Friday Rudeness: Gore v. Bush

[Coexist]

The Rude One doesn't usually bring tears to my eyes, but this one did:

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2007/10/gore-v.html

Or, to put it another way, Gore won. Again. When the books are written, in the long-term histories of this and other countries, Al Gore will be cherished and George Bush will be crushed like so much real manure on a fake ranch. Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize does in Bush's seeming obsession with his legacy. And that's due in no small part to the smallness of Bush's thinking compared to the expansiveness of Gore's.

<snip>
Back in 2000, because we didn't riot in the streets and shut down the country in the wake of the presidential election debacle, the nation essentially abandoned Al Gore. And while Al Gore didn't totally abandon the nation, he turned his focus to the effort to demonstrate that real leadership need not emanate from the false mandate of a corrupted electoral process. In his crusade for action on climate change, Gore not only remade himself, but he remade the way in which people think about the world at large. Here was not just a cause confined to a specific continent (like African hunger) or a fight against a tyrant like Hitler to catalyze large portions of the population. Here was a way of thinking of the Earth as a whole, a way of seeing the interdependence of each country, of each population, and Gore has shifted a generation's view of itself as part of something larger.

<snip>
Gore's not gonna run. Give that up. To go from speaking out about melting icecaps to being asked what he thinks about, say, a flag-burning amendment would be a degradation of what he's worked for the last six years. And had that statewide recount in Florida happened and Gore had become president, Republicans would have simply worked night and day trying to destroy him, and his causes would have been washed away in a tide of worthless investigations of Buddhist monk phone calls and worse. And let's not even get into how Republicans would have exploded in berserk, ape-like rage over 9/11 if it had happened under a Gore presidency.

It's not that we're not worthy or that he's too good for us or any of that hyperbolic nonsense. We got the president we deserved, twice, and we realized too late that we didn't get the president we needed. As with so many things, our own temptation to that latent American selfishness has done us in.

[dogindia]

1. k/r

[SeattleGirl]

2. The Rude one is absolutely right.

"We got the president we deserved, twice, and we realized too late that we didn't get the president we needed."

Amen, brother. Amen.

[Coexist]

4. sad, but oh so true.

[EST]

3. K & R

In my childhood, and in many if not most since then, I presume, there were many stories of the "winners never quit and quitters never win" variety. They were designed to instruct and, perhaps more importantly, identify with the protagonist, often the underdog/ultimate winner. Other themes like Steve Martin's A Simple Twist of Fate comes to mind.

One theme of considerable usefulness was the bully or con artist who took advantage of a less violent or less fortunate victim, cheating him or stealing from him and managing to deny to the good guy his well deserved goal. Of course, our hero, thus deflected, winds up on a totally different track, owning the Mayo Clinic or Scotland or something and saves the jerk's life or, maybe, wins the Nobel Prize or some such.

Somebody has to play the role of the jerk-ass bigot whose double dealing or his father's money and influence destroyed his victim. The perfect candidate for this role is someone so devoid of real intelligence and the milk of human kindness that he sympathizes with the bully.

Poetic justice on a scale that we are lucky to have seen in our lifetime. A gawdamn emmy, fer crissakes, and a Nobel peace prize, and the adulation of the world, or, at least, the thinking world, and the very real possibility that he could well be elected president by popular acclaim and write-ins, should he want.
Maybe king of the world or god would be more to his liking.

I wonder who'll play Al Gore in the movie version.

Think of it...he's even got instant credibility with the Arab and Persian world--
Al-Qida, Al-Jazeera, Al-Hamda, Al-Gore...

[MethuenProgressive]

5. "Gore's not gonna run. Give that up." Been sayin' that fer months.

He ain't that stupid.