Rating: 
“We live in an age when the thirty-second television spot is the most powerful force shaping the US electorate’s thinking, and America is currently in the hands of an administration less interested than any previous government in sharing the truth with the citizenry.”
So writes Al Gore in his harsh look at the state of America after almost eight years in which the values upon which the country was founded, and the reason that governed their origination, have been subverted or eroded in favour of “a politics of fear, secrecy and blind faith.”
The America that Gore rails against is one in which the appreciation of the fragility of democracy and past warnings against its future corruption seem to have all but faded from contemporary governmental decision making. Whereas the United States government was once a government of the people, by the people and for the people, it has now become a government of the people, by those in power, for distinct minority interests. Whereas policy was once based on the accumulation of the best available evidence to which reason was then applied, policy has come to be based on falsity and a wholesale disregard of evidence, truth and facts. The end result has become that which is most important, regardless of the means one uses to reach it.
In an America that watches an average of 4 hours and 35 minutes of television each day, the consent of the governed has become a commodity to be purchased or bargained for like any other. Democracy has been reduced to a one-way process mediated by the political TV spot, where individuals receive but do not send, where they listen but do not speak, where they are given information but do not share it in return. In turn, fear, superstition, deception and secrecy have all become tools to be employed for the purpose of tightening control over the governed and for manipulating the political process towards achieving one’s ideological ends.
With regards the war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, for example, fear of further terrorism after the 9/11 attacks was used by the Bush administration as a means of securing the general acceptance that, firstly, Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were linked, and secondly, that Iraq posed a threat to the safety of the United States and should therefore be invaded. “It was as if the Bush White House,” Gore states, “[decided] in advance what policies it wanted to follow and then construct[ed] a propagandistic mass persuasion campaign to ‘manufacture’ the consent of the people to do what the ‘specialized governing class’ had already made up its mind to do.” America was informed that Saddam had purchased enrichment technology and was seeking supplies of uranium ore in Africa. The public was told of the possibility of mushroom clouds appearing at the hearts of America’s great cities. But as we are now know, no such relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda existed and any suggestion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, was a fabrication intended to secure in the public’s mind the necessity of going to war.
Indeed, Gore’s attack on the recent corruption of the democratic process and the abuses of power that accompany it, can be seen as a direct indictment of the Bush administration’s policies throughout its period of government. As he writes with regards to the Iraq war, for instance, rather than using the best available evidence, rather than taking on board the advice of experts in their fields, the Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq and chose to ignore and suppress studies, reports and facts that were contrary to “the false impression [it] was in the process of fostering in the minds of the American people.” Instead, the administration chose to focus on “convenient untruths presented with superficial, emotional, and manipulative appeals that are not worthy of American democracy.”
The same can be said for the administration’s increasing invasion into the American public’s civil liberties, its environmental policies, its response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster and countless other examples of its determination to push through its own self-serving agenda at the expense of the American people, their rights, and the security of the world in general. Each aspect of the administration’s systematic occlusion of the truth is dealt with in the same economical, precise and brilliantly argued manner, outlining the nature of the Founding Fathers’ desire to secure the free and democratic future of the United States and demonstrating the steps that have been taken to dismantle, ignore or sidestep the checks and balances put in place to prevent such abuses of power as we have witnessed over the past eight years ever taking place.
There is more than just despair at how we could have let such a thing happen of course, the advent of the internet as a means by which the public can once again make itself a part of political debate is cited as one of the major areas of optimism that the free flow of ideas and information can be used to arm the people with the facts and allow them to disseminate the truth in order that we may make informed decisions and affect the democratic process as was originally intended. As Gore writes, “as a nation, our greatest export has always been the hope that through the rule of law, people can be free to pursue their dreams. We gave hope that democracy can supplant repression and that justice, not power, can be society’s guiding force.” As this sorry period of American history reaches an end of sorts, as the hope of change to come promises a new era in American politics, it is only with the restoration of a government of the people, for the people and by the people, that America’s moral authority in the world can be achieved. Only then can America’s commitment to bringing a better life to its global neighbours be realised.
This is an important and timely reminder of the fragility of the freedom that we more often than not take for granted and of the responsibility we each shoulder for its continued survival. It is a book that should be read by all.
Nice writing style. I look forward to reading more in the future.