Since I’m not President, I finally have time to finish writing my book.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Flipping through these pages can be tragic when you read the level of intelligence behind the words and begin to wonder what the world would be like today if Al Gore had served George W. Bush’s two terms in office. Would there be milk chocolate fairies delivering candy and fountain-style root beer floats to children throughout the heartland of America? No, absolutely not. Yet I would wage a healthy amount of money that the U.S.A. would not have been in the geopolitical crapper as it was when George W. Bush finally walked out of those hallowed doors with one of the lowest approval ratings in history. His one-time opponent, Al Gore, tries to explain and extol on the reasons things went so badly off the rails.
The Assault on Reason is written by former Vice President Al Gore and details chapter after chapter the numerous areas where the Bush years, and some of those before, have displayed an incredible and frightening trend replacing science and reason with faith and narrow-mindedness. The government we once knew, the one begun all those years back, has been systematically dismantled, pulling the power from the people as a whole and concentrating it into an increasingly small number of hands. Those chosen few have since done everything in their power to eliminate reason and intellectual debate in favor of religious rhetoric and cowboy posturing in face of any and all opposing evidence. In essence, readers feel the true power of the American people slip further and further away with each turn of the page.
Before even opening the book, it must be noted the context in which these words live. Al Gore lost the Presidential election back in 2000 in one of the most contentious, and in some minds demonstrably corrupted, rulings in history. This man was a single breath away from the oval office and seven years later he writes a book about how terrible a job his former opponent is doing. So it is impossible to view this book without a small sense of bias on the part of the author. Yet, although the book does sometimes fall too far into “political slam-book” territory and reaches a slight whiny tone, Gore checks himself and within a few pages brings it back to a place where he backs up each and every criticism with solid, reasonable and irrefutable facts. In those passages when he cites source after source and charts out the trends which we should be so afraid of, that is when Gore is at his most effective.
The real power of the book is not as a weapon against the Bush-era style of politics and power grabbing, but the entire political system hierarchy and its continued growth away from the general public. Gore points out numerous occasions, pre-Bush, that also helped lead to the dangerous place we are today with so much control centralized into the office of President and not spread out amongst the three co-equal branches of the government as intended by those who set it up all those years ago. Yet, Gore even expands on this to the rest of the planet as well when talking about nuclear proliferation, detailing other nations and how they followed the missteps of the American powerhouse. In one of his most eloquent moments in the book, Gore writes:
“As a world community, we must prove that we are wise enough to control what we have been smart enough to create.”
In my mind, that is the central thesis to his entire argument. His textual intent is to warn us of the danger of nuclear arms being in the hands of people who block out reason in favor of belief, religious or otherwise, but sub-textually I believe the statement also shines lights on the creation of our government. Power should never be wielded only by one man alone; that is the antithesis of our democratic style of government. The balance between the three branches has been slowly ebbing away and the person sitting in the oval office has been the silent beneficiary of it all. Both sides have played their parts in the dismantling of that balance, but the Republicans took more giant steps on that march towards an iron-fist government between 2001-2008 than ever before in history.
What we can learn from this book is how to regain that balance, if you can filter out Gore’s “I wouldn’t have done it that way” tone in various portions. Science, reason and factual proof are slowly making their way back into governing politics, but there is a long way to go and more people who live by that credo need to find their way into the hallowed halls of the capital buildings. I’m not suggesting no one of any faith should be in government, just that they no longer turn a blind eye to anything that doesn’t follow in lockstep with that belief. Important choices should only be made after the most rigorous of debate and unfortunately, as you will see in these pages, our last President was not a huge fan of differing points of view. Even though this was written while Bush was still in office, many of the policies and laws enacted during that time are still in effect and Obama has yet to find the spare time to return some of that balance the government so desperately needs. Let’s help remind him.
The End of the Page Recommendation: A well written and well researched book on the state of our government and the dangerous path it is on. Although not exactly a page turner and it gets randomly embroiled in mudslinging and overly scientific terminology, the final result is still impactful and important.
I promise to do whatever my political party says, in right and in wrong, till death do us part
I can hear it now rumbling in the back closet, rocking back and forth with one broken foot, that same one I’ve been meaning to fix for two hundred years:
The Political Spin Machine
…and it’s going full steam.
With the election of Republican wunderkid, Scott Brown, the troops on the right are doing everything they can to convince Democrats across the nation that every progressive and liberal policy currently being proposed now has as much chance of succeeding as Conan O’Brien ever doing a show on NBC again. Yet, let’s take a good close look at what really happened yesterday and see if we can’t find a way to help each party find its way back to some type of ethical center.
By electing Scott Brown, Massachusetts brought the Democratic majority in the Senate down by exactly one. They dropped from 60 to 59 and while many will bemoan the loss of the filibuster proof majority, what they neglect to mention is the filibuster proof majority never really existed because of those Democrats in the Senate referred to as “Blue Dogs”, or more conservative-leaning voters. The squelching of the filibuster happened only once, which was to finally push the Health Care bill out of the Senate, and the reparations the liberal Democrats had to make in order to secure those Blue Dog votes over the filibuster helped to shape a bill that virtually no one is pleased with. So the idea that Scott Brown’s inclusion in the Senate will suddenly destroy the happy-go-lucky hand-holding going on in the left leaning side of the chamber just shows how little the right side actually pays attention to what is going on.
This is nothing more than a scare tactic to frighten the left and encourage the right, but I honestly believe the right has more to fear from Scott Brown than the left. Republicans think his election is a repudiation of Democratic policies and of Obama himself, but in fairness I believe he was chosen more out of frustration of continued record unemployment ratings and a growing disappointment from independents who let themselves believe the Obama hype machine during his campaign. I’m not knocking Obama, I voted for him as well, but people seemed to forget he is just one guy inside a government machine built by money, power and massive special interests. He has made many changes already, in demonstrably record time, but people on Main Street won’t feel the effects of those until much later. The change some people was hoping for was much more than he could ever achieve in such a short amount of time. Remember, his one-year anniversary as President was yesterday!
Scott Brown also comes in claiming he is ushering in a “new type of Republican”, which in other terms means “time for the old guys to move on out.” Let’s see how well that plays out in the polls come mid-term time. Anyone coming in preaching change to the “old way of politics” is a danger to anyone currently sitting, Republican or Democrat.
Now, while watching Mr. Brown gloat over his seemingly amazing win, I can’t say I’m incredibly impressed with him or how he handles himself (check this little moment of pimping out his daughters at his acceptance speech), but I wasn’t all that enchanted by his opponent, Martha Coakley, either. This is where people need to help usher in a real and tangible sense of change. We need to start looking beyond the party name and look at the actual person. As unattainable as it might sound, filled with pretty rhetoric and uplifting oratory, I agree with Obama when he stumps for the goal of bi-partisanship, but I want to take it one step farther. “Bi-partisanship” alludes to the idea of two parties getting along, but what about “tri-partisanship”? Actually, we do have one Independent senator (wave to the nice Internet folks, Mr. Barney Frank of VT). What about “quad-partisanship”? The Tea-Partier’s are about to host their own conference, so who will deny they have a chance to get their own candidate on a ticket and not be forced to list them as Republican? I’m a good distance off from supporting anything currently coming out of the tea-party caucus, but I fully encourage their right to not affiliate with either dominating party. My belief is if we breakdown the powerhouse parties the American populace would be forced to learn more about who they are voting for instead of just checking whether their was an “R” or a “D” next to their name.
An informed populace is an absolute necessity of any great democracy and it’s time that we as members of that populace bore some responsibility for that.
Somewhere out there, there is a snack shack waiting for me.
Rating: 4 out of 10
One type of movies has recently been building in the nationwide queue, Apocalypse films. We stared in wide-eyed wonder at the destruction imagined in 2012, felt the weight of despair in the bleak future of The Road and even the magical CGI-fueled paradise of Avatar can be classified as apocalyptic since that was the reason for the human expansion to Pandora. This week we bear witness to a little twist, a holy light in the gray darkness of the cold and dusty future, a film that suggests in the aftermath of what is to come you can only truly survive by pure and unadulterated faith. Nothing like a good dose of God to add spice to the end of the world.
The Book of Eli is a moral fable about a man, most commonly referred to as “The Walker”, who sets out on a journey west to find the one and only safe harbor left in the world for the precious book he is carrying. He crosses paths with the worst and the best (but mostly the worst) of what humanity has become in the wake of some type of nuclear holocaust. The extent of his survival skills is impressive, but it pales in comparison to his determination and resolve to reach the destination told to him only a voice in his head. The road gets rougher as he passes through a town where the man in charge knows all too well the power of the book he is carrying and decides to claim it for his own.
Let’s start out with the nice things first, cause that is just the polite thing to do. As you can see from the picture above, there was a clear choice in visual tone to bring about this monochromatic, muted color palette to the world after the war. There was some incredibly stark imagery and compelling wide shots of our main traveler trekking across sheer emptiness and ruined wastelands. I was quietly pleased with that portion of the film, and only that portion, until I was reminded by the ending credits that this cross between Mad Max and The Road was directed by Albert and Allen Hughes, otherwise known as The Hughes Brothers. Looking back at their last film, From Hell, I suddenly put together all the pieces. The Book of Eli succeeded and suffered in the exact same way.
The Hughes Brothers have developed a style of powerful visuals and interesting color schemes, but they seem to forget about the rest of the recipe. The story lingers on in a menacingly slow fashion, broken up by frantic acts of violence, but a real ebb and flow is never truly achieved. Also, I will hold back all inclinations to what the third act twist is, but just know it left me extremely disappointed. I stand by the idea that films win or lose their audiences in the last five minutes and I was not only lost, but banging my head against the wall in order to develop short term amnesia. There were a good handful of ways the story could have ended, but they went with honestly the worst of the bunch.
In terms of acting, I actually thought Denzel Washington had a few really impressive scenes and it was nice to see him a little bit outside of the cocky, tough guy role that he was pigeonholed into over the last decade (like Man on Fire, Inside Man and his oscar-winning turn in Training Day.) Mila Kunis also stepped up for most of the film, yet I lost her when she started to become the rough and tumble chick again. She has a self-assuredness and confidence to her which works really well, but once she starts packing heat and sliding into some femme fatale position (ala Max Payne) she ends up a caricature instead of a character. Lastly there is Gary Oldman, who really has been playing parts like this for years. It’s not his best work by far, but even with that said, he still commands attention when on screen. His performance ended up making me imagine he was playing his same character from Leon, just many, many years older.
The End of the Page Recommendation: Honestly, I love religiously themed movies, especially if someone involved is carrying a crazy sharp machete, but this felt heavy-handed and preachy. A vain attempt was made at the end to balance that out, but it failed to remove the weight left by the previous hours. If you can get a copy of the actual 35mm film, find some of the really pretty shots, blow them up into posters and just be happy with that.
Since I’m not President, I finally have time to finish writing my book.
DandyID
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