Smartishness

I've just begun reading Al Gore's book The Assault on Reason and a couple of things have dawned on me. The first is that he would have SO made a better president that Bush, and the second is...Gore's pretty dammed smart.

Now I know that when you call a politician smart in this time and place he's immediately labeled a "faggot" by the Ann Coulter population of America, since, to put it mildly, we haven't been fans of intelligence since Ben Franklin was flying kites. But it follows that what Gore really is talking about, or an a priori reason he's writing this book, is our society's disgust at intelligence. This is why, as I read through his marvelous and illuminating points, I wonder, "Why bother? Does it make any difference?" Seems to me that he could have just as easily written a book, The Assault on Intelligence: Why Everyone Wants to Be Like Mike? And it could have been just as vital to the problems of America as a debate on our loss of reason since reason stems from our higher regions of brain activity, our intelligence.

In the first chapter for instance, he speaks about neuroscience and evolutionary development. Well how can one even decode those passages when one either is ignorant of, or doesn't believe in evolution? How can our leaders make "rational" decisions when three of our candidates for the Presidency don't believe in evolution? It's like making an argument for incorporating solar energy into our national energy policy and the head of NASA believes that the sun revolves around the earth, shining "happy rays" on us which go away when God beats his wife. We can't do one, or even talk about one, without first addressing the other.