He has said he feels he can contribute more by staying focused on educating Americans (and the rest of us for that matter) about global warming and it's dangers.
I hope he sticks by that.
I have a high regard for Al Gore.
For everything he did while a Senator to bring ARPANET into the public domain and for helping shepherd it into the internet of today. For which he was awarded a special Lifetime Achievement Webby award last June 9. (Fun side bar: the Webby acceptance speeches have to be 5 words or less - Gore's was "Please don't recount this vote".)
For his 1992 NYT bestselling book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit .
Among American legislators he's been almost unique in his curiosity about the rest of the planet.
So why do I hope he sticks to his decision not to run?
Because I don't want to see him turn his reputation over to the craven US press that reprinted every scurrilous lie Rove fed them. The cowards and fools in the press committed themselves so utterly to the Rove derived narrative about him that they would be forced to repeat it or suffer such a bout of cognitive dissonance so as to shake their tiny, incurious brains loose from their skulls.
Because I don't want to watch him be torn to shreds by his supporters in the Democratic party again.
Or manipulated into thinking that the perennial nonstarters at the DLC have his best electoral interests at heart or even the best interests of the United States of America. Or finding himself being forced to accept advice from buffoons and mountebanks like Carville or Stephanopoulos.
And because I don't want to watch any more good men and women chasing the idea that the United States of America's system of government is functional.
It isn't functional now and it won't be made functional by the election of a bunch of different people.
It's a broken system that needs rebuilding from the foundations on up.
And that won't happen.
No comments:
Post a Comment