Billmon on Al

Billmon has a typically perspicacious post today on Al Gore's environmental-disaster epic.

He uses the film as a jumping-off point to discuss what he describes as the post-Enlightenment tendencies in American cultural life. As usual, his insights are penetrating, and in the balance, I agree with his assessment.

I've also read a number of attacks on Gore from his left, which take him to task for hypocrisy, and which betray other problems that infects the American body politic: the desire for some Superman, free of all ignominy and vice; and the tendency of Americans to work politically primarily with people they agree with.

The sad thing is, there are any number of real issues on which many Americans actually can and do agree, but which get overlooked due to the political desire to only play with the cool kids. This takes on many forms, but perhaps my favorite was the vilification of Nader voters after 2000, as though they, rather than Bush voters and Supreme Court chicanery, were responsible for Bush's ascent to the Presidency.

Point being, I hope progressives and Americans can relinquish their squabbling long enough to accomplish something together.