Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?” The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable.
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Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder. To the extent that money and the clever use of electronic mass media could be used to manipulate the outcome of elections, the role of reason began to diminish.
From Book Excerpt: The Assault on Reason TIME
If Al Gore wrote this book without any thought to running for President, then he wasted his time. He does an amazing job of distilling the culture of spin and the damage it is doing to our Democracy. And he offers some remedies. I’m standing by my prediction that he will enter the race this fall.
