Ignorance In Gore's The Assault On Reason

Gore’s The Assault on Reason, is Gore’s way of telling America to open their eyes and not be so gullible to the politicians’ games. Throughout the book he relates the problems with America now, to how the founders would have liked it, or tried to preserve our democracy. He never refers to our democracy as dead, but rather ill. There is a growing ignorance and neglect for political facts among the voting public, and many politicians are considering the voter’s consent something with monetary value, something that can be bought or sold. Factors such as reason, logic, and facts used to play a crucial role in the national conversation, but now it is as if it is myth. An example of the growing ignorance that Gore uses in his book even caught me

Political elites have a way of altering the media, and using the media as a weapon to get what they want, and most Americans are too ignorant to stop and analyze what’s going on and see the facts. The biggest vehicle that politicians use is the television, which is where Gore starts his book. Gore does an excellent job of selling television as a top contributor to the assault on reason, and this is because, unlike the newspaper or internet, television is a medium for the rich and powerful, because not just anyone can get on TV. Also, unlike the internet, television is a means in which elite politicians overload viewers with information passively, which means that people cannot have a two-way conversation, because to purchase airtime on television costs a pretty penny, and only the rich and powerful (political elites) have the money to get that kind of airtime. This is a

One of the main examples described in the book was the authorization of torture and the attempts by the administration to create legal disarray involving the treatment of prisoners. This lead to Bush thinking he had the right to seize and imprison American citizens without trial, attack any country he saw as a threat, to wiretap people’s phones without them knowing to see if someone was planning any terrorist attacks, as well as searching people’s private property without warrants. The biggest surprise that I read were the reasons why Bush actually wanted to go to war with Iraq, but used Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks as a vehicle to install fear into the American people, and trigger an emotional response from the general public thus making it easier for the Bush administration to pull the wool over our eyes and throw out all reasons and logic, thus getting the laws he wanted passed. Through this fear installed by the Bush administration, President Bush was able to sell the war and have religious extremists approve new federal judges. These new