SansPoint

I recently picked up the audiobook of Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason, as read by Will Patton. Though I’ve not completed it, it’s been an interesting listen, albeit one which has repeatedly increased my blood pressure. At first, the blood pressure rise came from Gore’s continual assault on television as a medium, or to be more accurate, his half-hearted attempts to persuade the reader that he doesn’t think TV is all bad^[1]. They just feel like a vain attempt to not have the regular TV watching portion of his reading audience throw the book across the room and go back to watching The Simpsons. Once the semi-ad hominem attacks on the boob tube stop, though, the book really gets roaring.

Ultimately, Gore’s TV bashing does work towards a valid point: TV-based politics does not allow for real debate. It doesn’t allow for nuance, fact-checking, comparison, or logic. What passes for political debate in this country boils down to, “Hey! Let’s go bomb us some Ay-rabs!” versus “Uh, let’s not.” without any supporting facts, just pleas to emotion, and catch phrases like “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists,” or “Bring it on.” This sort of debate has allowed the Bush Administration, and its gaggle of talking heads^[2] foaming at the mouth and aiding in the replacement of debate with an echo chamber, talking points, and the manufacture of consent. Once this initial premise is established, much of the book goes into ripping apart the idiotic, half-developed, utter failures of the Bush Administration to defend our country, win wars, prevent terrorism and nuclear proliferation, establish an energy policy more complex than “drill for more oil”, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Face it, if you’re a progressive/Liberal, and even the slightest bit informed, 90% of the charges that Gore makes, you know about already.^[3] It’s these things that have me on the verge of arterial hypertension. Largely, that hypertension comes about from the sense that all my moral and ethical outrage is useless. I am a mere citizen. This is a representative democracy. All I can do is vote for the candidate I want, and hope they get the damn job done, if elected. After that, I can make the occasional phone call to their office^[4], or write letters. Even these tools are rendered dangerously futile thanks to astroturfing campaigns by lunatic groups like the American Family Association. Signing petitions and protesting in the streets are worthless; they both will get ignored. When, after all, was the last time an anti-war protest made national headlines? The only way a protest will make waves is if the government kills someone during it^[5], or it turns into a riot.

Perhaps, that’s the ultimate point Al Gore wants to make. Before the television age, we citizens had a bit more of a voice in political debate than we do now. We could write letters to the newspapers—and have them actually read! Before Reagan, radio stations were forced to provide equal time for opposing viewpoints. People could self-publish, post fliers and pamphlets, and protests were noticed by the people in charge. To be fair, I suspect Gore paints a rosier picture of pre-television democracy than actually happened. Newspapers have editors, who cherry pick the “best” of the letters and opinion columns, and work to maximize ad revenue and subscription sales first. Promoting the free exchange of political ideas comes in at, perhaps, eighth. Still, Gore seems to think the days of pre-TV democracy will come again thanks to the power of the Internet.^[6] The Internet is much like the golden age of print media that Gore waxes poetic about, only more so.

That’s the Internet’s strength… and it’s weakness. Though I haven’t reached the point where it comes up, I can’t help but wonder if Al addresses the problem of the signal-to-noise ratio in Internet discussion. Everyone has a voice, and the Internet gives everyone the chance to make their voice heard, whether a 85-year-old grandmother from Palookaville, Kansas, or a 15-year-old high school freshman^[7]. Everyone has something to contribute, but whether it’s worth contributing is another matter entirely. With all the voices screaming this, that, the next thing, and the other, it’s easy to get burnt out on outrage. I’ve found myself trying to unsubscribe from e-mail lists pushing “Action Alerts” on Net Neutrality, increased royalty rates for online radio, changing media ownership laws, and political rallies for Democratic candidates in your area. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the question of what I, or anyone else, can do in their limited capacity as a voter and citizen. Admittedly, it’s not much, but it’s better than passivity. I do hope the Internet, as Al Gore predicts, becomes a new way for us, the citizen, to engage in democracy and the “marketplace of ideas”^[8], and to have an impact on the way the country, and the world is run. I’m just afraid that we’re all stuck until the technology, both in terms of its reach and its breadth, catch up with the vision Gore has for America, and the world. I’d like to wait and see, but all the horrors of the past seven years have left me wondering if we have time to wait.

1. I’m convinced that Gore is one of those people who has a digital cable package, but only gets a handful of channels: His local network affiliates, PBS, CNN, FOX News (gotta watch the enemy), C-SPAN, and perhaps the Science Channel, and Sci-Fi. ↩
2. Please do not confuse this with the band Talking Heads, who—at least David Byrne at any rate—are decidedly liberal, and much more pleasant to listen to. ↩
3. This still, of course, leaves a good 10% that caught me off guard. For example: Bush and his cronies, for all their talk about keeping nukes out of the hands of rogue states, haven’t even tried to secure the loose fissile material floating around. You’d think that would be the first step, right? ↩
4. This always results in speaking to an intern, who—at least in the case of former PA Senator, Rick Santorum—likely forgot my petition by the time he hung up the phone ↩
5. e.g. Kent State, 1970 ↩
6. Insert “Al Gore created the Internet” joke here. ↩
7. or a 23-year-old college undergrad with too much free time… ↩
8. I’m going to be honest. I hate that term. ↩