There’s a lot to be said about the politics of Al Gore’s badmouthing America before a mainly Saudi audience at the “Jiddah Economic Forum.” But others have done that well. What interests me more is why Gore would do something like that in the bosom (apt word that) of a regime where women are not yet allowed to drive and Freedom of Religion is about as remote as Alpha Centauri (and that’s only the half of it). The obvious is that he is a frustrated man who was inches away from the Presidency and now finds himself increasingly marginalized. And indeed he must say something dramatic to attract our (or anyone’s) attention. Call that the ‘narcissism argument.” To some extent it’s true.
But I think it’s more than that. I think Gore has a secret wish to implode. Al is no rocket scientist (no Internet jokes, please) but he is a reasonably intelligent man. Let’s assume he is aware, as most readers of this blog are, of Bin Laden’s pronouncements about the strong and weak horse. At least he must sense the great gulf between our culture’s response to self-analysis and theirs. For Wahhabi culture, such apology is nothing more than a display of weakness. Deep down Al must have some idea of the Saudi reaction to the statements he made. They would have contempt for him. And he probably wants them to. (I could go on with the self-loathing implicit in all this, but I’m getting way too psychoanalytic here.)
UPDATE: Perhaps next time Al should shout “Death to Denmark.” Then he’ll really get some support.
God bless all those people in Palm Beach County who accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan.
What has become of the Democrat party when you have mouthpieces like Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. This is certainly not like the party of Truman or Zell Miller. If their present leaders are any indication of what is in store for the county if one of them are elected President we had better say our prayers. We have enemies out there and they are waiting for our form of Neville Chamberlain to arise, someone like Al Gore would do splendidly I think.
He’s a sick man either way it goes and it shows the desperation of his political party. Whether he is looking to garner some type of support to the democratic party; or God only knows what other purpose, it is a dark sinister attempt to get the Saudi’s to bet on a different horse.
There is something sick about what people on the left are willing to say – no matter what it may do to our country’s future – in public.
He obviously realizes the Saudi’s have been quietly supportive of the Bush admin. And why not, these business relationships go back for decades in the oil trade. Democrats while still receiving money from corporate oil giants know they are outside the camp of decision making processes and they’re furious of the consequences it has on their power. As a result, Gore, Clinton, others are willing to say and do anything.
In the PAST, this type of ‘backstabbing of America’ rhetoric would never have been exposed to Americans. Thankfully, today we have blogs and the internet! So now we know the disgusting behavior of people off our shores when bowing down to foreign leaders.
He is trying to break the business side by fueling the fire of religious ideaology and fanatic hatred of the west by supposedly ‘informing’ on the Bush admins ‘bad handling’ of Arabs.
As quiet partners that they have been taken for a ride in the desert on a horse with no name…. smiles.
By doing so, he’s hoping to open some gap which will allow some Democrats to get another horse in the show.
It is sickening to watch, but it happens on both sides. The republicans are just smarter to keep all their horse trading behind the curtains.
If you seriously think about the implications. Essentially America is up for sale by our politicians who go abroad. Gore is surely trying to get Saudi’s who own companies in America to give money to the Democratic War Chest. By doing so, he’s saying we will ‘treat you better’. We will open up more doors for your people, yada, yada, yada. You gave 20 million to two universities, why not give millions to the Democrats?
Screw the American people….
We live in a world whereby there is no allegience to faith, family, and country, but only to power.
It makes you want to take a shower after reading of such sleaze.
ìBut I think it’s more than that. I think Gore has a secret wish to implode.î
Michael Medved believes that Al Gore is mentally deranged. I shall dare to practice psychiatry without the necessary credentials and also describe the former vice president as someone requiring the services of a professional therapist. This man seems nuttier than a fruit cake. The very idea that Gore almost became the leader of our country should scare the hell out of us.
Many of my predictions are proven quite accurate. Unfortunately, sometime I make a total fool of myself. I thought that after the election of 2000. Al Gore might take some time off and return a more thoughtful and perhaps even brilliant human being. Oh gosh, how could I have been so wrong?
I can remember a time in the 1980′s when Al Gore was considered among the more thoughtful, rational (and believe it or not Conservative) members of the Democratic Party. At some point he developed one of two things which has evidently deranged him: a brain tumor or ambition.
I guess Al being in front of all those crypto RICO, women loving, Jew hating, Christian bashing, dress wearing Muslim bigots forgot that lefty ‘Speak Truth To Power? stuff?
The Gods must want to destroy the Democrat party. Look at who the Gods have made successful. Hillary, Al Gore, Read, Pelosi, Kennedy, Kerry, Carter. It would be fun if it didn’t, and it does, embolden yet again another dumb Muslim kid to go shoot, bomb or blow up a Red State soldier in a HUMVEE.
I really wonder if it’s even possible to run for President now without having some underlying problems. Just thinking about it …
- Carter: Domineering (but idolized) mother, pulled away from a Naval career to take over the family peanut business (I don’t know a lot about his childhood)
- Reagan: abusive alcoholic father, idolized mother, unstable childhood, stage performer (narcissism?)
- George H.W. Bush: less obvious, but a lot of family tradition (Sen Prescott Bush, George Walker) against which to feel measured
- Clinton: father died before birth, idealized mother, unstable childhood (mother a bit of a party girl in youth?), lots of obvious self-destructive behaviors, glaring narcissism
- George W Bush: distant father, black sheep, alcohol (recovering alcoholic), pretty dramatic rejection of his Connecticut background (he’s got a lot more of a Texas accent than Jeb or Neil, but he actually started talking in CT), strong and domineering mother
- Al Gore: “Daddy” issues all over — father was grooming him for presidency (and openly planning it) from an early age, lots of signs of early rebellion against this (eg, left law school for divinity school)
I’m not a therapist, but it seems there are some threads of similarity here….
ìI can remember a time in the 1980′s when Al Gore was considered among the more thoughtful, rational (and believe it or not Conservative) members of the Democratic Party.î
I personally saw a TV interview of some twenty years ago when Al Gore unambiguously argued against abortion and gun control. He knowledgeably and thoughtfully provided strong reasons why abortion should be normally outlawed. The man was an adamant pro-lifer! It is shocking that today Gore has become something of a radical leftist.
Al Gore on Leno was thoughtful, self-deprecating, funny, and human. His long career in politics was marked by conservatism socially/culturally and avoidance of risk.
What the heck happened?
He wants to be President. Thus he needs the Kos/Moveon/Code Pink votes and money. They love this stuff. Look at their reaction to Cartoon Jihad. They’re on the other side (along with most of the media).
I do not know what to think of Al Gore anymore. As David notes the Al Gore of 20 years ago was a very different man.
I heard that Gore said Bush had picked on the Arabs here in the US…. he had indiscriminately rounded them up…. he had refused them visas etc. But I also remeber that in Moore’s cinematic masterpiece the opposition was accusing Bush of being too easy on the Saudis. I have to admit I am getting tired of trying keep up with the ups and downs and ins and outs of Democratic party politics.
I forgot…. Thanks Roger, PJM and thanks to all the blogs who expose such backstabbing guffaw.
Matrix; Neo says, ‘I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change.”
So true today of MSM and government media. They’re afraid. The blogs are watching and reporting around the world. Reporting on media around the world, watching the GateKeepers, insuring information flows which we never would receive in the past. Change is taking place.
We poor, we uneducated, we uninformed “Americans” are getting a rude wake up call and “not just us”, but people around the world for the first time are reading and seeing free people speak without being told what to think and they’re seeing truth abroad which never would’ve reached us or them.
Not only are our enemies offshore. They’re right here amongst us, greedy people who will do anything for power and they exist on both sides.
People don’t hate us because of who we are. They’re not getting the truth. Nor are there so many jealous of our riches as we might think. Instead, media like ARD, BBC, teach people to hate us because of what propagandist mouthpieces for them “say we are.”
For example, David’s MedienKritik pointed out a TV spot on ARD in Germany reported America was letting people freeze to death in the northeast. And then reported how Hugo Chavez was helping ‘better than Bush’. Meanwhile, 9 have frozen to death in Germany and they say nothing about it.
A similar message like this was delivered abroad about Katrina and New Orleans. Yet, Democrats have ruled for most of the last 100 years in Nawlin’s and have consistently held that state to the lowest rate of education and welfare in the nation. But somehow, Bush is to blame, just ask Jimmy – the ‘Christian’ who supports Hamas and Chavez.
This is nothing new under the sun. Its been going on before many of us were born. Thankfully, the internet shines the light for us to see. We recognize the monster and its socialist propaganda tactics. But rarely did the misbehavior of politicians on distant shores reach us through MSM. We recognize too the propaganda of Hitlarian proportions in Islamic media as well.
Everywhere you go, whether Germany, Russia, China or even places like England, twadlle is spewed forth to people. Who think they are getting the truth about those terrible Americans, or those terrible ‘right wingers’, those ‘far right Chrisitan and Jewish Zealots’. Afterall says the psuedo-intellectual, we’re above all that religion ‘stuff’. Its only the ‘religious’ who cannot think for themselves. These same giant egos and intellectuals fail to see the difference between Islam and Judeo-Christian beliefs.
They say, we don’t care about the poor, the downtrodden. Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Americans yearly donate 285Billion to charity with much going abroad. But folks at ARD will never report this, nor the BBC or papers like the Guardian, Pravda, etc.
Well, as Neo would say, “I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you.”
MSM, government run media in Europe, Russia, China, Islamic countries, you’re afraid of change, but we’re going to show the people what you don’t want them to see and show them a world is better with more voices for truth watching around the world and you are no longer the Gatekeepers of what flows into and out of your people minds, nor our minds.
New pens are writing…. and New eyes are reading.
It coulde be as simple as ..
Al has accepted his Dhimmitude in an open and public way, so now the Saudis can send him (campaign) money.
Oh, come now. Is it any surprise that Gore has the same Bush Derangement Sydrome that afflicts so many in his party? Alas, the only cure is January 20, 2009.
I am neither qualified to make, nor interested in any psychological analysis of the man’s statements. But, Roger, you certainly used the right word to describe both the probable Saudi reaction, and my own sentiments as well–contempt!
What can Gore be thinking of? Just how much money has passed hands for a former vice president to become a dhimmi.
I would like to put forward a more practical view of Gore and Saudia Arabia. Being from Chicago I place the motivators of Money and Sex first and second on my scale of why smart people do apparently foolish things.
Gore is not going to get any sex in Saudi so that leaves money, which is there in great quantities. The Gore family takes a back seat to no one in insuring the growth of their capital base; Al Sr with OcciPet, Armand Hammer and the family zinc mine come to mind.
Al Jr is not getting any younger, time to take care of the grandchildren’s trust funds, and perhaps shore up the coffers of the new cable channel, and maybe a few bones to his friends the investment bankers in San Francisco who gave him a place to sit for a few months when he needed it.
Yep, to steal from Willie Sutton, I go with the money.
In my hometown we describe such actions with a four letter word beginning and ending with the letter P.
The assumption that Albert Gore slipped his noodle after the 2000 election is too kind. The Democrat Party began to mortify in the 1970′s, and by the time of the 2000 election, a quick kick to the inert carcass forced all the worms and burying beetles into the open. One of whom was Al Gore. A man like Gore would have found no other political home that would accept him.
Instability rendered by the destruction of false hopes and expectations is one thing. The bizarre and physically revolting behavior of this man, in my view, is only attributable to some deep and truly frightening need for power at any cost, and a moral corruption so thorough that he must never be allowed near public office.
I think we have to believe that the Gore we see in Saudi Arabia is the very same Gore in Blair House and before. What we don’t know about him, so far, is probably better left unknown.
I will advance three reasons other than those I have seen above for Al Gore making the statements he made in Saudi Arabia.
First, he wants to speak to audiences that approve of him, and to do that he must say what they want to hear. He was presumably being paid, as well, by his Saudi sponsors at this occasion. He delivered value to them for hsi fee.
Second, he has become bitter beyond reason, if not sanity. In this he joins fellow America basher Jimmy Carter. I think neither of these men can forgive the country for rejecting them. They prodfess to love America, but it is the “Americas” of their imagination—a “good” America that accepts them—rather than the bad country that America has become, the one that rejected them.
Third, he actually believes what he is saying. He really thinks man faces extinction by global warming. He really thinks America has entered a dark night of oppression and is too blinded by his narrow convictions and bitter self elevation that he can’t even see the contradiction of rooting with actual torturers and oppresors against his own country. This is a man with just enough smarts to learn a little bit and become dangerous. He is intellectually narrow, and like Carter, the ideology that defines everything he does is finally an ideology of self.
Just thought I’d mention that “stark raving lunatic”, “bought and paid for dhimmitude”, and “seditionist idiot with a ready excuse” are not mutually exclusive afflictions. Al Gore is living proof.
Islamists are quite informed that America and other western nations are deeply divided as to how we ought to respond to their attacks on us. They don’t need Al Gore to give them the lowdown. And the only way to prevent them from getting that message would be to suspend elections and a free press here in America.
On the other hand, I am disappointed in Gore’s speech. He should have used the opportunity to criticize the Saudis for…something. As Cherie Blair did in regard to the lack of women’s rights. Gore could talked about global warming and the need to get the world to a post-oil economy ASAP, and the fact that the whole region will be left in the dust if it neglects to develop its people and its economy before this happens.
I thought he sounded like a presidential candidate after his speech in December on warrentless spying. But this one sounds more like the speech of someone who has thrown in the towel.
This is a common historical phenomenon,the pretender to the throne seeking the support of a rival power to gain what he believes is his rightful place on the throne.
Often it was a younger brother who had no compunction in raising a foreign army to invade his homeland,nothing new here,but if it is any consolation,the reward was often the pretenders head on the city gates.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his
own soul?
I don’t buy into the “self-loathing Democrat” meme. Never have.
(I also don’t buy into the “progressives hate America” meme–they really do not see that their criticism hits the country as broadly as it does. They think they’re just criticizing the small group that they imagine is running the country. But I digress…)
I don’t care that much what’s going on inside Gore’s head, but it seems to me that he’s just completely unable to understand why power eludes him. And it’s made him a little crazy, maybe a lot crazy.
Roger:
It’s desperation and politics. He wants the White House so badly that he will shift his image to achieve his dream. The DNC center left is Clinton country and so Alberto veers way left to pick up the Kos Kids crowd. He has been out of the spotlight so he has to go nuts to get attention. Carter is a bitter self loather. Gore is just a stupid politician.
Milton’s Satan: “Better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.”
Has AG decided, at some level, that if he cannot be the leader then he wants to whole edifice of civilization to collapse? I know it sounds hard, to believe, but what other credible hypotheses are there for this behavior?
I don’t think losing the election in 2000 was the only thing that happened to Gore. I think he has been slipping for some time. I remember him stalking Bush in the debates. It was oddly disconcerting to see that.
I honestly think that for some people, a lot of people, multiculturalism and white/western guilt trumps liberalism (e.g. principled feminism, egalitarianism, etc.) It’s like something out of a scifi TV show where a robot is forced to consider a logical impossiblity, resulting in smoke running out its transistorized brain. For some people, all these things collide together in something like a mental highway pileup and somehow some wreckage rolls down the embankment. Since that’s the only thing left, they just run with it. I’ve seen this sort of thing too many times in too many people to imagine that it’s a phenomenon limited to only a few.
On the other hand,I still think it could be Botox poisoning.
Actually I would not personalize it quite so much. I believe Al most likely truly believes in what he says. I just think he has been overwhelmed by the mass psychosis (symptomatic of BDS) that has gripped the Dem’s since 00. He (along with a few others) just happens to represent the nadir of that particular disorder. For him and those “others”, there is no limit when it comes to hating GW.
Back in the 80′s, when I was still a Democrat, I noticed that the Democratic party in general *was* less patriotic than the Republicans. That was why they were vulnerable to Reagan and Bush I.
Now I see that the folks at The Center for American Progress Action Fund listened to the SOTU and laughed at words like “freedom.” I think that game was also played by other progressive folk. What I see is an overdose of cheap sophistication: it is just not cool to believe in things. Muslims get a pass because they are considered inherently primitive, but educated folks are supposed to know better. So, if you don’t really believe in anything, what is left? Power, money, and demagoguery.
I think our elites are insulated and overprotected, as a result they are above it all and think nothing can touch them: whatever happens, they expect to remain on top. One needs to talk to refugees who have come to this country from Eastern Europe, the old USSR, or other tyrannical lands to appreciate the meaning of freedom. Freedom is a concept lost on our elites, they are far too self absorbed to see any virtue in it.
“I don’t think losing the election in 2000 was the only thing that happened to Gore. I think he has been slipping for some time. I remember him stalking Bush in the debates. It was oddly disconcerting to see that.”
Maybe something happened to Gore in the Clinton White House. Maybe it’s PTSD from what he saw there. Horrible, horrible things. Or maybe Clinton asked him to do horrible, horrible things…
I’m with chuck on this one.
I was thoroughly disheartened when he and G W were the 2000 nominees, thinking are these the best our great nation can come up with? I could have made my first Dem for pres vote if they’d nominated Bradley (my first election was JFK v. Nixon), but never Gore. His palpable sense of privilege and contempt for us unwashed, evinced by his assumption we couldn’t remember what he said last week, ever so shallow intellect, near-continuous approval-seeking, etc., etc., etc. Suspected Poppy was a closet lib, but at least one with a long history of honorable public service. How could Jr be as good after Poppy blew us off, then topped (bottomed?) himself with such a miserable campaign v. Clinton? How can you lose when you have stratospheric approval ratings after GWI? When the freaking Berlin Wall falls on your watch!?
Then came 9-11. I’ve been on my knees thanking G-d a lot since that day. I get chills, shudders and bejeebers thinking how close we came to having……. I can’t even say it. Thank you, G-d, SCOTUS, Dick and Rummy. And thank you GW for proving me wrong.
“He wants to be President. Thus he needs the Kos/Moveon/Code Pink votes and money. They love this stuff. Look at their reaction to Cartoon Jihad. They’re on the other side (along with most of the media).”
That’s the Democratic party in a nutshell (appropriate word!) today. I don’t know if the majority of registered Democrats (hell, I’m still a “registered Democrat”) belong to the Michael Moore wing of the party but without a doubt they are the ones running the show now. And as long as that’s true, I’m not voting Democratic regardless of any other issues (deficits, gay marriage, scandals, SS reform, health care, whatever).