Proving their deftness with manipulation and hypocrisy, the Conservative propoganda machine is continuing to fire on all cylinders in its relentless and manufactured assualt on Al Gore and the movie that has catapulted global warming into the forefront of human awareness.
In a USA Today column widely cited by conservative websites and blogs, Peter Schweizer compiles a largely distorted and baseless assualt on the credibility of Al Gore. Rather than recognizing the success of his impact on the global warming debate, and his personal leadership in embracing a carbon neutral lifestyle, Mr. Schweizer instead attempts to paint Mr. Gore as an environmental hypocrit by focusing on three irrelevant details of his personal consumption habits and the peripheral environmental impacts of his business and investments.
As with most right wing smear efforts, the article entirely misses the point. Al Gore is championing action against global warming, not recycling, not sustainable mining, and not the green character of the democratic party. What he is doing is advocating explicit action to curb and control carbon emissions, and he is living his life 100% consistently with this aim by going carbon neutral. This is the entire point behind Kyoto and other efforts, not to prescribe what we should and should not do or consume, but rather the leverage the power and innovation of the free market and allow businesses and citizens the maximum amount of flexibility in bringing our carbon impact under control.
The so called free market champions of the right should be embracing these efforts, but instead they are showing their true motivation and hypocrisy. The modern conservative movement does not believe in free markets, human innovation or freedom itself. What is at the heart of modern conservativism is the world's most complex and well funded propoganda machinery, whose sole purpose is to misdirect people's values into thinking we can anything without facing consequences, while bolstering the power base of the fossil fuel and military industries. And each time a threat to that structure bubbles to the surface, the full power of that propaganda machinery is turned loose against it.
Al Gore has now found his way into the crosshairs of that machinery, during a time of the current Bush administration where the right has perfected the manipulation of disinformation and the world of truth and fact has been ground in its gears. For decades, the right wing has built up grass root support, funding and a massive public relations infrastructure that can now be turned against any threat to its interests. Now the progressive community in general, and the blogging community in particular, is charged with providing the counterbalance - to build a network that can face this well tuned conservative machinery and support the true champions of progress, human freedom, and a sustainable world.
That begins by taking a stand against the systematic smearing of true leadership. Provide your feedback to the original article here, and email Peter Schweizer at peter.schweizer@stanford.edu and let him know your opinions on his style of journalism.
