Lucidity In The Balance: Al Gore's Bad Trip

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: May 31, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern

The meds cup is on the way ... perhaps a bit too late. Al Gore, speaking of the abuses at Abu Ghraib and other prisons in a recent speech at New York University, stated, "Where do we go to get our good name back?" The man who was Bill Clinton's VP for eight years didn't even snicker when he said this.

Ah, yes, the good ol' days when everybody in the world liked us. The shoplifters sure do miss the crooked store security guards, don't they?

Gore also called for the resignations of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone, Condoleezza Rice and George Tenet, stopping just short of asking George Bush to give himself a spanking and condemning the fall lineup on the WB.

In this particular speech, as in many others, Gore spoke of the world as one entity comprised of healthy, harmonic tissue with the United States acting as a cancer on that body. He spent the better part of his comments talking down the U.S. military in a generalized fashion, outlining the nasty things they have done to prisoners, with some reporting that they were "forced to eat pork and drink alcohol." This one in particular didn't resonate with me, since it's the same complaint often voiced by visitors to my house.

Viewing and listening to Gore's recent speeches, it's pretty apparent that this is one ticked-off man, bitter to the core at ... well ... all of us.

For eight years, Gore defended his lying, adulterous boss while watching his wife, Tipper, slap parental warning stickers everywhere except where they belonged – on Bill Clinton's pants. During those years, Gore observed Clinton's successful election and re-election, and naturally tried to emulate him politically.

The problem for Gore was that, as it is with watching great athletes and musicians, the Clinton's make it look so easy that anybody thinks they can do it. In trying to copy the pattern of his former boss in achieving the nation's highest office, Gore was like a three-fingered shop teacher convinced he can perform the same sleight of hand magic of David Copperfield. In doing so, Gore dropped the cards all over the floor, right next to his marbles.

The root of Gore's real downhill emotional spiral began at the presidential debate where he wore so much makeup that Tammy Faye Bakker told him to "cool it on the foundation." Gore looked like he rear-ended a Maybelline truck on his way to the theater that night. The content of the debate was lost amid the comments about Gore's appearance, which even from his supporters were something along the lines of the mournfully positive fib you hear from the family at a funeral visitation – "Pop looks good, doesn't he?"

Winning the popular vote and losing the election furthered the fierce combination of rage and depression, prompting Gore to go back to Tennessee and work on genetically fusing Orson Welles and Sebastion Cabot into one, gigantic ex-vice president and former presidential candidate.

The sinking feelings of what might have been, combined with going from being a stone's throw from the presidency to a tiny footnote in the history books, may have gotten the better of Gore, but then he decided to dive back into the political pool – head first, into water three feet deep.

Gore endorsed Howard Dean. The news was huge. This was the boost that would put Dean over the top – and did it ever. Dean was so excited, he let out a scream like an unsuspecting janitor at Lane Bryant who just barged in on Bea Arthur in the changing room.

Gore's endorsement went to the same place his presidential hopes were dashed – south. It's been all downhill for him since. Now he's giving speeches making the U.S. military and their leadership look like dirtbags from head to toe. He paints the United States with one brush, and the rest of the world with another. Gore's talks have turned into impressionist art. Verbal "Picasso's" – loud and wildly over-exaggerated. If anybody's speech has four eyes, two noses and three breasts, it's Gore's.

Some say that Gore's speech gave "aid and comfort to the enemy." Did it? I don't think so. At most, all Gore did was tell the world exactly what can be such a great thing about America – the freedom to behave like a total nut.

How do we correct the problems our nation faces to make this a better America? Listening to Gore over the years, the answer lies in the global community.

For Gore, "American values" these days seem to be found in every part of the world except the United States – the country that screwed him over.

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

Doug Powers is a freelance writer whose work has been
read by millions of Internet denizens.

Who was this person whose "progressive" politics presaged the modern democrat party?

By Edward Feser

He had been something of a bohemian in his youth, and always regarded young people and their idealism as the key to progress and the overcoming of outmoded prejudices. And he was widely admired by the young people of his country, many of whom belonged to organizations devoted to practicing and propagating his teachings. He had a lifelong passion for music, art, and architecture, and was even something of a painter.

He rejected what he regarded as petty bourgeois moral hang-ups, and he and his girlfriend "lived together" for years. He counted a number of homosexuals as friends and collaborators, and took the view that a man's personal morals were none of his business; some scholars of his life believe that he himself may have been homosexual or bisexual.

He was ahead of his time where a number of contemporary progressive causes are concerned: he disliked smoking, regarding it as a serious danger to public health, and took steps to combat it; he was a vegetarian and animal lover; he enacted tough gun control laws; and he advocated euthanasia for the incurably ill.

He championed the rights of workers, regarded capitalist society as brutal and unjust, and sought a third way between communism and the free market. In this regard, he and his associates greatly admired the strong steps taken by President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to take large-scale economic decision-making out of private hands and put it into those of government planning agencies.

His aim was to institute a brand of socialism that avoided the inefficiencies that plagued the Soviet variety, and many former communists found his program highly congenial. He deplored the selfish individualism he took to be endemic to modern Western society, and wanted to replace it with an ethic of self-sacrifice: "As Christ proclaimed 'love one another'," he said, "so our call -- 'people's community,' 'public need before private greed,' 'communally-minded social consciousness' -- rings out! This call will echo throughout the world!"

The reference to Christ notwithstanding, he was not personally a Christian, regarding the Catholicism he was baptized into as an irrational superstition. In fact he admired Islam more than Christianity, and he and his policies were highly respected by many of the Muslims of his day. He and his associates had a special distaste for the Catholic Church and, given a choice, preferred modern liberalized Protestantism, taking the view that the best form of Christianity would be one that forsook the traditional other-worldly focus on personal salvation and accommodated itself to the requirements of a program for social justice to be implemented by the state.

They also considered the possibility that Christianity might eventually have to be abandoned altogether in favor of a return to paganism, a worldview many of them saw as more humane and truer to the heritage of their people. For he and his associates believed strongly that a people's ethnic and racial heritage was what mattered most. Some endorsed a kind of cultural relativism according to which what is true or false and right or wrong in some sense depends on one's ethnic worldview, and especially on what best promotes the well-being of one's ethnic group. Who was he? He certainly sounds like the ideal presidential candidate of a Pacifica Radio Network listener or Mother Jones subscriber -- or, to make a more timely reference, a contributor to MoveOn.org.

It can only add to his appeal for such people that he was a target of American and British bombing raids and had to flee to the safety of an underground hide-out.

Can you name this "progressive" politician?

Here's my take on the Dean and Gore screams. The conventional wisdom is that Dean and Gore are nut cases and ready for the straight jacket. I'm ok to some extent with that interpretation.

But consider the audiences in both cases. Dean's explanation ex post facto was that he was giving the audience "what it wanted". That the college kids working for him needed a little "red meat" after losing to Kerry in Iowa.

Little needs to be said about MoveOn.org. This outfit is essentially CPUSA.

Both Dean and Gore are experienced politicians.

So my take is draw the appropriate conclusions about the speakers and as I said, I can't argue the point. But my main point is what does this tell one about the *audiences*. The fact that two dem politicians have gone off the deep end in front of live audiences may have, in the end, more to say about the *audiences* then about the speakers. Politicians become successful by knowing their audiences and saying what the audiences want to hear. Perhaps Dean and Gore are merely holding up a mirror to the absolute nuttiness of huge wings of the democratic party.

When it was just Dean, it was easy to say that the guy lost it. Now you've got Gore doing the same thing. Is there a pattern here? I guess if it happens a third time we'll have to say that there is. But I think one really has to stop and think about just how crazed the dem in the street has become!

The remnant communists (the media, academia, Move-On, etc.) are still extremely vicious and dangerous. It is amazing how they set the tone for the rats these days.

Yes. Exactly the point I was trying to make. I feel it gets lost sometimes when the attention is focused on the psychosis of the messenger and tuned away from the audience.

It is also amazing how the communists are down to North Korea, Cuba, and the Democrat Party as power bases.

On paper, I guess this is true, but islamofascism is one threat which while, not exactly communism, might as well be for the danger it poses. Not to mention China, which is still communist despite loosening economic controls.

But more to the point, I think the Robin Hood idea that communism champions is an idea, that sadly, is never going to go away. Someone once mentioned that the Robin Hood myth, story, legend, is the most dangerous in the English tradition.

Academically and historically, it has been proven that free markets provide the greatest good for the greatest number.

However, it will always be the case that the have-nots will envy the haves. It is basic human nature going all the way back through history. When you couple this with the ability in a democracy for the have-nots to vote themselves a share of the treasury plus the geopolitical trend for the have-not societies to black mail the haves with nuclear weapons, immigration, political unrest, I would not (sadly) pronounce communism dead just yet.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.