An Inconvienient Truth Al Gore Review
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The Assault On Reason
Al Gore
The Penguin Press, 2007
Al Gore was the 45th Vice President of the United States, serving two terms. He also served in the US House of Representatives in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1982, and in the Senate in 1984 and 1990. He was the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Gore is the chairman of Current TV, an independently owned nonfiction television network for young people.
The Assault On Reason is an unrestrained depiction of the current state of our country, its citizens, and the actions of the Bush Administration. The book organizes and brings to light the many injustices that have been committed toward free thought, liberty, and reason. It is a thorough explanation of the loss of dignity our country has invoked in the last decade.
Through a dominant executive branch, a sensationalism-crazed media, and an apathetic public, Gore explains, logic and reason have been replaced by fear and submission. He exposes the deception used by the Bush Administration to gain support for the war in Iraq, and the ideological nonsense that was manipulated to outweigh political debate and thorough evaluation of issues at hand. He also criticizes corporate-owned television networks and how they care much more about high ratings than informing the public.
The book begins with a lesson in the workings of the human brain. Gore explains the reason television is very addicting; the eyes are drawn to the ever-changing stimuli on the screen through an instinct that dates to the hunter-gatherer need to notice subtle changes in the environment to stay alive. He then explains the effect of fear on the brain, and the chemical secretions created that override mental processes such as logic. After this explanation, the reader can interpret events like 9/11 and the involvement in Iraq from a more psychological perspective.
Gore frequently bases his political philosophy on the works of the founding fathers, as well as taking from other great philosophers of history, and he often quotes them to support his arguments. He writes in much detail on the dishonesty behind the Bush Administrations arguments, and how they have relied on exploiting fear. They have been successful in avoiding arguments which would disprove their claims, due to a breakdown in the bodies which have acted in the past to place a check on such power. Gore repeats many of the facts showing that the Bush administration lied to get us into the Iraq war, but also chastises Congress for not holding real debates.
The most realistic point in the book is the need for television and mass media to be replaced with the internet as a source of public information. Gore criticizes the movement of people obtaining their news from newspapers to television. Television news