The only thing I used to know about Al Gore was: oh, that former vice president who lost the most controversial presidential election in American history due to a series of unfortunate events. Surely I sometimes missed him: that guy would have done a better job than Bush! ---- But, hey, who wouldn't?

I got to know more about Gore when I was listening to Joe Klein's Politics Lost. Klein depicts him as a person with an academician temperament who became a politician because his father happened to be a senator. This image surely appeals to me, not only because I fucking hate all politicians, but because I spent so many years in academic too. His work in the global warming awareness also won some of my appreciation, though honestly, I don't quite like the hype of "An Inconvenient Truth". So after I read "The Last Temptation Of Al Gore", the cover story of May 28th issue of TIME, which also has an excerpt of his new book "The Assault on Reason", I immediately put a hold on this book in the New York public library.

I was lucky that very few people knew that book at that time (Al Gore appeared in Jon Stewart show several weeks later to promote this book), and the library were still waiting for their orders to arrive. Three weeks ago, I got this book, among the first of library readers.


(BTW, I like this cover. Very neat. Like the main page of Google, for which Gore serves as a senior adviser. I distaste those books with a phonically posed picture of the author as cover.)

Here is the table of contents:

Introduction
The Politics of Fear
Blinding the Faithful
The Politics of Wealth
Convenient Untruths
The Assault on the Individual
National Insecurity
The Carbon Crisis
Democracy in the Balance
A Well-Connected Citizenry
The Rebirth of Democracy

In the first chapter, he gave a scientific review of how of human emotion of fear evolved and helped the survival of the human race, but then stressed on the irrational side of fear, that would be easily exploited by politicians for their own political purposes. The example is, of course, how Bush administration uses 9/11 and terrorism to push their agenda. In the following chapter, Gore talked about the damage religion could do to democracy. This is an easy task, as the only thing he needed to do was to quote the Founding Fathers who invented the brilliant principal of the separation of church and state, and the Enlightenment Thinkers who were rallying hard against religion. And the target here, of course, is Bush administration’s zealousness in evangelical views.

The attack toward Bush and his gang only elevates as this book unfolds. From the title of the chapters, you can see what Gore is picking on: the economical policy that bias on the rich (e.g., tax cut), lies that misled the public (e.g., Iraq War), violation of individual rights (e.g., Patriot Act), ignorance of the real threat the nation faces (e.g., Taliban), environmental policy (which I skipped since I think I am well aware of this issue), and violation of the check and balance principal of American policy (e.g., the puppet Republican congress).

Gore’s major point in this book is that democracy relies on the rational reasoning of citizens, which could be easily damaged by the politician’s exploitation to the public’s irrational emotions like fear, religion, credulity, etc. But the biggest enemy that Gore deemed of democracy, at least in my impression, is the dominance of TV in media. The author, who is also president of Current TV, asserts that printed press is one of vital motives of Enlightenment, as well as one of the biggest premises the Founding Fathers designed their delicate democratic systems under because they believed that democracy can only work when the citizens are well informed. Gore argues that reading requires more thinking than watching TV, and also printed press is more accessible for individual voices. Therefore, TV is a more one-way media, that would weaken the foundation of democracy, the idea market. So in the end of his book, Gore expressed his hope in the new medium, internet, which is unprecedently easy to access, extremely decentralized, and more text-oriented (which is of course not true, but I guess Gore doesn’t go internet to download porn).

I am a huge fan of internet, and can’t agree more with Gore’s point of view that the neutrality of internet must be defended. And I am more optimistic than anyone about the positive changes internet is going to bring to this world, including (actually especially) China. But proponent of internet doesn’t have to be opponent of TV, nor does that of print. I think TV is just a natural thing, developed from the progress of electronic technology, and reached prosperity due to the human nature like curiosity and laziness. I’ve seen enough conservatives attacking TV because they are afraid of anything new. Surely TV have a lot of bad influence, but I think Gore as a liberal, should think about how to use TV's positive side and ways to minimize the other side. Simply bashing is often annoying.

As for the relationship between reason and democracy, that’s a much bigger topic. I used to be a sort-of fundamentalist of rationalism. Irony that it was during my composition of 数学乐旅 and 诲淫乐旅, some pieces I deemed as the high triumph of rationality, that I started re-think about it. My doubt came from the clear fact that people don’t always act or think rationally. And even when we think people are acting based on careful income-and-expense analysis, their real motivations are often something deep under their rational calculation, something mysteriously rooted in their sub-consciousness.

Furthermore, a society that everyone is as rational as a computer, can probably make everyone benefit a lot, but I highly suspect it would also lose the meaning of human life. Even Gods envy human life because we can love, hate, fear, as well as hope.

But of course, Gore is not proposing Reason rules alone. He also acknowledged Nazism, fascism, communism as results of rationalism that swept away human instinct and common sense by the so-called reason. However, Bush administration apparently have gone too far toward the other pole. And that's what most motivated Gore to write this book.

By any means, this book is just like Gore himself. A politician with academician temperament. His writing is detail oriented, sometimes more than what the readers need or care. The presentation is often boring and repetitive. I didn't watch "An Inconvenient Truth" so I don't know how boring that one is. I am sure Gore would think his books are far more valuable than those movie thing that is only one-way and doesn't encourage thinking, but had not been this move, I bet most people would not read his book. That's the dilemma he wouldn't be willing to admit. I just always feel bad for those public figures when I read their books and realize how self-contradictory they are.