Al Gore: 'The rich have subverted all reason' - MUST READ

[malaise]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/30/al-gore-interview-our-crumbling-planet-the-rich-have-subverted-all-reason-al-gore
<snip>

“In order to fix the climate crisis, we need to first fix the government crisis,” he says. “Big money has so much influence now.” And he says a phrase that is as dramatic as it is multilayered: “Our democracy has been hacked.” It’s something I hear him repeat – to the audience in the ballroom, in a room backstage, a few weeks later in London, and finally on the phone earlier this month.

What do you mean by it exactly? “I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial. And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat.”

One of Trump’s first acts after his inauguration was to remove all mentions of climate change from federal websites. More overlooked is that one of Theresa May’s first actions on becoming prime minister – within 24 hours of taking office – was to close the Department for Energy and Climate Change; subsequently donations from oil and gas companies to the Conservative party continued to roll in. And what is increasingly apparent is that the same think tanks that operate in the States are also at work in Britain, and climate change denial operates as a bridgehead: uniting the right and providing an entry route for other tenets of Alt-Right belief. And, it’s this network of power that Gore has had to try to understand, in order to find a way to combat it.

[JDC]

1. "Our Democracy has been hacked" is from Mr Robot

[longship]

4. Possibly you've been reading too much GWB campaign lit.

Just a casual observation.

[JDC]

6. Are you gently suggesting that because I point out that

Al Gore's great "new catch phrase" is borrowed from a popular tv show, that I am somehow by association, supporting a republican cause a la Bush 2?

[longship]

7. Come on! "Mr. Robot?????"

That is pure GOP-talk.

And there is nothing gentle about my suggestion.

Otherwise... My best to you.

[JDC]

9. I think the problem lies in your lack of understanding.

Please take a look at the attached link. If you don't feel comfortable looking up a link from DU, please type in Mr Robot, TV show "Our democracy has beeen hacked"

[longship]

10. I am not aware of that one.

But then again, there is no cable TV available where I live, nor broadband INet. We're still into stone tools and bone knives here.

I apologize. I thought that "Mr. Robot" referred to Al Gore, not your obscure, from my perspective, cultural reference. After all, one of the 2000 election narratives was indeed that Al Gore was robotic.

Forgive me. However, I cannot imagine how I could have figured out such an obscure cultural reference.

My best.

[JDC]

12. i thought it might be miscommunication

take care and thanks for the note.

[longship]

14. No prob, my friend.

[lunasun]

41. It's hardly obscure Golden Globe nominated show and not a new show . And I don't have cable

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/dec/11/best-tv-of-2015-no-7-mr-robot

Mr Robot’s three Golden Globe nominations this week (best drama, best actor for star Rami Malek, best supporting actor for Christian Slater) confirm what fans have been saying all year: it’s a modern classic. Launched without much anticipation on USA Network, a channel not known for going out of its way to make groundbreaking TV, it has become one of the sleeper hits of 2015. In the UK, it didn’t appear for months, until it was finally picked up by Amazon Prime (another one for the “2015: year of streaming” file). Judging by the number of buses driving around London plastered with Malek’s face, Amazon knew what they had on their hands.

[Silver Gaia]

45. This is really interesting... I hope you both see this. I was surprised!

I also thought that "Our democracy has been hacked" came from Mr. Robot (awesome show! one of my faves!), but it didn't. When I researched it, I learned that Al Gore actually used it first! This interview with Gore is from 2013. Mr. Robot debuted in 2015. So, they got it from him. Just an interesting tidbit.

This is a trailer for Season 1 of Mr. Robot, in case anyone is interested. I just checked, so can say that all episodes of both seasons are available for FREE streaming on the USA channel website.

[MaryLouisaWillis]

54. Al Gore said it first...

I learn something new everyday. Al Gore, one of the two best Presidents who never got to serve.

[Silver Gaia]

59. I hear that! Yup.

Both were cheated out what they rightfully won. Thanks for your post, Mary.

[spanone]

2. K&R..👍🏼

[longship]

3. What a tremendously great article.

The Guardian yet again excels in their reportage.

A recommended click through.

Thanks, my good friend.

[malaise]

15. This week's Sunday Guardian is one of their best ever

and that's saying something. You're welcome my friend

[calimary]

19. Their coverage has been unsurpassed for years.

During bush/cheney, about the only place you could find NON-fawning coverage, especially about the Iraq War and the run-up to that reckless fuck-up, was in The Guardian. For way too long, that was the only source for reality and truth, and not Pox-Noise-style spin. It was almost as though they alone retained some immunity from kkkarl rove influence.

[longship]

26. And their science reporting is tops!

I have been listening to their science podcasts for some time. Plus, clicking through to their science reportage.

It is universally very good.

That's always a good sign. As things go these days.

My best to you.

[zentrum]

5. Al is right, as usual.

And I wish he'd fought for his legal right to be our President. And I wish he hadn't been part of the DLC which encouraged big money in politics.

That said, glad he's still there and fighting.

[Aristus]

42. He did fight.

But when the Supreme Court is against you, and half the country is calling you a sore loser, there's very likely only so much a person can take.

If Al Gore had waded into the Federal bench with a katana, and come out covered in blood and throwing severed limbs onto a giant pile, and the SCOTUS decision had still gone against him, people would still have said he hadn't fought hard enough.

[zentrum]

43. There are several versions

....of what went down in 2000 and why the Dems didn't fight harder, (like Repugs would have IMO) but your points are well taken.

[MaryLouisaWillis]

57. There is really only one version

There were several options he had legally. He called for the partial recount. The only people who could call for a full recount were Jeb Bush, Kathryn Harris or the Florida SCOTUS. As the FL SCOTUS was about to call for a statewide count the US SCOTUS ended it by declaring bush the winner. I worked on that campaign as a super volunteer. I was very aware of every angle and detail of what happened. There are people on the far left who wanted to make it Gore's fault but it was not.

[MaryLouisaWillis]

55. He rejected the DLC before he ran for President.

I think it was 1998 when he did not attend the DLC annual "kiss our mighty ring" event.

ps...he did all he could except for calling for people to hit the streets. He was afraid people would be hurt. Maybe he should have fought as dirty as bush, but other than that there was nothing more he could do legally.

[Achilleaze]

8. The nightly news has become a nature hike through the Book of Revelations

Must read.

Must throw lying republican climate deniers out of office.

Now.

[malaise]

16. Great line indeed

Al's book The Assault on Reason was an early condemnation of RW attacks on enlightenment ideas.
I reread sections over and over.

[CrispyQ]

11. When the rest of us are dead, the Koch's & their ilk will live in their underground bunkers.

Not sure I'd want to live in a bunker. I think that rich folks who like living large & showing off their wealth might not like it so much either. You'd think maybe they'd rethink this greed thing, share the wealth, save the planet & we could all live above ground. I guess having in entire destroyed planet to yourselves is better, though, huh?

[dalton99a]

13. +1

[lunatica]

29. That's my sig line

[socialist_n_TN]

30. The SYSTEM (capitalism) that they made their money under........

has certain imperatives that it requires when it comes to reinvestment. Those imperatives don't allow reinvestment into anything other than the highest rate of profit possible. As long as you leave to private discretion WHERE that reinvestment takes place, you will have this. It's not even about greed, which is a human failing, although capitalists CAN be greedy people. It's about a system based on the profit motive.

To think that capitalism is a system that is concerned with the well-being of society as a whole is to TOTALLY misunderstand capitalism.

[CrispyQ]

40. They use their power & money

to tilt a system that already favors them to favor them even more, so don't tell me it's not about greed. There was a time when everything wasn't done for profit, when we didn't allow private corporations to profit from imprisoning our fellow citizens. Trust me, I have no reservations about capitalism's concern for society.

[DefenseLawyer]

17. If you go back and read Al Gore's 2007 book The Assault on Reason

It was an excellent analysis of this anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-Reason trend in our society. The sad thing is that in 2007, Gore wrote that he hoped the internet would be the marketplace of ideas that would save us from the biased commercialized influence of television. That didn't quite work out.

[malaise]

20. LOL Check #16

One of my favorite books

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

39. I'd really hoped that book would open enough eyes to cause some kind of

mass movement against that rejection of enlightenment Gore described.

I know many thought the internet was going to be far more of a force for good than it seems to have become, but the dark underbelly was always there. Some of the Usenet groups I stumbled upon way back when were not much better than 4chan; anti-progressive libertarianism, weird conspiracy theories, and astounding lack of civility abounded.

[Omaha Steve]

18. Thanks for posting!!!

K&R!

OS

[malaise]

24. You're welcome Omaha Steve

How are the birds this summer?

[Omaha Steve]

36. We have another full crop

We are trying to find a live trap for our moles. Bumper crop of them this year too. As well as Japanese beetles: http://www.omaha.com/living/japanese-beetle-swarms-are-worse-than-ever-this-year-and/article_77257d36-6c28-11e7-839a-877ff3c8538b.html

http://www.omaha.com/sarpy/papillion/tips-tricks-to-combat-japanese-beetle/article_3a6c1b6a-abda-5737-b55f-4b94b2c71873.html

OS

[malaise]

48. Thanks for the links

[R B Garr]

37. Yes, thanks for posting about this great DEMOCRAT!

Look what we missed out on due to the LIES perpetrated about him by Nader that he was the same as the Republicans. Proof that voting for the DEMOCRAT is essential.

[MaryLouisaWillis]

58. What you said....

I thought anything could be worse than the was he was treated by the media and the nader "purists"...but this last election was worse, at least in my opinion.

[Gabi Hayes]

21. Democracy in Chains:

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/nancy-maclean/

It seems inevitable the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy” will pop into your head while reading Duke University historian Nancy MacLean’s disquieting Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. After all, the phrase made famous by Hillary Clinton in the 1990s popped into MacLean’s head a few times while she researched and wrote her book.

It would seem an apt description, given the covert undermining of American democratic foundations and institutions by the extreme libertarian movement MacLean documents in Democracy in Chains. But as pernicious as the movement is, it “is not a conspiracy,” she said in an interview. “A conspiracy involves illegality, and this movement, while it operates by stealth, is generally careful to stay within the rules that exist.”

She uses “fifth column assault” instead. She acknowledged “fifth column” also is “a phrase with a fraught history.” But the academics, operatives, ideologues, and billionaires of the radical right “have a fundamental hostility to our form of government as it existed over the 20th century,” and seek to vanquish it from within.

Democracy in Chains expands on Jane Mayer’s reporting in Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. Where Mayer follows the radical right’s money trail, MacLean examines its intellectual origins—“the master plan behind it,” as she writes in her book’s introduction. Her findings will leave you deeply concerned for our democracy and civic life.

At the center of MacLean’s book is Nobel Prize-winning economist James McGill Buchanan, who died in 2013 at age 93. Largely bankrolled by Charles Koch and other deep-pocketed misanthropic libertarians throughout most of his career from the mid-1950s onward, Buchanan latched onto public choice theory to become its leading promoter. Buchanan assumed self-interest primarilymotivated politicians, bureaucrats, union organizers, civil rights activists, and others, MacLean says. He cast public service in a deeply cynical light and denigrated the idea of “we the people” and the common good. Where the common good leads, Buchanan thought, is to an out-of-control government that destroys individual liberty.

[malaise]

23. Of course destroyng individual liberty means

there must be no common good so don't you dare tax the rich.

[certainot]

25. the deniers' most important tool last 30 years is talk radio yet we allow 88 universities

without complaint to support/endorse/attract advertising for 257 limbaugh stations by broadcasting sports on them

at a cheap $1000/hr x 15hrs/day x 5 = $75,000/wk x 1200 stations republican talk radio is worth $18MIL/day or 390MIL$ /month or 4.68 BIL$/ year FREE for coordinated global warming denial and electing deniers, and all things republican - making single payer politically impossible, destroying public ed, deregulation and tax breaks for billionaires, unqualified reactionary supremes, swiftboating dems and progressives

and yet we quibble about a few million here and there spent on politics.

257 stations are worth about $1BIL/year in global warming denial and electing deniers, while attacking public ed to defund and privatize it.

as an example of how ridiculous this is, penn st supports 11 limbaugh stations while supporting the work of famous climate researcher michael mann!

and the 'climategate' bullshit that limbaugh created in 2009 from out-of-context hacked emails that is still cited by deniers as 'proof' its a hoax was from a RUSSIAN hack.

so that could have been putin's work to successfully derail copenhagen climate talks, and how long has limbaugh been getting paid for that?

all that is practically FREE for the republicans because democrats and thinking americans ignore talk radio and never complain about it - all r-cons have to do is fund a few think tanks to feed the radio.

[Gabi Hayes]

27. Think I'm gonna be sick

I knew it was bad, but on on the scale you present

Doesn't this malignant scenario result from that horrendous 1996 communications act, which allowed unfettered expansion of companies like clear channel, leaving us today with monstrosities like Sinclair?

[certainot]

28. no, talk radio monopoly after reagan killed the fairness doc made the tel com act possible

reagan did it in 1987 by killing the fairness doctrine.

they subsidized limbaugh on 500 stations and pretty soon they had 1000 radio stations spewing a monopoly message that deregulation would lower cable prices, money is free speech, liberal media, unions put in as much as corporations, etc - for 9 years before they pushed the tel com act.

even with tel com act deregulation, talk radio is by far the biggest problem because it is ignored by the left while its high volume wide spread ignored repetition creates the alt reality and sets the levels of acceptability for racism, hate, etc. fox wouldn't exist without this talk radio.

all other major mediums are monitored and challenged to some extent by the left. all other major mediums present 'alternatives' a click away. talk radio gets a free speech free ride while it kicks internet ass.

the tel com act is a symptom of ignoring talk radio, not the cause, but it is often used for anti-clinton

[malaise]

31. Excellent post

and the rich own and finance these RW stations

[certainot]

38. clearchannel/iheart is $20 bil in debt or something, but they'll drop

a few billion to make trillions with denial, deregulation, war, tax breaks, etc

even with all that debt even some liberals fall for that crap about RW radio being 95% RW because of market demand.....

i guess it's an investment - but most would consider it all free and i wonder if at some level russian money is involved. it would be a game changer for investigators/journalists to find out limbaugh got tired of his measly 30 mil/yr and has been freelancing and a friend of a friend of limbaugh is a russian launderer....

someone did tell trump to study talk radio in 2014, after all... according to gabriel sherman, new york magazine, 4/3/16

so we still have hugh hewitts getting a 50% seat at the MSNBC table now to continue 7 years of repeating ad nauseum how obamacare is a failure....

[socialist_n_TN]

32. "...destroys individual liberty." is ruling class code for........

destroying the ability of wealth to oppress and dominate the rest of us.

[malaise]

47. Yep

[certainot]

22. oops

[Sunlei]

35. He's actually honestly worked for his money. Thanks for your concern.

[Sunlei]

34. make those 10 million- tax free,( irs lists as charity) "Republican Political Charities" pay taxes o

pay taxes on the billions they spend on Republicans agenda.

America would have billions/trillions! more in state/federal tax revenue.

[Initech]

44. Yup, Al's right. The rich have declared all out war on the government.

And now they've got Trump, his lackeys, and the MAGA crowd to help them carry out their evil deeds. They must be stopped at every turn possible!

[BadgerMom]

46. Vast right wing conspiracy, amirite?/K & R

[broadcaster90210]

49. It takes two to tango

Don't just blame the rich. Tens of millions of fucking morons jumped on board the crazy train.

[burrowowl]

50. k&R!!!!!!

[BainsBane]

51. Except a lot of big corporations actually favor

Standards on carbon emissions. It's beyond the influence of money in politics. The GOP has nurtured hatred for science and knowledge, and their base's opposition to climate science is absolute. My sense is that the GOP primary electorate has a bigger role in the party's position than even donors.

[Pachamama]

52. Definitely a must read - I also didn't know this about Theresa May

But then again, I am not surprised about Theresa May The very forces that put her in power, who want to drive a wedge and separate the UK with Brexit from EU are anti-climate protection and pro-industry. There is in my opinion a current assault on democracy and on climate protection and what role the wealthy and Putin and his oligarchs/mafia are playing in all this and their reasons can and should be debated. But we can't ignore this and we need to know how to counter it and must counter it.

I am sure that Al Gore knows that his hopes that Ivanka and Daddy cared about the world are very clear now.

[malaise]

53. She's an awful woman

seriously

[Pachamama]

56. Agreed

She is a Dick....