May 29, 2000

The Role of the Presidency in the Politics of Disclosure
Part III - The Case for and against Gore

Stephen Bassett

Washington, DC –   In 1945 as WWII ended and the Cold War began - world human population was 2.3 billion.  It had taken several million years to achieve that level.   The Cold War symbolically ended in 1989 – world population was 5.2 billion.  Today it is 6.1 billion.

This grand conflict was certainly unlike any before it.  It was not the longest war in history, but it was the most expensive.   Its cost estimation is a complex work in progress.  However, factoring in all related expenditures by the United States and its allies plus the Soviet Union, and including the costs of environmental cleanup and disarmament, you get a figure somewhere between $15 and $20 trillion in 2000 dollars.  This is an amount greater than the cost of all the wars waged in all of history.

Thus, in a period in which the population of the planet added 3.8 billion, the first world nations committed $15+ trillion in treasure to an ideological difference of opinion. None of this money was available to feed, clothe, heal or educate the additional arrivals.

During the nuclear age, tens of thousands have died as a result of an atomic explosion.  Tens of millions of have died as a result of  the gap between human need and the resources required to serve it.   By starvation, environmental degradation, disease, territorial wars over resources, genocide, and countless other derivative causes, the Cold War generated a profound level of suffering and death – it just didn’t get the credit.

While we were focusing our fear and apprehension on the next nuclear bomb which never detonated, the population bomb exploded and laid waste to millions of the weakest and poorest of the human family.  That this aspect of the Cold War took place outside the U. S. borders only dampened the awareness of the American public to its reality and ensured it would not be a factor in the policies created to pursue the conflict.

Like the general interest in UFOs, population concern tends to move in and out of fashion.  Talk show legend Johnny Carson single handedly created a significant upswing in the 70’s due to his personal interest and repeated guest appearances on the Tonight Show by Paul Erhlich, one of the leading environmental and population theorists.   More importantly, there are few areas of controversy which are as verboten for politicians to engage as the UFO/ET issue – one of them is population control/reduction.

The U.S. Census Bureau predicts a world population of 9.1 billion by 2050 using very conservative growth projections.   Beyond then, one would best not project, since the earth has hinted at methods by which further growth will not be permitted regardless of the degree of our need to breed.  And these methods are of a type that only a Wes Craven could properly appreciate.

We grouse about the intrusive images of starving children that interrupt our channel surfing.  If the trend toward 9.1 billion humans in 2050 proceeds, one should be prepared for all Sally Struthers, all the time.   Unless there is a profound change in world view by the leaders and citizens of the advanced nations, the first half of the 21^st Century will produce a level of suffering, death, and deprivation surpassing even the best our last century could generate.

Because the population problem and possible solutions are verboten as political discourse, those with legitimate concern usually proffer “environmental” front issues to indirectly address the question.  As in the case of the extraterrestrial presence, there is always a price when the truths surrounding any controversy are kept out of the political arena.

The 50-year death march to 9.1 billion human beings packed into a world of diminishing resources begins next year.  

Which brings us to Vice President Albert Arnold Gore, Jr.   It is already well known that Patrick Buchanan has the finest 19^th Century mind in America.  He will not become the president.  The question before us is, “which candidate has a 21^st Century mind?”  Who either has or can acquire a worldview commensurate with the new set of problems the human race is about to encounter?   And make no mistake, one of those problems will be adjusting to the knowledge we are being engaged by extraterrestrial beings more advanced and with a complex agenda.

Actually, there is an easy answer – Heather Harder.  But she will not become the president either.   This leaves Gore and Ralph Nader.   As it happens, Green Party aside, Nader is very much a 20^th Century guy.  However, he is progressive and resonates with the disenchanted left.    So much so, he might well play the same role as Perot in 1992, only this time on the Democrat side, and elect George W. Bush president.   In politics, like nowhere else, what goes around, comes around.

To assess Gore as a potential president, the following books are suggested:  The World According to Al Gore – Joseph Kaufman, Inventing Al Gore – Bill Turque, and Gore: A Political Life – Bob Zelnick, in ascending order of critical intensity.

But do not even think of voting for this man unless you have read, Earth in the Balance, his environmental/ theological/ political manifesto.

Written just after the near fatal accident of his young son, it is a highly unusual book for a political careerist, which Gore most certainly is.  Outside of a few years as a journalist, he has been a professional politician following a path set out  by his senator father.  Gore does not want to write this book if he is following the rules of modern political strategy. Here he goes where others fear to tread.  Does he have the worldview to take on an issue as difficult as the UFO/ET reality?

This book and Gore’s intellectual interests would seem to make that case.   But there are serious problems elsewhere.

It is difficult to read about Gore’s career without thinking of The Candidate, a movie starring Robert Redford which gets hauled out of the vault every election year along with The Seduction of Joe Tynan with Alan Alda.   The American public has come to believe the political process is fundamentally corrupting.  No matter what degree of intellectual sincerity and vision you enter with, it will be stripped away by the time you leave.  Al Gore may be the poster child for this cynical view.

The public is fairly fed up with ludicrously expensive, winning-is-everything politics.  Gore has embraced both adjectives with a passion.  As a result, his willingness to touch the UFO/ET problem on moral/ethical grounds, knowing it will damage him politically and hurt his party, is most certainly in doubt.

He is well aware of President Clinton’s interest in the UFO subject, including the briefings of Clinton staffers and the charge given to Associate Attorney General Webster Hubbell by Clinton to look into the matter at the DOJ.    He was witness to  these activities going over like lead trial balloons, and this includes the efforts of Rep. Steven Schiff of New Mexico.  Further, Gore has never shown much interest in challenging the military/intelligence community. 

If he has, in fact, lost his ability to say what he means and mean what he says regardless of the political consequences, there is not much prospect of his taking up the disclosure mantle as president.

However, Gore has shown courage at times.  He volunteered for Vietnam against his own personal views because it would have hurt his father’s senate campaign had he stayed out, which he most certainly could have done.  He was one of ten Democrats who voted with the Republicans in support of President Bush’s Gulf War resolution.  It was a risky vote of conscience.  It came at a time when he had withdrawn from the coming 1992 presidential campaign and was completing work on Earth in the Balance.   It was the zenith of Al Gore’s career as a man apart from the corrupting influence of paying for and winning elections.

Because of his service in Vietnam, the Gulf War vote, and unchallenged devotion to family values, he is viewed far more favorably than Clinton by the military and intelligence careerists who are conservative and republican in the majority.  Should he win the election, they may consider dealing with Gore on disclosure rather than riding out another four years of government witness leakage and pressure by the UFO/ET activists and the media.

William Clinton had the opportunity to make the UFO/ET disclosure his presidential legacy.   It would now appear he has chosen to make Al Gore his legacy.  Perhaps he feels that disclosure under Gore will reflect back on him – a two-for-one.

Bush or Gore, take your pick.   Regardless of who you choose, you will have to let him know in unambiguous terms you want the UFO cover-up to end, now.   You might consider starting with the campaign.  It is long past time for candidates for the highest office in the country to be repeatedly ask about the UFO/ET reality until they respond in depth without insulting anyone’s intelligence.  Long past.