For Those Desperately Seeking Answers, Know That They Are Already Within Reach...

A PERSONAL VIEW

A Prophet for our time.

Since the year 2000, many of us have been troubled in deep and complex ways by something we could not quite define. What it resembled for many of us was a vacuum that suggested that there was no philosophical underpinning to anything that we as a nation were engaged in—it was as if we were endorsing something that had the depth of a human hair and bordered on farce if it weren’t for the fact that it was a force multiplier that changed lives; it was as if our arms were being twisted to accept someone else’s half baked vision of values and spirituality and trying to use strong arm tactics to justify it.

. Without such a philosophy, it seemed that we could fall right through the center of the earth with nothing we could grab onto that would interrupt our fall. There was no one or nothing to cling to that would explain why everything around us seemed so wrong so utterly craven; nothing we could believe in. The media was mute. Our senior statesmen didn’t whisper a word. . Why the only corresponding parallel was something we could barely grasp suggesting what we already knew that something was dreadfully wrong, that our instincts were being trampled upon and that we were being lied to with impunity.

Many around me were seeming to buy into what appeared to be a huge hoax that threatened to bring us down as a people, preparing us for things we might never accept otherwise. There were no voices for truth; nobody willing to stand up and say that this doesn’t seem right—Lord something is wrong here. Am I the only one who sees it. Americans are smarter than this.

We awoke from this feverish nightmare in what was becoming a strange parallel universe only to discover that there were no answers to our most fundamental questions or at least no one to answer them. We were in a wasteland of unimaginable dimension. The right were made to feel wrong. And the smart held their tongues. We awoke to discover that we were alone and adrift on a black sea replete with sea monsters of every description. It was as if we have been traveling in a vacuum for the last seven years with no explanation and we had all become mired in a kind of molasses of the soul.

What we needed, we didn’t recognize.

But the instrument of change was there; only we didn’t understand his role as prophet and, perhaps, at the time, he didn’t either. It is to his credit that Al Gore after the election of 2000 did not lose his courage, his commitment and his faith in America; Al Gore stood up, unwavering and gave us that something to cling to, a bastion against the winter storms that assailed the very foundations of our beliefs that seemed to be crumbling before our eyes. And, over time, he has endured as the whitest of White Knights gently steering us to coherence, to honesty, to values that we can believe in once again.

It is to his credit that the real president also had the ability to fill the voids when there was no one else to turn to; to satisfy our lusting for rational explanations for all things. Over time, we have discover that he is the ‘real thing,’ a prophet for our time to lead us out of the wilderness.

To this boy, he is an amalgam of Carl Sagan, Adam Smith, Rousseau, and the inheritor of the ideas of Adams, Franklin and Hamilton. And we love him for it. But, despairingly, there is no number two. No one who understands the truth and tell us what we need to hear without first taking a poll, consulting with staffers, judging the impact of their words, hemming and hawing. Why are people so afraid to speak their minds; to tell the truth.

For many, myself included, Al Gore has assumed the mantle of Deux Ex Machina, the mechanism for solving a Greek tragedy in the third act.
We are not in Greece today but we may well be in the “third act.”
Gore’s insights and positive approach buoys us up in ways that without him, could not even be entertained. But without him, we are like ships tossed at sea.
He has correctly identified the enemy, the cabal that gouges away at our government and depletes all of our resources; that attacks our middle class; our most cherished traditions with impunity like robotic devices designed to just keep taking until there is nothing left to take or exploit.

There is no more Mario, the Hellenistic Catholic Theologian who is more likely to quote Acquinas than St. Augustine. Bill Clinton goes on worldwide trips with the man who says nothing, does nothing to interrupt the fulfillment of his vision of a New World Order which raises the legitimate question of whether our former president has sold out to the instruments of power and bought into the wholsesale abandonment of the middle class. If he really cared, why couldn’t he say, “rein in your boy, Mr. Bush.” Beyond them, we seem bereft of those who might help us find moorings. But they are there. Buried in their little academic dens or shunted off to the side waiting for the present nest of foul things to be swept away in the coming election; nevertheless, we yearn for the Eisenhowers, Trumans and Roosevelts of old and their predecessors for guidance in seeking a safer harbor and a truer course. .

Until the reemergence of Al Gore, we had to plod along through alien space like a bunch of misplaced hobbits seeking redemption from a cabal of evil creatures who seek to steal our souls and plunder on feeding off of lies that we could not accept or integrate with all honesty. ..

For now, aside from Al Gore, who do we trust to do God’s work? . And make no mistake about it, for what needs to be done, we do need someone who can take on the onerous task of rebuilding our world from the bottom up under a clock that ticks away and threatens to erase our futures. .

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon