We watched "An Inconvenient Truth" today. A very disturbing movie. How anyone can remain unmotivated about doing something about global warming after seeing that movie is beyond me. Go to the official website if you haven't heard about it. If you haven't seen it, you should.
One of the things that did stand out to me, though, was a continued reflection from this blog entry about Bobby. Coming away from that, I spent considerable time pondering what would have happened had Robert F. Kennedy not been assassinated and had become President. With Al Gore, it's a very different matter, because he didn't miss out on becoming President because he was killed (obviously), but rather defeated in somewhat controversial circumstances. I don't know the full history (I intend to look into it a bit further), but it looks as if Gore potentially should have become President of the United States in 2000. As I pondered with Kennedy, imagine if Gore had become President instead of Bush...
However (and this is where the title of the post comes from), I find 2 things comforting about that the fact it didn't happen. The first is that if Gore had become President, his fight to focus on global warming (which is decades old for him) would have no doubt been distracted. How could he have continued to focus on global warming while dealing with the 9/11 attacks, for example (regardless of how differently he would have surely handled the last 6 years since then...)
The second encouragement is that Gore didn't just give up, but instead has (possibly) become even more "powerful" in some ways because of the course he's taken. Maybe not from a military or economic (although possibly) point of view, but politically...? I also seem to recall Gore being the butt of a lot of jokes around 2000 about his personality, etc. Look at him now - Leonardo DiCaprio salutes him at the Oscars! There's a fantastic lesson in there about sticking to what it is you are made to do, and not being knocked off course if things don't seem to go right, but seeing the opportunities that are presented to you and taking them.
There are those who would argue that if Bush hadn't become president, the 9/11 attacks wouldn't have happened.
ReplyDeleteI follow the thinking that he might have been distracted - there's also a great deal of pain delivered via mismanagement that may have been avoided.
Look into the 2000 elections and you'll see some scary patters of behaviour - I'm sorry, but I just don't get how a court appointing a president weighs up as democracy...