“Someone Else for President”

7 Comments

1. 

   mrboma on June 8, 2006 at 5:32 pm

   Tucked at the bottom of his Monday article this week, Sports illustrated’s Peter King say, “Run, Al Gore, run.”

   He could use the slogan “Re-elect Al Gore.”

   • 

     mrboma on June 8, 2006 at 7:13 pm

     I must be the only one not at yearly kos.

     You all just look out for a fake terrorist attack.

     • 

       katiebird on June 8, 2006 at 7:19 pm

       Hi! I’m home too.

       • 

         Errol on June 8, 2006 at 8:21 pm

         so am I

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     keepinon on June 8, 2006 at 8:52 pm

     He should use the slogan “Re-elect Al Gore”.

     Exactly!  Personally I’m for a Dean/Gore or Gore/Dean ticket.  Say what you mean, mean what you say. It works for me.

2. 

   ignorant bystander on June 8, 2006 at 8:22 pm

   not the cardboard cutout we’ve been shown by corporate media.  

   I have a challenge for you.  Get a copy of Earth In the Balance.  Get a black magic marker and blank out everything you find that  directly refers to climate change or global warming.  Now start at the beginning and read what’s left.  Contrary to conventional wisdom, I think you’ll find that about half the content is still readable.  Read it carefully and then tell me that’s NOT the man you want in the White House.

   • 

     ignorant bystander on June 8, 2006 at 9:40 pm

     Two quotes to whet your appetite:

     The history of agriculture is intertwined with the history of humankind.  Each increase in the size of human settlements was accompanied by further sophistication in the cooperative effort to produce, store, and distribute ever-larger quantities of food.  New technologies, like the plow and the irrigation ditch, led to new abundance but also new problems, like soil erosion and the buildup of salt in the soil.  Progress was slow but steady.  Through the centuries, the ratio of population to food supply remained relatively stable, with both growing at a roughly equal rate.  But with the scientific revolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the human population began surging, and for the first time it seemed possible that the population might soon outstrip the ability of the environment to yield enough food.  This fear was articulated at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the English political economist Thomas Malthus; that he was famously wrong has been due to a series of remarkable innovations in the science of agricultural production.  Malthus was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically, but he didn’t foresee our ability to make geometric improvements in agricultural technology.  Even today, with several countries in the world suffering massive famines, there is little doubt that a commitment to use more land and newer agricultural methods could vastly increase the amount of food produced on earth.  The problem we now face is therefore more complicated than the one Malthus identified.  In theory, the food supply can keep up with the population for a long while yet, but in practice, we have chosen to escape the Malthusian dilemma by making a set of dangerous bargains with the future worthy of the theatrical legend that haunted the birth of the scientific revolution: Doctor Faustus.

     Al Gore, Earth In the Balance, p. 127

     I have come to believe that the waste crisis — like the environmental crisis as a whole — serves as a kind of mirror in which we are able to see ourselves more clearly if we are willing to question more deeply who we are and who we want to be, both as individuals and as a civilization.  Indeed, in some ways the waste crisis serves as perhaps the best vehicle for asking some hard questions about ourselves.

     For example, if we have come to see the things we use as disposable, have we similarly transformed the way we think about our fellow human beings?  Mass civilization has led to the creation of impersonal, almost industrial, processes for educating, employing, sheltering, feeding, clothing, and disposing of billions of people.  Have we, in the process, lost an appreciation for the uniqueness of each one?  Have we made it easier to give up on someone who needs extra attention or repair?  Traditional societies venerate the oldest among them as unique repositories of character and wisdom.  We, however, are all too willing to throw them away, to think of them as used up, no longer able to produce new things to consume.  We mass-produce information and in the process devalue the wisdom of a lifetime, assuming that it can easily be replaced by skimming a froth of essential data off the flood tide of information rushing through our culture.  For similar reasons, we have devalued the importance of education (even as we increase the lip service we pay it).  Education is the recycling of knowledge, and since we have emphasized the production and constant consumption of massive quantities of information, we don’t feel the same need to respect and reuse the refined accumulation of learning treasured by those who have come before us.

     Al Gore, Earth In the Balance, p. 161

     Whole sentences.  Paragraphs.  Sustained coherent arguments that go on for pages and chapters.  Compared to His Illegitimacy, who can’t seem to manage a coherent sentence, the contrast is stunning.  When I look at what has come to pass and think about what might have been, I feel something very like real grief.