For
Al Gore, the perfect future is one in which democracy and capitalism as
we know them have ceased to exist, conservatives have stopped promoting
their smaller government agenda, and there is more regulation.
“Capitalism, like democracy, must also be reformed,” the former vice president argued in his latest book “The Future [1],” which was released Jan. 30.
Besides
bashing capitalism, democracy and conservatives, “The Future” continued
to push Gore’s agenda of increased government regulation to prevent
what he claims is an impending climate change [2] disaster. He also praised radical Occupy Wall Street as well as Al Jazeera, the new owners of his Current TV network.
According to news reports [3], Gore made about $100 million from the roughly $500 million deal selling his cable channel to Al Jazeera [4], and has been defending [5]
that decision ever since. In “The Future,” he referred to the
terror-friendly network as “feisty and relatively independent,” and
praised their involvement in helping to mobilize the Arab Spring. Al
Jazeera, however, is a purveyor of propaganda, consistently offering the
anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist line at a time when America
has been threatened by Islamic terrorists and has gone to war against
them.
He
had previously refused to sell Current TV to conservative radio and TV
personality Glenn Beck, citing that “The legacy of who the network goes
to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with
our point of view.” But apparently he has no problem with the point of
view of those who throw birthday parties for terrorists [6].
In what seemed like a thinly veiled rant against the dismal unpopularity [7]
of Current TV, he expressed disappointment about what he saw as the
public’s inability to express itself, due to television “offering no
means for interactive dialogue and collaborative decision making.”
Gore
also ripped into capitalism saying “the operations of democratic
capitalism in its current form are producing unfair and intolerable
results,” including “suffocating control of policy decisions by elites,
the ever increasing inequalities of income and the growing
concentrations of wealth, and the paralysis of any efforts at reform.”
With
such views, it is no surprise Gore praised the Occupy movement, whose
formation he saw as having been “driven by the dawning awareness of the
majority of Americans” of the flaws in “democratic capitalism in its
current form.”
According
to Gore, the Occupiers fought a losing battle against “the forces of
wealth and corporate power,” which he claims are weakening the “state of
democratic decision making in the U.S.” and have “paralyzed the ability
of the country to make rational decisions in favor of policies that
would remedy these problems.”
Gore
was apparently baffled as to why anyone would be opposed to further
government regulation and about the rise of the conservative Tea Party
movement. He repeated the liberal line about the Tea party movement
being fake grassroots, labeling it “faux-populist.”
“Within
the United States, it is a measure of how distorted the ‘conversation
of democracy’ has become that in the aftermath of the economic
catastrophe, the most significant ‘populist’ reaction in the U.S.
political system was not a progressive demand for protective regulations
to prevent a recurrence of what had just happened, but instead a
right-wing faux-populist demand by the Tea Party for less government regulation.” Gore then accused the Tea Party of being little more than a front for corporate lobbyists.
Continuing
his attacks on conservatives, he imaginatively spoke of a unified
political Right with “lockstep discipline.” This group of “corporate
Musketeers” as he calls them, strive to “starve the government of its
resources,” so that “it is capable of interfering as little as possible
with the plans of corporations and the interests of the elites.” Said
the guy who just sold his TV network to terrorist sympathizers for $500
million.
“It could
be called the Three Musketeers Principle: all for one and one for all.
Those primarily interested in opposing any form of gun regulation agree
to support the position of oil and coal companies opposed to reduce
global warming pollution. Anti-abortion activists agree to support large
banks in their opposition to new financial regulations.” Gore wrote.
And
of course no Gore book would be complete without a warning about the
calamitous threat of climate change. His push for expanded regulation to
protect the environment takes up the bulk of the book. One of the
sources he cited to back up his claims was NASA scientist, climate
change doomsday prophet and favorite of the left: James Hansen [8]. Gore referred to him as a “global warming expert.”
In
a speech before Congress in 2008, Hansen called for the chief
executives of large fossil fuel companies to be put on trial for “high crimes against humanity [9],” according to the U.K. news outlet The Guardian [10]. In 1988, Hansen predicted that global temperatures would rise by 0.45 degrees Celsius. This was not the case [11]. However, Hansen began an Aug. 3, 2012 Washington Post [12] opinion piece by saying that his predictions that year were too optimistic.
In
spite of those failed claims, Gore still used him as an expert saying,
“James Hansen, for one, surmises that we are witnessing an exponential
process of ice mass loss, and that, as a result, the most relevant
statistic is the doubling time of the observed loss. Based on his
preliminary analysis of the data, Hansen believes it is likely that we
will see a ‘multi-meter’ sea level rise in this century.”
But
maybe it’s fitting that Gore would use a discredited scientist to back
up his warnings. After all, the very day his 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth [2]”
opened in theaters, Gore told NBC's Katie Couric that sea levels would
rise 20 feet or more worldwide by 2010, the polar ice caps would melt
and the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa would become deserts if nothing
was done. But, 2010 came and went, and the polar ice caps still exist.
Gore should see if he can get a refund for those apocalypse prediction
classes that he took from the Mayans.
