The state(s) of fallacies

IIPM PUBLICATION

Bushwhacked! Gore’s not giving up yet....

Armchair critics might be sniffing for another whiff of thick smog from the environmentally conscientious former Vice President of the States, or at least that’s the impression one gets, considering how far all the bushwhacking has taken Al Gore on the road to revival. Anyway, Gore’s ‘An Assault on Reason,’ in a sort of metaphor that mars the American landscape today, promises a structured and intelligently designed – and at times passionately raw – series of arguments impelling one to sit up and notice innumerable questionable and atrocious policy decisions that’s become so very dubiously Dubya’s.

The book is not an invasion. It’s ‘Bushvasion’, but with valid beliefs that are apparently apolitical. And for that, credit is due to Al Gore. In today’s day and age where ignorance needn’t be bliss, Gore presents a rather gory picture of the affaires quotidiennes of American politics and how reality television has been used as a tool against the common citizenry. “What has happened to our country? People are trying to figure out what has gone wrong in our democracy, and how we can fi x it.” Perhaps propagandist to conspired ears, but it is this theme that more or less forms the basis of Gore’s lengthy salutation to democracy, its functions, and its founders. And much like his blunt and piercing ‘Oscar-venture’ documentary on the climatic challenges that lie ahead, Al Gore talks about the dangers of a society without a conscience. A bunch that allows absurd reasons to bypass a war that killed 3,000 of their very own, and ravaged an already miserable nation. A society where newspapers have lost relevance and public opinions imposed by fashionably suited multimillionaire Congressmen who win elections sponsoring 30 seconds spots on TV but without much reason and without any debate. Amidst such ‘typically American trends’, Al Gore professes gloom.

It’s been seven long years since the fateful 2000 elections, following which Al Gore appeared to have pretty much resigned from public life. But that veiled existence was short term. Hanging up Democrat responsibilities, Mr. Gore jumped into the war zone criticising the White House of imposing a ‘spectator’ war on the television-obsessed country. In The Assault... he talks of how the American junta was misled into believing Saddam’s connections with 9/11. “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,” quotes Al Gore from Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest serving Senator in the American Congress.

As much as can be held against the beleaguered Bush, Mr. Gore has summed it all up. From the absurdity of his policies to the ills of ‘secret strategies’ that hover around the White House, he stuck his neck out with facts that scream for global attention. Be the administration’s sudden collapse in times of calamity, as during Hurricane Katrina or the sudden revised medicare benefits, Al Gore warns of a state being run while suppressing reason – the most basic idea behind democracy.

His, however, is not an argument with a lost cause. Perhaps a trifle over-ambitious, Gore pins his hopes on the Internet. His belief in the world coming closer through constant deliberations over blogs and communities does seem a bit farfetched considering Americans spending close to 100 million hours collectively, with each passing week, watching mind numbing reality TV re-runs.

However, in Mr. Gore lies a man with true conviction. For in The Assault on Reason, he comes across as a writer frustrated with a regime that has consistently treated the rest of the world with dangerously dismissive arrogance. And eventually all he asks for is reason…

Edit bureau: Shashank Shekhar

For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2007

An IIPM and Professor Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist) Initiative

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