The Al Gore Book

The Al Gore book, The Assault on Reason, is basically a companion to American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. Al Gore says a lot of things I've known for at least a year, but also is brave enough to point out that surveillance technology is not only advanced, but also widely available, and as I enjoy pointing out, Orwell's nightmare is actually possible so long as people aren't paying attention (And when are they ever?)! Gore argues that this might not be like those times in the Cold War when we later regretted using illegal surveillance.

The serious thing is that our complacency in dealing with George W Bush can and probably will set a precedent: "He didn't get caught or punished, so I won't either," not because we might not not care, but because the six megaconglomerates are firing our survival neurons every few miliseconds when we are glued to the Huxleyan glass teat. America will always be distracted, which is why democracy no longer exists in America.

There is no "well-informed citizenry," as issues themselves are secondary, or even thirdly, to money and airtime. More money = more ads = more repetition = more people remember = more votes. Gore calls this, cited from another person, "Manufactured consent." Sort of like buying something.

If you hear Pepsi (or Coke, if you prefer) commercials enough times, even if you've never had soda before, you will buy it simply because you remembered it and nothing challenged it in your mind. This is what politics and elections have become.

The degredation of ideas through simple repetition. Do you know how many times I hear the same ridiculous arguments for evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity and/or Creationism/UiD? It doesn't matter how absurd a concept is. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The more an argument is repeated, drilled, the more impervious it is to reason. Has the person who has bothered me about Jesus ever read anything by Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins? Probably not. Who made the silly connection between a shady charlatan (Jesus) and evolution? His educators. Many, many, of the minions are not intelligent enough even to grasp why 2 + 2 = 4, let alone devise arguments for their collective cause.I wrote a lengthy paper on the Russian Revolution and I read that the Bolsheviks were the same way - only able to repeat Lenin's rhetoric, completely unable to think for themselves.

So where is this "democracy?" Doesn't "democracy" require active participation in the political process? Now, instead of the political leaders being shaped by the people, the leaders are shaping the people. No, politicians themselves are not involved at all. That's work they don't have to do. Television does that job for them. The political leaders would really be the six international megaconglomerates - Vivendi Universal, Disney, NewsCorp, AOL-TimeWarner, Viacom, and Bertelsmann AG, each endorsing a political agenda for its own aims. They choose, through their discretion, what content they air, specific to what they want the public to think. The TV is the most effective tool for this aim by far.

Mr Gore states that the problem lies in that TV communication only goes in one direction, and all responses to the programming are effectively politically irrelevant because the transmitters cannot receive as the receivers cannot transmit, meaning that any reaction or response is futile.

The corporations take whatever candidate they endorse and throw him/her on the network for repetition. America, glued to that Huxleyan box for an average of four hours a day, is rendered by the confiscation of his free will, due to the manipulation of neurochemicals by stimuli in rapid sucession, becomes, effectively , a complacent zombie.

I was just watching a movie a few hours ago on TV that was awful. The thing is that I hated it, but I could not get myself to walk away. I think there's a Weird Al Yankovic song that goes something like, "Like a train wreck / I did not want to stare / But I could not look away" (It's titled "Jerry Springer," I remember now). This is how television robs people of their free will. "Why can't you just turn it off?" Because it compells one to look. And to keep watching.

Televangelism works the same way as Hitler's Nuremburg Rallies. Wealthy con artists, demagogues, and charlatans can buy their own television networks and rally people in their favor using a simple box with silicon chips and a screen, using the same methods I explained previously: Repetition, repetition, repetition. On a massive scale.

Our democracy is no more insofar as people have lost the ability to participate. Yes, we can vote, but how and why are we voting? We have been told by the TV and those that control it who to vote for. Sometimes, against our crippled, though breathing, better judgement, we march on to vote for the person who will hold our hand and leap into the abyss.