I want Al Gore to run for president. I think he will be a truly great president. That is not the major reason I want him to run. I want him to run because I believe it will create Copernican revolution, which actually are rare. Until this happens the old guard maintains sway not matter how much evidence and energy is arrayed against them. One such Copernican revolution in recent history was Gandhi's march to the sea to make salt. It was a tidal wave that, in a matter of days, changed perspectives of power of anyone even marginally involved. I believe something similar will happen if Gore runs for president on the relationship between the traditional media and alternative media. I will explain below the fold.
For those of you who don't know Copernicus was the person who (at least publicly) made the argument that the earth is not at the center of the universe - the sun is at the center of the universe and the earth revolves around it. In science, when something occurs that creates a complete change of perspective it is referred to as a Copernican revolution, a complete shift in the way we understand the world and our place in it.
I learned two things about Gandhi living in India a quarter century ago. The first is that nobody calls him Mahatma there (I didn't know that wasn't his first name until I went there) - and the second is that people generally don't think of what Gandhi accomplished in terms of the man, but in terms of the events that we helped spark. This is difficult to understand in the United States where we are addicted to what is known as the Great Man Theory of History (GMTH - really), that suggests that single humans of super human ability create great change. Then we reify this man's greatness in history and compare all others attempting to foster change to him. In India they have a very different perspective of time and the relationship between humans and change (I don't want to get in to a big discussion of karma and dharma, besides it has been too many years). Anyway, many of the Indians I talked to talked not so much about Gandhi, but about events he was part of, and specifically his walk to the sea. For those of you who don't know the history (or haven't seen the Richard Attenborough movie - which doesn't really capture it) the British controlled the Indian society by controlling (and taxing) salt. It is difficult again for those of us in the West to understand the importance of salt in survival for countries like India. Gandhi decided he would walk to the ocean and make salt. What was more important than the making of salt is so many people understood through this simple action issues of control and power relationships, and joined Gandhi on his trek to the sea. By the time he reached the ocean the entire beach was full of more humans than many had ever seen in one place before, all protesting the power relationships in a very simple fashion. Nobody I talked to was there or knew people who were there, but they still talked of it in awe. It was, in essence, a Copernican revolution.
This is all prologue to why I want Al Gore to run. In 2000 scripts and lies were developed about Al Gore that were repeated over and over again by the traditional media, helping Bush to the White House over a better man. Every time I read about this, no matter where, I can taste the bile of the authors' anger. Nothing quite raises fury the way recalling the traditional media's misuse of Gore does. I believe there are actually millions of individuals who have a seething anger about this that they keep in a corner of their psyche (I know that I do) as they go on with their lives. I believe the members of the traditional media know this as well and they are afraid of it. They know if they repeated this mistreatment in another election that it would unleash an extraordinary rage that will make everything else pale by comparison. Yet if Gore does run, and especially if he is leading, the traditional media will not be able to help themselves. They will tell the same lies about Gore with the same smirks. But this time the damn will break and all the rage and anger that has been building up over the last six years, not just about Gore, but about Swiftboating, and Diebold, and lapdogs will come pouring out with an intensity we simply do not see in our society. Millions upon millions of letters and e-mail messages will be written, there will be real and virtual protests, newspaper websites will be shut down, there will be boycotts of any products/industries that support these websites. It will boggle the mind, even of those who predicted it. It will be the equivalent of the bloggers' march to the sea, and our society will never be the same. I am not sure what will emerge, but the old guard will become irrelevant. What happens after I cannot predict, but it will be something we desperately need, a new history. So run Al, run - not because you are a great man but because you can be the spark to great things.