In WAYR?, I note what I’m reading and comment...you note what you are reading and comment. Occasionally, I may add a section or a link related to books…
I am reading:
The Assault on Reason by Al Gore- In the two of the middle chapters I am reading, Gore takes a seeming break from “the assault on reason” in order to outline his criticisms of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy and national security policy. I say “seeming” simply because in order to get a good portion of the U.S. population to go along with what the Bush Administration was doing, you have to also perform assaults on reason and common sense.
All of the plans that think tanks like the Heritage Foundation have had for a second Trump Administration have probably been well-thought and planned since the Bush Administration, I figure. Because a lot of what Gore describes in this 2006 book sounds a bit like it.
It is deeply disturbing that the administration uses the word dominance to describe its strategic goals. .
Dominance is as dominance does. Dominance is not really a strategic or political philosophy at all. Rather, it is a seductive illusion that tempts the powerful to satiate their hunger for still more power by striking a bargain with their consciences. And as always happens sooner or later to those who shake hands with the devil, they find out too late that what they have given up in the bargain is their soul.
Written at the beginning of the age of social media when many, including Gore himself, was optimistic that more and better information would, eventually, put a stop to it. I know there is a chapter later in the book about the internet and Gore’s hopes for what was to become known as social media but...I won’t cheat, I’ll read the chapters in the order that they were written.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler