Truth Decay

I went to the dentist for the first time since my military days on Friday. I had a bit of a tooth ache, which was not so surprising since it had been over four years since my last official cleaning- It was quite an adventure really because I went to the university’s school of dentistry and my case was peculiar and worth talking about. The professor came over to probe my mouth after the young eager hygienist to be had conducted her preliminary assessment. Yes it seems that my mouth served as a near perfect example of what can be expected after four years of outdated brushing techniques. Everyone was friendly, helpful and certain that if I was open to a slight oral hygiene update my mouth would make a full recovery- I mentioned that this was actually the second time in my life that I was told of a generally accepted complete change in how to brush as advised by the dental profession. The students (most younger than I) nodded sympathetically and one said sadly “with those old techniques you just weren’t getting your back teeth clean.”

So I learned that throughout four and a half hours of someone poking, prodding, and scraping away at things quite a bit of communication can actually be accomplished between hygenist and patient. As it turns out the young hygienist to be found tremendous satisfaction in working on my mouth because the Calculus (the new term for tartar) was all easy to scrape away and localized so we fell into seemingly natural but broken conversation- for my part I spoke of a great many things that have been tumbling around inside of my mental engine…

Roy’s new book is filled with spectacularly intricate descriptions of his largely unnamed, yet already patented inventions. It is a book filled with uncomfortable contrasts, leaping from vague overviews of what "must be done to change our world" to the rather precise seeming claims such as “it is preferable to select a relatively low modulus of elasticity material, such as unfilled ethylene tetrafluoroethylene, rather than a stiffer material, such as glass-filed polyphenylene sulfide” to construct Transducer Disk 63. He explains how Transducer Disk 63 interacts with Valve Seat 54 and Dielectic Polymer 64 but cruelly fails to ever give any reason why his invention is important or worth reading about let alone what it might be called aside from “my invention.” There are many problems with transitions and a complete lack of any proper introduction to most of the material but it is easy to see that he wrote in earnest hope that every reader would somehow gather the significance of his ramblings.

I’ve been working with some contact with the alternative energy splinter info realm and it’s not hard to imagine why it’s largely gone nowhere in America. Every new energy group, association and fringe wackadoo seems to want someone to take their great idea and run with it. In short it is a field big on managers and idea men and extraordinarily deficient when it comes to innovators, technically savvy entrepreneurs, and cunning risk-takers. There is yet to be a solar Rockefeller.

This brings me to Al Gore, mostly because It is inevitable. To talk of Al Gore I must first air the sad fact that I was among the delusional ill-headed masses that thought the Vice Presidents sighs and rolling eyes in his debate with Gee Wiz Bush indicated some unforgivable pompous nature. I never stopped to consider that it might be a very reasonable reaction when an intelligent thoughtful gentleman is forced to listen to a burbling stream of pure idiocy vomited forth from a good ole half wit in a presidential debate. That Gore could not use this to his advantage may go a long way in explaining his reluctance to throw his hat back into the coliseum spectacle which mad-men now muck about with to arrive in that prized office.

I have not yet read Gore’s new book The Assault on Reason. However, I have thoroughly enjoyed the interviews that he has been engaged in while promoting this seemingly exceptional work. Asside from some well deserved, vicious appraisals of the Bush administrations failings, the general premise of the book seems to be that our system has some serious problems when it comes to connecting logic and reasoning with actual decision making and accountability. Basically, the media is to distracted by the newest sensational story to take a look at the repercussions of the lies and manipulation of the perception of the electorate that result in unnecessary, disastrous wars… And yet wherever Al goes he can hardly talk about these deep rooted problems that exist within the US system because whoever might be interviewing him can not resist asking him over and over again if he will be running for president. A perfect example is his appearance on Diane Sawyer’s show it’s worth wathing and it's not hard to find on Youtube or you can view it at:

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/21/gore-sawyer-interview/

but here’s a tidbit:

SAWYER: Joining us now is the author of The Assault on Reason, former Vice President Al Gore. And it’s good to have you with us this morning.

GORE: Good morning.

SAWYER: OK, you’re not going to tell me again that you have no plans to run, are you? Tell me this morning…

GORE: Well, I’m not a candidate and this book is not a political book, it’s not a candidate book at all. It’s about the fact that there are cracks in the foundation of American democracy that have to be fixed.

[…]

SAWYER: Well, I want to come back to that thesis because part of it involves our jobs in television news, and I want to deal with that.
But nonetheless, Mr. Vice President, it’s going to be very hard for people to read this book and say this is not a political book, because this is a book that really does go to the current administration. And my question…

GORE: Just as one of many examples of how our conversation of democracy has turned toward these buzzwords and phrases, like the frame for the discussion, the logo Campaign ‘08, that’s not what this is about. You know, for anybody who has asked the question, Has something gone wrong in our country? this book is about that. It’s about what’s gone wrong and how we can fix it.

[…]

SAWYER: Again, not to come back to this and fall into your thesis that the press only wants the horserace of the political campaign, but one way…

GORE: But back to the horserace.

SAWYER: … back to the horserace.

[…]

SAWYER: And I just wonder, when will you make a decision? And what will it be that causes you to make that decision, if you’re waiting and watching?

GORE: Well, you know, I’m not pondering it, I’m not focused on that.

[…]

SAWYER: We are going dig deeper — in fact, we’re going to come back with another piece, because I really want to talk more about this thesis.

GORE: Oh, great.

SAWYER: But to dig not very deep, once again, at my peril here…I just want to say, Donna Brazile, your former campaign manager, has said, If he drops 25 to 30 pounds he’s running. Lost any weight?

GORE: I think, you know, millions of Americans are in the same struggle I am on that one. But look — but listen to your questions. You know, the horserace, the cosmetic parts of this — and, look, that’s all understandable and natural. But while we’re focused on, you know, Britney and K-Fed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we, the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are.

I’ve watched several interviews and I’m convinced that Gore is sincerely fed up with the idiocracy. I believe it was on Countdown with Keith Olbermann that Gore just came out with it and pretty much said he wanted to be able to say what he really thought was important and couldn’t expect to get elected doing that. So here’s a guy that in some recent poles is shown to have a better chance than either Hillary or Obama to beat any of the Republican candidates including Giuliani, and he came out and said that he pretty much doesn’t think he makes a very good candidate in today’s election process. I know enough to say that regardless of what any person thinks of Gore politically that particular sentiment should make us all sad and angry at the sort of leadership our decrepit system seems to inevitably produce. It seems reasonable that we might all begin to contemplate whether the exact personal attributes which make it possible for an individual to strive in a presidential election may also be some of the same attributes that ensure miserable, ill-conceived and wrongly motivated decisions from dually elected presidents.

Ah well, perhaps not all of this made it into the strange broken conversation between hygienist to be and overdue patient but that’s what might have been achieved if my obsolete brushing techniques had been as ill-suited for my front teeth as they apparently were for those in the back…

Beyond the Dentist...

A short time ago I listened to an audio presentation of the Diary of Anne Frank. Aside from highly suggesting that anyone even slightly interested in some of the simple mysteries of humanity immediately either read or listen to this amazing little piece of history, I must say that it kindled a renewed fascination with World War II. I have been listening to a lecture series on the whole disastrous exploit and although I would like to collect my thoughts and perhaps post some more in depth thoughts this experience has evoked two far more immediate responses which seem relevant.

One is the idea which I believe is overwhelmingly held by Americans that in the past great men have risen up to lead above their own ability on behalf of the US in desperate times. Whether that is true or not the perception does seem to exist. After that strange disaster in 2001 many of our fellow citizens were afraid but took solace in the hope that GW would be the best man he could be in order to lead us through troubled times. However, an advantage was seized, an unrelated war was waged, the truth was discarded as an annoying obstacle and an almost unrecognizaple new America seems to have been born of it all. Only now are many folks shaking off that terrible image of buildings falling only to awaken to an America that idly speaks of the pros and cons of torture while ignoring Bush’s baby as it devours the lives of US service men and countless Iraqis while shitting out meaningless rhetoric and wiping its ass with any good will felt towards the US that may remain around the world.

The other is a thought of some words uttered by Hitler himself as his dreams of easily steamrolling the Soviet Union began to unravel. Evan as the front pushed on to Moscow, platoons and entire companies of the red army which had been left behind by the hasty advance of the Nazis and had no way to communicate with their commanders formulated what would today be called an insurgency. They would fearlessly ride on horse into villages where unsuspecting German support troops were trying to acquire provisions. They would gun them down or cut them up with sabers if they had to. Often the soviets sustained tremendous casualties in these raids leaving the Nazi commanders to wonder what the point was, but the psychological impact on German soldiers was a mounting burden and the Russian villagers took heart in the stuburn resistance of their proud army. The effect was eventually clear, Germans could never expect to find safe quarters in Russia. Holding the Soviet territory would be like pinning a great bear to the ground, even if the Nazis found they had the strength to do it the moment that they let up they could expect the bear to tear them to shreds. Hitler is reported to have said of his decision to terminate the nonaggression pact which he had signed with the Soviet Union, as these hard realities came to light, something to the effect that going to war is like kicking in a door and rushing into a dark room; you may believe that you know where the furniture lies and what obstacles to anticipate but in reality you can never be sure of what you will encounter.

It seems extremely likely now that GW thought that the US could expect to take Baghdad and be received as liberators with only easy details to take care of thereafter. It’s clear that the Bush administration is no authority on history, yet it seems that at every turn they ignored the lessons from how power has been successfully and unsuccessfully projected in the past. It is always a sad end to any who believe that they are above these lessons. However, what is even more sad is the depressing facts that we as a people must now live with the consequences of terribly arrogant blunders and unfortunately our system may be ill-equiped to bring to power an individual capable of dealing with these consequences in any sort of constructive way.