Once upon a time in a land very close to us, chads saved the country from being violated by a true lunatic. Not just any chads, but “hanging chads.” These improperly completed voting slips changed the results of the election for better or for worse and the nation hung on just for a bit longer. Or maybe we can thank Florida for in actuality for selecting a better man for the office. Hate him or love him, George W. Bush was a much better president than Al Gore could have ever been. I personally do not like George W. Bush very much, but on the other hand, the alternative here was much worse.
picture courtesy of: http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/al-gore-loses-the-plot-his-world-is-crumbling/
On the other hand, some people say that it was not chads, but a conspiracy and yet others still claim that it was the fault of the US election system that was to blame. Recount upon recount occurred, but as we all know the story unfolded as we know it did. The first time the supreme court of the US ever decided an election for itself.
The rest of this article is going to be rather surprising. I am not going to focus on criticizing the man or otherwise deriding him like most people would and since this happens enough anyway, I think it is clear to put this thought forward: Al Gore has serious issues. Since he never got help for any of these issues in the past, he goes on as if he has no problems and will not face his demons. We all have our demons and it is important to recognize them and to deal with them. From there, we can move on and live functional lives no matter what life throws at them. People may claim that Al Gore never faced a real life, but I will throw this in here right now: he has from one event lived the worst of the worst and we should recognize that the man does deserve to be ridiculed for a lot, but on the other hand we should be trying to get the man help too.
On a very broad scale: Al Gore’s descent farther and farther into madness can probably be attributed to a certain level of anxiety. Perhaps an obsessive need to both be needed by other people and to also face grandiose challenges to meet them head on. “To Excelsior and beyond” as some may say to steal a line from South Park. This need to be well frankly needed as mentioned earlier probably stems from father issues that lots of people face when their fathers are important men who indeed held lots of power.
The point here is not to cut fun at the man as much as to tell the story in several forms. Al Gore today is pretty much laughed at enough, and there is plenty of places to find his crazy ramblings other than here. Here is one good example of many: http://freedomkeys.com/gore.htm So I am focusing on the descent of the man and where we can peg it to as getting worse. As I stated before, he has probably been always a little crazy but this was hidden by the fact that he was such a great politician. Some might argue with that last line, but remember, no matter what, he did secure the nomination for president and a lousy or even terrible politician can never accomplish something such as that.
Regardless, some background is required on the man to find out what he was thinking in the past and what he thinks today and how this descent from respectability (for an eccentric man as he was seen as) to basically village idiot and laughing-stock occurred.(this might not be the best way to phrase it, but remember as I stated his madness is just part of who he is.
Born in 1948 and attending school at Harvard where he graduated in 1970, Al Gore never really lived a hard childhood. The best accounts show that his life was one of being a “Senator’s Son” since his father served in Congress most of his life and one term in the senate when he lost the re-election campaign in 1970. During this time Al Gore publicly believed differently then his father on several issues including racism especially. This difference probably lasted the rest of their lives as the Civil Rights Act which Al Gore Sr. refused to support even afterwards was probably what cost him the 1970 election. Al Gore on the other hand suffered from loving his father like most children and wanting to be noticed. His political affiliation was strongly with his father, however. This should help to understand some beliefs he has today which are rather outspoken and rather wrong when taken into consideration with where he came from. It seems this issue with his father also came to tobacco (which the family owned many tobacco farmlands). This is why when Al Gore joined the service voluntarily it was such a surprise when knowing all of that.
His military service was rather short and he was kept safe due to his father’s influence (And the influence of others who did not want to see such a high priority person die in any way). Needless to say, he all along was against the war but never protested and in addition was one of only a dozen students from Harvard in his graduating class who actually served over in Vietnam. This gives us the information to realize that he looked up to his father and would have done anything his father asked of him. Nothing bad so far, he was willing to compromise on his beliefs to help his father in his re-election campaign despite the fact that both men were against the war. This was one of the issues they both strongly agreed with each other on.
But his career after this really starts. He studied at a divinity school for a bit and went on to law school as well. He cut both of these short when he decided to run for congress at the age of 29 (1975) with no degrees past his first from Harvard. He served in congress from 1976-1993.
The information from this seems to say that he did have some issues with reality in general with some wacky ideas but also some very good ideas. Lots of people credit his work in technology (where the credits he claims are always over-embellished.) It also should come to as no surprise that he tends to embellish everything to make himself look better. (standard politician) This was quite the habit he had during this time period and one can almost say it is almost as if he believed he was the only person responsible for the internet. The only place he had seriously wacky ideas was in regard to the environment where his lies were rather large in most cases. But this should not detract from his obvious helping of the internet and he might have actually been responsible for the dot.com boom happening a year or perhaps more earlier then it would have otherwise.
At the end of this time period (1989) his son was tragically killed basically before his eyes. No one can fault Al Gore in this tragic incident, and indeed anyone who suffers such a loss knows what kind of tragic consequences this has on someone. In fact, the book he also wrote after this time period “Earth in the Balance” might have been mostly to do with him grieving and trying to find answers spiritually. This is quite normal and although the book is rather radical and sounds mostly like a rant: I must ask all of us out there, who among us wouldn’t write a book like this? I will also contend that his madness might have been there all along but this life-shattering event either dodged it loose or just simply exasperated the issue. This is not meant as a slight for this issue, but the point is that this pivotal point in his life changed him for the worse in so many ways. If he had conquered this demon which is worse than most parents have to suffer, he would have in all likelihood ended up as president at some point in time.
I will add in Al Gore’s defense that at this time he gave up a run for the presidency (to spend time with his family) which in all likelihood he would have probably won since the year was 1992 and he was basically more well-liked than Bill Clinton who for all intents and purposes was the same type of politician. His decision to go ahead and run as VP should not be held against him. In fact, I think it would be prudent to add that this book in itself should not be held against him per se, it is whether he was ranting like most of us would if a similar incident happened to us. But on the other hand, the marching of time should see us through to a better image on reality and instead of realizing some of the mistakes he wrote in the book, he embraced what he wrote and became a rather fanatic about the said issues. This embracing of these rants is probably the proof that he indeed went off the rails. This is where the true tail starts as prior to this time period by all accounts Al Gore was at the worst just eccentric and embellished his achievements. After this book was published, he got worse over time and became a radical when before he was even more moderate than Bill Clinton. By the end of his term as VP he was saying some rather bizarre things in interviews and his outspoken views on several issues were what probably cost him the presidency versus George W. Bush.
To further explain some of this, his political career was overall fairly well spent and he did achieve more than a lot of others through his embracing of technology in regard to mass-communication. He was a very large moderate in comparison to other democrats while in congress and in the senate. While VP, he tended to also be a moderate, but his stances changed and he tended to get more and more radical in some areas especially the environment. The process was rather slow, but lots of his stances on issues moved more liberal as time went by and his stance on the environment was rather frankly radical by the end of this time period.
But let’s explore some selected quote from his book to show how his descent started.
Quotes from “Earth in the Balance”:
“[DDT] can be environmentally dangerous in tiny amounts.” – no proof is offered for this very specific quote.
“Modern industrial civilization, as presently organized, is colliding violently
with our planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is
breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy
our capacity to recognize them, comprehend their global implications, and
organize an appropriate and timely response. Isolated pockets of resistance
fighters who have experienced this juggernaut at first hand have begun to fight
back in inspiring but, in the final analysis, woefully inadequate ways.”
“Any child born into the hugely consumptionist way of life so common in the
industrial world will have an impact that is, on average, many times more
destructive than that of a child born in the developing world.”
“What does it say about our culture that personality is now considered a
technology, a tool of the trade, not only in politics but in business and the
professions? Has everyone been forced to become an actor? In sixteenth century
England, actors were not allowed to be buried in the same cemeteries as
‘God-fearing folk,’ because anyone willing to manipulate his personality for the
sake of artifice, even to entertain, was considered spiritually suspect.”
“And tragically, since the onset of the scientific and technological revolution,
it has become all too easy for ultrarational minds to create an elaborate
edifice of clockwork efficiency capable of nightmarish cruelty on an industrial
scale. The atrocities of Hitler and Stalin, and the mechanical sins of all who
helped them, might have been inconceivable except for the separation of facts
from values and knowledge from morality.”
“Again, we must not forget the lessons of World War II. The Resistance slowed
the advance of fascism and scored important victories, but fascism continued its
relentless march to domination until the rest of the world finally awoke and
made the difference and made the defeat of fascism its central organizing
principle from 1941 through 1945.”
“The twentieth century has not been kind to the constant human striving for a
sense of purpose in life. Two world wars, the Holocaust, the invention of
nuclear weapons, and now the global environmental crises have led many of us to
wonder if survival – much less enlightened, joyous, and hopeful living – is
possible. We retreat into the seductive tools and technologies of industrial
civilization, but that only creates new problems as we become increasingly
isolated from one another and disconnected from our roots.”
After this point, the madness deepened from normal levels to extreme. After he was defeated as the presidential candidate in 2000, he basically turned his back on reality for all intents and purposes and started to seriously push his environmental agenda which was even more radical than his book. The end result of this was his 2006 film “An inconvenient Truth” which for no better way to phrase it, a load of bollocks.
During his tenure as VP, his stances on issues as stated went from normal to ultra-liberal. After the failed presidential campaign in 2000, he lashed out rather frequently at George W. Bush and was rather vocal about his opposition about Iraq involvement. This contrasts with his support of the Iraq issue 1 and although most pundits agree that he position makes sense, it does tend to seem rather different to me when you look at where he was looking. I think this change also shows where he was going. He was becoming a rather radical activist and this can be seen from his film especially where without any evidence he went on to show a fiction of what AGW (global warming ) is. This descent over a long time period points more towards issues that were never taken care of in the past.
His obsession and anxiety as mentioned before contributed to the fact that he would yell and scream for attention no matter what and possibly it was based on a mental issue. Indeed, he would embellish this issue and turn it into a political circus instead of studying the science himself or having someone he could trust to do this for him. The games just started as he went further off the deep end and would only lecture children for a length of time where he actually banned recording devices as well and refused to debate anyone on this issue. He would do interviews with friendly reporters, but never once would he debate people on the issue when the controversy in the science was known and the political effects of global warming were being hotly debated in reference to such bills and ideas as cap-and-trade and carbon trading. He especially had a vested interest by this point having money invested in the CCE (Chicago Climate Exchange) and also having money invested in the wind industry.
The entire point being that he would never once argue with facts on why the science was correct or why the solutions he proposed were worth the cost. Assuming the science is correct, this is very important for someone in order to justify such a large cost to everyone in the US, it should be required to justify this expense. As Al Gore stated at this time, if it is such an important goal for the country to do, why not debate it with everyone and often? Why not stand up to people who he derided starting this time as “Deniers” and other derogatory terms and show the world he was right?
Every single one of the sceptics in this country would have debated him if he had just asked. But he always refuses which is the last point of the descent…a breaking of ties with everyone including his wife of so many years who suffered along with him in previous tragedies.
And today, Al Gore is slated in just one week to be part of “24 hours of reality.” I would hope that anyone making such a claim would be already part of reality, but that is just me perhaps. Other claims in the video (listed below) include claims of “a new normal in weather” and other such nonsense which is actually the opposite of what reality shows in general. A true paradox if one would think about it, and it just goes to show that the man’s grasp on reality has indeed slipped and he has gone over the deep end.
In ramping up the publicity for this event the following “episodes have occurred” which should go to show how far this man has truly gone. From respective politician to crazy old man.
Recent evidence of Al Gore really losing it recently: (much worse than previous craziness I might mention.)
He goes off the rails in this link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkZ7VFeZZ84&feature=player_embedded
Basically saying that you are the “moral equivalent” of a racist if you do not believe that CO2 is causing the warming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY-mboZkhD0
The promo video for “24 hours of reality”.
BenfromMO 
Interesting viewpoint Ben.
Pretty much all of history’s greatest despots and dictators had unhappy upbringings and suffered as children from lack of affection, physical and/or psychological abuse. You don’t have to be a psychiatrist then, to understand their adult predispositions to narcissism, the preternatural need to be loved by everyone, and the dissonance that occurs in their head when they become aware of opposing points of view.
It’s a paradox that those who most desire power and possess the greatest will to achieve it, are nearly always mentally the least suited to wield it.