapters fires at news media themselves and at the monied interests that control them. If such an exception was his intent, he should have written it plainly rather than couch it in an outrageous statement that raises doubts about his knowledge, his motives, his vision, his judgment and his courage. As it is, one finds good reason to question all those things in this hypnotized turkey of a book.

Regarding the War on Drugs: Gore passes up several opportunities to denounce the drug war or to call for an end of it. Instead, he writes that “ . . . the global challenge of defeating drugs and corruption . . . has never been more serious given the growing strength and sophistication of international crime organizations.” (p. 163)

Regarding the War on Terror: Gore writes that “Our top priority should be preserving what America represents . . . and winning the war against terrorism first.” (p. 177)

Nowhere in 'Assault' does Gore question either the drug war or the terror war as policy. Instead, Gore asserts repeatedly (explicitly or implicitly) that Bush is screwing up those wars and that Gore (or another Democrat) could run them more effectively. Thus there’s nothing new here, nothing bold or innovative, just more of the same old, boringly familiar, carefully triangulated, entirely illiberal and ineffective, Clintonesque, GOP-Light, New-Democrat donkey crap. There may be some difference between positions staked out by Gore in 2007 and those taken by John Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000, but I don’t believe the difference would buy my landlady a used T-shirt at the Salvation Army.

Coming from an influential Democrat, Gore’s argument against television at first seems to hold a great deal of promise. But that argument and the hope it engenders soon get lost, buried beneath tons of rage against the Bush régime. Between pages 102 and 238 (fully half of the text), the word “television” gets no mention whereas Bush and his GOP get their asses beat on virtually every page. When in Chapter 9 Gore finally returns to his prosecution of television, he does so only to offer an uproariously stupid and utterly self-serving solution, which he claims to believe will break the grip that commercial television and its army of brilliantly talented, professional liars now hold on the mind of America. I won’t tell here what Gore’s proposed solution is because – if you’re dumb enough to buy 'The Assault on Reason' after reading this review – you still deserve one good laugh for your money.

At the beginning of 'The Assault,' Gore serves up a caveat: “It is too easy – and too partisan – to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes.” (p. 2) That’s plain enough, and it’s absolutely right. Yet I think it is insufficient because that caveat, like Gore’s indictment of television, gets lost in the tenor and intensity of the Bush bashing that takes over the narrative in subsequent chapters. And while Gore frequently dips into history to add depth and weight to his arguments, his dipping too often works either to puff himself up or to beat Bush down.

Without defending Bush in any way (Nobody deserves 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.

A longer, more informed view of history recalls Gore’s caveat and would call readers 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 truly lousy 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. (pp. 271-73)

With this book, with his indictment of television, with the political mojo he's acquired from his environmental activism, Gore could have led readers (especially including rank-and-file Democrats) to see that getting rid of George Bush and Dick Cheney is merely the necessary first item on a lengthy list of urgently needed systemic reforms. With this book, Gore fails (refuses?) to pick up the reins of leadership. Others can say what they will: I say that -- all of its other shortcomings aside -- 'The Assault on Reason' crashes on the rock of that failure, alone.

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 keep me sane in a world that makes no sense. 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.” (Matthew 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 Al Gore cannot see outside 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 may be a technophile and an ardent environmentalist, 'The Assault on Reason' clearly shows that Gore is not a man who could or would lead this nation to a democratic-republican renaissance.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

* 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 intellectual toxicity was Jerry Mander’s excellent 'Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television' (New York: William Morrow, 1978).

** Thank you, St. George. ( )

Articulate. ( )

Synopsis: Al Gore takes a look at how the American people have become disconnected to democracy. Since the inventions of radio and especially television, Americans have had a one-sided assault and have lost their chance to reason. He also explores the Bush administration's one-sidedness and reasonings for the Iraq war, economy, environment and how that affects the future and compares with past administrations.

Pros: Compelling and truthful account on what has gone on with the current administration and how detached our country has become. Many examples of corruption in politics, yet the conclusion still offers hope.

Cons: He repeated himself on many topics, which dragged on. Some parts seemed disorganized. (The same sentence was used twice a couple of paragraphs apart) ( )

An excellent re-hash of the cynicism and incompetence of the second Bush administration. A little poorly organized in places but the sincereity he expresses over the degradation of our constitutional government is obvious. ( )

In just a few months in the United States, we will have a VERY important decision to make as citizens of this county - who are we going to choose to lead the nation for the next four, possibly eight, years? Anyone planning to take part in that decision should read this book, no matter who you plan on voting for (and especially if you are not sure yet!). Not because Al Gore has anything specific to say about the upcoming election or the candidates involved (he doesn’t), but because he has plenty to say about what went wrong last time, and how we allowed our fears, our ignorance, and our blind faith to lead us to a president who simply disappointed this country in so many ways, time and time again.

Now I’m very aware that not everyone that reads this blog is liberal minded like I am, definitely not everyone has the same utmost respect for Gore like I do (I really do think he’s a brilliant man), and some of you may even still believe that Bush has been a good president. However, I think this book will really open up some eyes - it certainly opened my eyes up to a lot of things, and I have already done a lot of reading on this subject and agree with most of the arguments! One of the major points that Gore makes in the book is that regardless of whether you agree or disagree with a person or an idea, it is so crucially important to democracy to really understand that person/idea so that a reasonable discussion/debate can be had. If we simply take things at face value and blindly follow our leaders, we can end up in some very awful situations (most people, myself included, would say that the war in Iraq and the crisis of global warming are two of these such situations). So even if you think that Bush is second only to the god of your choice, I still really, really believe that this book (and other books like it) are valuable to read if only to explore other ideas and help you further understand your own beliefs.

Ok. Off my soapbox now. As is crystal clear, I really enjoyed The Assault on Reason and would highly recommend it. ( )

I'm an Al Gore fan (I desperately wish he was president right now), but this book was pretty boring--ended up skimming it for the most part. But, good point about the internet needing to stay open. ( )

If you're still on the fence about whether G.W. Bush is the worst president in history or just one of the worst, then this scholarly, blunt, and often repetitive book is for you. Personally, I'm tired of reading about him. ( )

I listened to this on CD--my only complaint is that I wish it were read by Gore himself. This is a fabulous book--a real wake up call to those who have been lulled into a stupor by the Bush Administration's endless lies and the staggering lack of response from, well, all of us.

This is a profound book filled with frightening accounts of the history that lead up to modern politics and the recent steps our government has taken that fundamentally cripple the foundation of our Constitution. ( )

Al Gore wrote this book to alarm and warn us that this country is being taken over by people who will do and say anything to get their way. These people do not want us to use our reasoning powers because if we did their agenda would be exposed. This book is a call to us to use our good sense and reasoning to look at everything that is being done in our name. The war in Iraq is a good example. We let our country be railroaded into this illegal and immoral war by the Bush administration who lied to us and the main stream media who did Bush's bidding. Gore gives us leadership and hope in taking back our country. ( )

The book is incredibly thoughtful and reasonably well-written. Overall, I would have liked more optimism and focus on the internet as a new medium for two-way communication and political involvment. There was a bit of this at the end, but I wanted to hear more. I didnt' think that the points about the danger of television as a medium for reasoned debate was compelling. I also was expecially interested in the sponsorship of conferences for judges. I think this sort of pernicious and insidious work id the most dangerous attack on our system. Similarly, this administration has packed so many civil service jobs (that don't turn over with an administration change) with political appointments that I'm quite concerned about the ability of the next administration to remedy the problems across government agencies that have become prevalent during the past eight years. ( )

I voted for Al Gore in 2000, but I've grown to like him a lot more since then. He gets historically screwed, then watches the guys who screwed him do a royal job of wrecking the country. Does he fall into a lasting, soul-crushing depression and fade from public view entirely? No. For a couple of years, because the country has been attacked and needs to pull together, he goes around saying "George Bush is my president and I support him." Then, when it becomes clear that Bush is abusing his power in every possible way, Gore does his patriotic duty and speaks out, much earlier than most people are willing to do so, even though media empires exist merely to paint Gore as an irrelevant whining weenie. And THEN, oh yeah, everyone finally catches up with his decades-long crusade to save the entire freaking EARTH.

I ask you: Is there anyone on earth more qualified to lead the free world? Where?

Anyway, Gore's latest book is The Assault on Reason, and I'm very glad that someone of Gore's stature is willing to point out that our national discourse has become almost mindless. Democratic populations are easy to manipulate when they stop thinking, and how best to make them stop thinking? Scare them. Gore lays out the ways in which the Bushies have done this. He laments the replacement of print-based national debate with TV-based demagoguery. He hopes very much that the interactive nature of the Internet will encourage and allow more of the citizenry to take part in governance. (He appears to dream of 21st-century democracy as a fabulous, enormous wiki.) I hope he's right, for I'm sick of living in a country that has no respect for reason.

Gore is not the most fluid writer, but man, does he know a lot of stuff. He discusses the neurological aspects of fear. He quotes German philosophers. He's up on technology, obviously. He's been following and publicizing the process of climate change for years. In this book, he takes information from various fields of inquiry and uses them to come up with big, practical-sounding ideas. He's a nerd. Too bad much of the American electorate resents nerds.

The core idea of the book is that the state of political discourse in America has been compromised by such things as the lack of interaction and the sound bite effect of TV. He makes a good case, and perhaps the book will help revive citizen participation in the American polity. ( )

Gore provides thought-provoking insights into how politicians manipulate the media to further their agendas. He effectively demonstrates how the "politics of fear" can be cunningly advanced. He also shows how complex issues can be oversimplified and "sold" to a mass audience using some of the same advertising/public relations techniques that were used in prior eras to sell everything from Betty Crocker products to cigarettes. The book looks at everything from infotainment(entertainment masked as news), to the impact of media consolidations.
There are dozens of revealing nuggets in this book. Sadly, "The Assault on Reason" is undermined by occasional redundancies and wordiness. Gore's book suffers from the same flaw that mars many political speeches and presidential campaigns -- it simply goes on too long! ( )

I picked up this book because I felt it would directly address one of the concerns I have about this administration. It seems everything is ideological, and it doesn't matter if the evidence doesn't support the plan. This is a faith-based administration. If they believe hard enough, then Iraq will be the keystone in a new chain of Middle Eastern democracies, and Tinkerbell will survive another day.

I do feel, like many others, that Al Gore could have made this book half its length and not lost a bit of rhetoric. His style is extremely clear, almost to a fault. On the plus side, he pulls pieces of evidence that have been scattered across six years of this Administration into one argument citing the loss of independent media, freedom of information, and freedom of speech. On the down side, I sometimes had flashbacks to high school essays. ("This book is about X,Y & Z. Chapter 2 is about X, Chapter 3 about Y and Chapter 4 about Z.")

Gore has collected a wide array of evidence and he speaks strongly about his fears for a disempowered and disheartened public, abandoning the political arena to politicians. He is not as exact as Seymour Hersch, but then again he's far more readable. Hersch explains the forest through the bryophytes on the trees. Gore just describes the canopy, which in most cases is enough.

The Assault on Reason is a quick read, and an angering one. Certainly worth a read if you are experiencing flagging fury and wish to enliven yourself before the beginning of the new election. ( )

08.21.2007
after completing chapter 2

For a change of pace, I am reviewing a book as I read it. It will probably not be a significant book in my reading history, but it speaks to my political history and lets me imagine an alternative political present and future. This I need.

I purchased The Assault on Reason (Bloomsbury, 2007) by Al Gore to cast a vote once again for Al Gore for President. I even purchased it in Australia at an inflated price, without my customary US discount, to show my support for Gore and what he stands for. I wanted to say if he were running again, I would vote for him again—even though I fear he would lose yet again. I will read the book publicly on the plane home. I will display it prominently on my coffee table, as I did An Inconvenient Truth. It is my bumper sticker, my yard sign. It says, “Don’t blame me. I voted right.”

But this is not simply a book of an “also ran.” Its message is not, “I told you so.” I sorta wish it were, for I wish he had. The Assault on Reason is not a fiery assault on the unreasonable. I sorta wish it were.

What it is is Al Gore. Reading it helps me imagine what our world might be like now if this thoughtful, studious, decent, gentle man had been our president for the past eight years. But reading it also reminds me of why he was not elected decisively and why he probably would not be in our current milieu. For Al Gore is not fightin’ mad. And Al Gore writes — well, like Al Gore talks. Not to the “common man,” or even to the “common reader.” For those who are already informed on his topic or who already agree with him, he doesn’t say much new. For those who are ill-informed or who disagree (or who have labeled him “preppy” or somewhat “namby-pamby”), he doesn’t say anything likely to persuade them otherwise or to persuade them to rethink their position. His critics likely will cockily dismiss him yet again as an “ivory-tower” liberal, more preppy than practical, more academic than reliable. In his campaign he needed a speech writer to translate his powerful ideas into powerful prose and his good intentions into language that is clear and down-to-earth, that comes right out and assaults the unreasonable.

Instead he tends to write in abstractions and generalizations. On the one hand, for the well-informed, he writes not so much as a scholar but as a student, almost as a school boy. His quotations from famous names read a bit as if they came from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. For the ill-informed, he doesn’t tell enough of the story. He doesn’t dwell on the telling details. He doesn’t build a case for a jury of his peers, or to be more accurate the peers of the accused.

Oh, his message is powerful, his points well taken; his ideas deserve thoughtful consideration. Here, for instance is an early statement of his thesis (or two or three theses) taken from the introduction:

“The combination of ever more sophisticated public opinion sampling techniques and the increasing use of powerful computers to parse and subdivide the American people according to ‘psychographic’ categories that identify their selective susceptibility to individually tailored appeals has further magnified the power of propagandistic electronic messaging that has created a harsh new reality for the functioning of our democracy.”

One loses count of the statements embedded in that one sentence. All of them are important, by the way; but one wants to say to the writer, “Show us, Al! Shout it out!! Let us hear what ya got to say!” With the eloquence of a Bill Moyers or the clarity of a Molly Ivins or the specificity of a Frank Rich, this could be a great book. Its message is one that needs to be heard and acted upon. Gore repeats his message again and again, but seldom shows us and never shouts it out.

The Introduction is really an opening chapter that might be called, “The Media as a Public Forum.” It has apt quotations and citations: John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippman, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson, Marshall McLuhan, Dan Rather, and German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as well as the former head of the National Security Agency and the chair of the National Committee on Education by Radio in the 1930s. It traces the origin of the public forum to the invention of the printing press and the success of the Founding Fathers’ vision of democracy to their effective use of the press. But in his accurate account of the transition to electronic media, he includes only two specific accounts, each limited to a brief paragraph — one from his own senatorial campaign, one involving a MoveOn commercial refused by CBS. We long for more particulars and more dramatic details. We need to see those “sampling techniques” and “psychographic categories” and “propagandistic electronic” messages; we need to see them in action, as they actually work. Details, details, details. “We must create new ways to engage in a genuine and not manipulative conversation about our future,” Gore says. Yes, indeed, Al. Show us. Shout it out!

The chapters go on: generalization without scholarly depth, occasional particularization without dramatic details; citations without analysis of critical incidents. One chapter, on political fearmongering, focuses on brain research and propagandistic techniques: “repeating the same threat over and over again, misdirecting attention (from Al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein) and using vivid imagery (a ‘mushroom cloud over an American city’).” Another chapter, “Blinding the Faithful,” puts the manipulation of religious sects in the context of a broader political alliance: (1) economic royalists, (2) global imperialists, (3) governmental authoritarians, masking as antigovernment forces, (4) propagandists masking as news reporters and commentators (the “Limbaugh-Hannity-Drudge axis”) and (5) religious extremists and fundamentalists. “While this new coalition, a group of ultraconservative religious leaders (who are actually primarily politicians) provide manpower and voter turnout.” The economic royalists provide the financial backing; the extremists provide the numbers; and each empowers, emboldens, and enriches the other.

08.23.2007
after completing chapter 6

In The Assault on Reason (Bloomsbury, 2007), Al Gore gradually but definitely does reach a rhetorical peak — sensible, unemotional, but confident, clear, rational, and eventually (by chapter 6, “National Insecurity”) reasonable, specific, direct, even succinct. In his brief account of the changing relationship between economic power and political power (chapter 3, “The Politics of Wealth”), one sees his sense of history, his respect for balance, and his commitment to continual reform. He notes that as early as 1787, Thomas Jefferson envisioned a bill of rights that would include, along with freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and trial by jury, an item stipulating “no monopolies in commerce.” I count at least nine events that Gore sees marking the developmental stages of the relationship between wealth and political dominance: (1) the rejection of John Adams’ proposal to restrict voting rights to property owners; (2) the acceptance of slavery (“the odious ‘three-fifths’ clause”) in the Constitution; (3) Lincolns’ emancipation act, but his simultaneous reliance on large corporations to produce munitions, transport troops, and win the war, forcing “the industrial strength of the North against the largely agrarian economy of the south”; (4) an 1886 Supreme Court decision accepting the legal treatment of corporations as “p-ersons”; (5) the muck rakers’ use of the public forum to document corrupt influence of industrial wealth on government; (6) the Progressive movement, especially Theodore Roosevelt’s actions against “this invisible government” of monopolies;; (7) the first electronic medium, radio, controlled commercially by corporations but at least restricted in the USA by the “equal time rule,” the Fairness Doctrine, and “the public interest standard”; (8) also in 1922, witness to the rise of Stalin, Musolini, and Hitler, whose power as dictators was consolidated by the use of state radio and the skillful use of propaganda; and (9) the development of psychology-based communication by Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, eventually leading to capaitalistic control of the media and of audience thinking (Walter Lippman’s phrase, “the manufacture of consent”). The ultimate triumph of corporate control over the public forum cam during the Reagan administration with the removal of those constraints that had prevented the propagandistic power of radio in the USA. Television is even more a one-way communication system than radio, requiring large capital investments to control the networks and also to purchase their use to spread ideas and opinions. Hence, the dominance of of corporate wealth in manipulating public thinking, the amalgamation of various media forces into today’s super-monopolies underlie the contemporary public assault on reason. “Greed and wealth now allocate power in our society, and that power is used in turn to further increase and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the few.”

Of all the quotations Gore includes, perhaps the most provocative and frightening is from Bernays: “If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?” The next three chapters of Gore’s book provide a clear, well-documented analysis of the current Bush administration’s success at manufacturing consent, especially with regard to the invasion of Iraq, its consolidation of presidential authority, its attack on the rights of individual citizens, and its disrespect for international law and treaties. To readers of liberal webpages, like Huffington Post, Raw Story, and Truthout—examples of an open forum for rational argument—most of this is old news. But what is surprising and unsettling is that to the USAmerican public generally it is all unknown or has been ignored or is simply accepted either as inevitable or even positive. Corporate America, political authoritarianism, and religious fundamentalism have indeed manufactured consent to dictatorial poer, ruthless imperialism, and the abrogation of personal liberties. The consequence are perilous. As the dean of the Yale Law School is quoted as saying, “If the president has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.” Frightening! Frightening, indeed!

As specific and convincting as Gore’s arguments are are in these central chapters, one is left with many questions. For example, exactly how have corporations and particular corporate executives profited from the Iraq invasion/occupation and other Bush initiatives? How are these connected to the Bush dynasty? Even more important, why has the political opposition not attacked these abuses? To what extent are Congressional Democrats and prospective presidential candidates also under the control of wealth and corporate privilege? And what exactly are the connections between these corporate forces and the dominant media; for example, reputable newspapers, national television networks, and advertising agencies? What is the danger that these forces will gain commercial control of the Internet? It is time to name names, to make visible “this invisible government.”

Secrecy has been one of the principal components of the assault on reason. But simple inattention is another. What can be known about political power and privilege, must be known. Who pays? Who profits? And how? Moreover, there are other recent developments in the rise of capitalists to power: tax legislation favoring the affluent, the reemergence of monopolites and, now the introduction of huge conglomerates, the ever-widening wedge between CEOs’ income and their employees’ earnings, and continuation of all parts of corporate welfare. But there is more, and there will be more.

What is at once both heartening and disheartening is the occasional glimpse one gets of what a Gore presidency (the legitimate presidency) might have been like:

“If we had behaved as a democracy, we would not have invaded Iraq. We can effectively defend ourselves abroad and at home without dimming our core principles. Indeed, our success in defending ourselves depends precisely on not giving up what we stand for. Our top priority should be preserving what America stands for in the world and winning the war against terrorism first.”

“One of the central points of this book is that we as Americans should have ‘known then what we know now’—not only about the invasion of Iraq but also about the climate crisis, and what would happen if the levees failed to protect New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and about many other fateful choices that have been made on the basis of flawed and even outright false information. We could have known and we should have known, because the information was readily available. We should have known years ago about the potential for a global HIV/AIDS pandemic.”

“ . . . after World War II, there was an enlightened vision embodied in the Marshall Plan, the UN, NATO, and all of the other nation-building efforts that in turn led directly to the conditions that fostgered prosperity and American leadership through the world.”

The first couple of chapters were amazing! I really enjoyed how Gore explored the aspects of fear and psychology in overcoming our reason.

I liked the section about the 3 parts our lives: reason, faith, and passion/emotion. And how fear, which would be part of passion, is so strong as to overcome our ability to reason effectively.

How fear is used by governments, Bush/Cheney, and tyrants, in effective propaganda to control the people, to manufacture consent of the people.

How TV is basically a harmful one-way form of communication, detrimental to a robust 2-way marketplace of ideas which is essential to a healthy democracy. Compare one-way TV to 2-way forms of communication like the printing press and the internet.

At times, Gore let his left-wing politics shine through a bit too much for my taste, but overall he surprised me with his excellent writing skills and extensive research. ( )

Al Gore has some important and extremely salient points about the media and it's influence over our democratic processes. As well as how the modern political machine has learned to exploit our very human nature. He does repeat himself a little, and if you happen to align your politics with the current administration you'll find some of his attacks brutal (I loved it), but on the whole it's a great read and made me realize that our democracy is not to be taken for granted, but to be protected. ( )

First let me say that I don’t read books about U.S. politics anymore. I love to read nonfiction on just about any topic, including world politics, but I’ve given up on U.S. politics. I’ve become resigned to passive powerlessness and hopelessness.

So why did I read Assault on Reason by Al Gore? I read it because I, like the vast majority of U.S. citizens today, feel strongly that the United States is going in the wrong direction and I wanted to know why. I’d heard that this book took a wise, well-reasoned, and non-biased elder statesman’s view on what was wrong and why. Naturally, I was skeptical. Before reading this book, I no more trusted Al Gore than I trusted any other politician. But unlike other politicians, I have grown to respect Gore’s active role in bringing the issues of global warming to the forefront of U.S. politics—so it must be, I reasoned, that underneath all that distasteful past impassioned political posturing, was in fact, a highly intelligent and experienced statesman with a strong moral compass.

Once I picked up the book, I could honestly hardly put it down. It kept me fully intellectually engaged (and yes, even entertained!) throughout. I felt like the fog had lifted and I was finally able to see clearly where I was. I was in a country that was quickly slipping the moorings of democracy that our Founding Fathers had set so steadfastly over 230 years ago.

Here was Gore, of all people, keeping me on the edge of my seat while deftly explaining, in unusually clear, statesman-like prose, what was wrong and why. Here were reasoned arguments backed up by well-researched examples and facts. I kept asking myself: Did Al Gore really write this? The prose was so articulate—it showed a true love for the beauty of well-constructed, well-reasoned argument. I was astounded. I did not know Gore had all this in him!

I’m not going to summarize what Gore says in this book. Others have done that here far better than I can. What I do want to stress is that this book is not only very readable, but for this reader at least, an absolute joy to read! Whatever you think about Gore, please put that aside, pick up this book and see if you are not captivated by it after reading the first chapter. And if you finish it, see if you don’t come away with a clearer view of why we are headed in the wrong direction and what is needed from all of us to bring our government back on course. ( )

The Assault On Reason by Al Gore should be required reading for all high schools. It is a very readable case for saving and restoring democracy in the United States of America. In an attempt to reason an explanation as to how we lost the government by the people that our founding leaders established with the carefully worded and much thought out Constitution, Mr. Gore analyzes the effects of the printing press, radio, television and the Internet on the American public and their ability to make informed and rational decisions in order to "rule by the many" our nation.

Marshall McLuhan described television as a "cool" medium in comparison to the "hot" medium of the written word. By that McLuhan meant that the brain activity of someone reading (and comprehending) the written word is very different than the brain activity of someone watching television. Gore points out,
"Although it is true that television does not elicit the same cerebral response, it definitely does stimulate the flow of much more energy in different areas of the brain. And the passivity associated with watching television is at the expense of activity in parts of the brain associated with abstract thought, logic, and the reasoning process.

Any new dominant communications medium leads to a new information ecology in society that inevitably changes the way ideas, feelings, wealth, power, and influence are distributed - and the way collective decisions are made.

When a new technology emerges as the primary medium for the sharing of information - like the printing press in the fifteenth century or television in the twentieth century - those who adapt to the new technology have to literally change the way they process information. As a result, their brains may actually undergo subtle change. When millions of people experience these same changes simultaneously in the course of a few decades, their interactions with one another begin to take new forms.

An individual who spends four and a half hours a day watching television is likely to have a very different pattern of brain activity from an individual who spends four and a half hours a day reading."

The following stats are interesting ...

One-third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives. Many do not even graduate from high school.

58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.

42% of college graduates never read another book.

80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.

70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.

57% of new books are not read to completion.
--Jerrold Jenkins.
http://www.JenkinsGroup.com

Most readers do not get past page 18 in a book they have purchased.

Of the top fifty books, fiction outsells nonfiction about 60% to 40%. Fiction peaks in July at 70% but nonfiction reaches almost 50% in December.
--USA Today, April 30, 1999.
http://www.USAtoday.com

Each day, people in the US spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines.
--Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment bankers
http://www.veronissuhler.com

70% of Americans haven't visited a bookstore in five (5) years.
--Michael Levine, June 2002
http://www.LevinPR.com

Customers 55 and older account for more than one-third of all books bought.
--2001 Consumer Research Study on Book Purchasing by the Book Industry Study Group,
http://www.bisg.org

People reduced their time reading between 1996 and 2001 to 2.1 hours/month.
2001: per capita spending on books per month was $7.18.
--Publishers Weekly, May 26, 2003
http://www.PublishersWeekly.com

Only 32% of the U.S. population has ever been in a bookstore.
--David Godine, Publisher.

The time Americans spend reading books.
1996: 123 hours
2001: 109 hours
--Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment bankers
http://www.veronissuhler.com

The mean age of book buyers
1997: Age 15-39: 26.5% of the books bought
2001: Age 15-39: 20.8% of the books bought
1997: Age over 55: 33.7% of the books bought.
2001: Age over 55: 44.1% of the books bought
--Ipsos NPD reported in Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003

1992: 20% of adults in the U.S. read at or below the fifth grade level.
--National Adult Literacy Survey reported in Publishers Weekly, January 6, 2003.

"Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half have never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half."
--Gore Vidal, author. (This is a personal favorite of mine!)

There was a time when literacy and education were of great value not just to put on the old resume but to actually use. Those who could read and write, and you rarely found one without the other, were the leaders and decision makers. They discussed the information they gleaned from the pages with one another. Instead of asking neighbor Brown "How 'bout them Saints?" (or Cowboys or Stealers) they were talking about education for the children and taxes, etc. It follows that one enemy of reason is the change in the people of this country. It is our shared disinterest and passivity that has all but destroyed democracy in the U.S. of A. It is the fault of the people that we are now governed by a few instead of the many. We have reached a point where according to Gore,

"It may well be that the disuse of democracy’s calisthenics-the sharp decline in reading and writing-and the bombardment of every new fear with television commercials and simplistic nostrums disguised as solutions for the indicated fear has given American democracy an immune system disorder that prevents the citizenry from responding precisely, appropriately, and effectively to serious threats to the health of our democracy. So all of a sudden we overreact to illusory threats and underreact to real threats.

The disclosure that our government had been cruelly and routinely torturing captured prisoners – and was continuing to do so as official policy - provoked surprisingly little public outcry, even though it threatened America’s values and moral authority in the world. Similarly, the disclosure that the executive branch had been conducting mass eavesdropping on American citizens without respecting the constitutional requirement that it obtain judicial warrants - and was continuing to do so - caused so little controversy that the Congress actually adopted legislation approving and affirming the practice. Yet this action threatened the integrity of the Bill of Rights, which is at the heart of America’s gift to human history.

At the same time, the majority of citizens were led to wholeheartedly approve and endorse the invasion of a country that did not attack us and posed no threat to us. And there was little opposition expressed to the redeployment of US troops and other war fighting resources from the hot pursuit of the terrorists who actually did attack us and who actually do pose an ongoing threat. So how could we have become so confused about the difference between real threats and illusory threats?

There are many people in both political parties who worry that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush’s relationship to reason, his disdain for facts, and his lack of curiosity about any new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he is supposed to wrestle with on behalf of the country.

Yet Bush’s incuriosity and seeming immunity to doubt is sometimes interpreted by people who see and hear him on television as evidence of the strength of his conviction, even though it is this very inflexibility - this willful refusal even to entertain alternative opinions or conflicting evidence –that poses the most serious danger to our country.

By the same token, the simplicity of many of Bush’s pronouncements is often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, when in fact exactly the opposite is true: They often mark his refusal even to consider complexity."

And...

"Moreover, the diminished role of individuals in America’s national conversation has been accompanied by a diminished respect for the rights of individuals -especially during the Bush - Cheney administration.

For example, President Bush has declared that he has a heretofore unrecognized inherent power to seize and imprison any American citizen whom he alone determines to be a threat to our nation - without an arrest warrant, without notifying them of what charges have been filed against them, and without even informing their families that they have been imprisoned. The president claims that he can simply snatch an American citizen off the street and keep him or her locked up indefinitely – even for the rest of his or her life - and refuse to allow that citizen the right to make a phone call or talk to a lawyer - even to argue that the president or his appointees have made a mistake and imprisoned the wrong person.

All that is necessary to make this move legal, according to the president, is that he label that citizen an “unlawful enemy combatant.” Those are the magic words. If the president alone decides that those words accurately describe someone, then that person can be immediately locked up and held incommunicado for as long as the president wants, with no court having the right to determine whether the facts actually justify his imprisonment. These claims have been and are being challenged in court, but so far with only modest success.

...As Winston Churchill once put it, “The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”

The Supreme Court has recently disagreed with the administration’s bizarre claim of extralegal power, but the president engaged in legal maneuvers that have thus far prevented the Court from providing any meaningful relief for this abuse."

Half way through this book I had an overwhelming sense of defeat and loss. How can we ever have a true democracy again in my home land? Is there no hope? But just as he did in An Inconvenient Truth, Gore ends on a positive and optimistic note. There is hope that we will once again have a Well-Connected Citizenry that takes the government of this nation back. One medium of hope is the Internet and the connection it provides individuals to read and write and bond as interested and thoughtful citizens of the world. There are many active blogs and the numbers are growing exponentially. As Gore points out,
"The power of online organizing has also begun to create hope for many that America’s current system of financing political campaigns - now dominated by special interests - might eventually be replaced by the millions of small donations collected online outweighing the smaller number of larger contributions from big donors."

There is hope. Now is the time to change the course. The children of today are the leaders of tomorrow and they should be given every opportunity to learn to reason, now before it is truly too late.

"Almost three thousand years ago, Solomon warned that where there is no vision, the people perish. But surely the converse is also true. Where there is leadership with vision and moral courage, the people will flourish and redeem Lincoln’s prophecy at Gettysburg that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

The rule of reason is the true sovereign in the American system. Our self-government is based on the ability of individual citizens to use reason in holding their elected representatives, senators, and presidents accountable for their actions. When reason itself comes under assault, American democracy is put at risk.

Throughout history, those bent on domination have always seen reason as their enemy. Less than a century after the invention of the printing press, Henry VIII was challenged in 1543 by some of his subjects who had taken it upon themselves to question his authority after reading the newly available printed translations of the bible. His response was to outlaw Bible reading and severely punish transgressors.

Fredrick Douglass, a former slave who became the most eloquent American opponent of slavery, wrote about how his owner had forbidden him to learn to read. When he secretly gained literacy, he gained an ability to reason powerfully and to understand the evils of slavery.

One historian who has studied Douglass, Francois Furstenberg wrote: “It is striking that Douglass, who had experienced the brutal violence of slavery first hand, believed that illiteracy (as opposed to, say, brute force) explained ‘the white man’s power to enslave the black man.’ This realization was more than intellectual; it was a ‘revelation’ in all its religious sense. Joining the community of readers would be a new birth, converting Douglass from social death into new life. Suddenly Douglass understood the essential connection between literacy and liberty, ignorance and the ‘fitness’ to be a slave.”

Today, reason is under assault by forces using more sophisticated techniques: propaganda, psychology, electronic mass media. Yet democracy’s advocates are beginning to use their own sophisticated techniques: the Internet, online organizing, blogs, and wikis. I feel more confident than ever before that democracy will prevail and that the American people are rising to the challenge of reinvigorating self-government.

Dr Martin Luther King once said, ”Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.”"

Al Gore is but another human being, with all his flaws and missteps. However, you do not have to be an Al Gore fan to recognize that the message of this book is an important one. ( )

Gore's eloquent defence of the ideal of a democratic republic.

I had high hopes for this book, but I was ultimately disappointed by it. Though I'm normally reluctant to bother with books about contemporary politics, I was impressed enough by the excellent introduction that was printed in Time magazine that I decided to give this one a try. Unfortunately, Al Gore never really followed through on the promise of those first dozen pages though, and instead descended into exactly what I hate about such books.

He starts off with a fascinating enough question. On two separate vital issues (The threat of global warming, the threat posed by Saddam Hussein), the public was successfully misled, made to believe falsehoods, and ultimately made to support the wrong choices. It would be instructive to see what parallels exist between these cases and why the public made such bad choices in both cases. So I was expecting a book that looked at the big picture: why the electorate's political decisions have seemingly become so poor in the last half century. The introduction offers some damning anecdotes which point to a root cause - what happens to our brain what we watch TV and the mathematical precision by which 30 second ads can be used to boost polls, for example.

Having also identified television as a major culprit, I was looking forward to an extended discussion of how the media warps reality and distorts the public's ability to make good choices - through paid advertising, sound bites, sensationalism, etc. Although he touches on this (too lightly) in the first chapter and again in the last chapter... the middle of the book (probably 80% of it) is devoted to a diatribe against the Bush Administration.

Mind you, Bush deserves every damning thing said about him, but it's just not what I was expecting when I began the book. With the television era now going on over 50 years, I'd have expected that he could have drawn from a much larger sample of modern history to show the relationship between money, ads, and political decision making. Yet Gore devoted most of the book to simply listing the many egregious wrongs of the Bush Administration. And speaking as someone with his eyes open these last seven years, I learned nothing new from these chapters.

He does try to tell a consistent "story" of the Bush Administration, fitting the scandals together into an overall "assault on reason", but I felt this case was weak and lacks explanatory power. Had Gore continued along the lines of the introduction and first chapter, citing social psychological research and how it might apply to these scandal's and the electorate's reaction to them, he could have had a powerful and important book on his hands. Like I said above... disappointing. ( )

Al Gore should have been President. He should have fought the 2000 vote into the ground and gotten a full count, but he didn't. He went into the wilderness, and came back a stronger person. He wrote an amazing Keynote presentation and turned that into an Oscar. He gave amazing, intense speeches that pulled no punches. He toyed with running for poltical office and then he wrote this book.
If I were a columnist for the NY Times, I would say that it comes across snobby, hollow and an intesely self-serving argument. But I'm not David Brooks, the so-called Centrist Republican.
My review is that Gore may come across as a little too plodding, a little too preachy, but it does capture your attention and his argument rings absolutely true.
Gore argues that the lack of investigative journalism, the lack of literacy of the public, the misuse of propaganda and religion to cite as reasons for the decline of our democratic institutions. He ends by talking about how the Internet will make us more democratic by participating. He argues for Net neutrality, for the environment, for alternative energy, for transparency in government and for executive restraint. In the end, it might have been plodding, but it was the work of a great political mind that would have led the country into a very different place than we are right now. In fact, I seem to remember a SNL skit about just that... ( )

Only Al Gore could make such a distasteful subject so palatable. This is not an easy book to read, yet it certainly is well written. Several times I put it down in disgust. Even if he has engaged in a bit of hyperbole, and I desperately hope he has, Gore paints a striking picture of a republic in jeopardy, and a presidency interested primarily in the accrual of power.

Is there a way for us to bail off this handcart headed for you-know-where? Al Gore believes there is. After enumerating the Bush administration’s numerous shortcomings, and outright crimes against humanity, Gore iterates a doable if difficult recipe for reversing the dangerous path we’re on. For the sake of my children, I hope he’s right.

This is a must-read for anyone who plans to vote in the next U.S. presidential election. ( )