Any regret, Al Gore?

This is your election-year reminder that Al Gore is the major cause of division in the US that persists to this day.

Without his sore-loser ongoing legal challenges to the election he lost, we would never have had the hell that was 2020. Regardless of how you feel about Trump or the election irregularities (that did exist, please see the extensive research by our own @SaintAugustine), our Republic was severely fractured by the ongoing legal challenges in Florida in 2000.

Al Gore ensured that every following election would be replayed in courts, delegitimizing any election win in the mind of whatever person disagreed with the results. Indeed, there are people who still argue that Clinton won in 2016 and distrust of the government and election proceedings seems to increase each election cycle.

While I would love to see the American experiment continue, I often wonder if that election signaled the beginning of the end of our way of life. We mock the overly sensitive responses of Gen Z, the soy-boy antics of the Left, and the entitlements demanded by people who don't have an employment history. But where did it begin?

It all began in 2000 with a culture-shaking display of sour grapes and entitlement. It legitimized this sort of behavior, enshrining it in Supreme Court precedent.

If the adults in the room were willing to behave this way, it was only natural that their children would embrace that legacy, screaming and wailing whenever they didn't get their way: demanding a recount, refusing to accept election results, and repeating the mantra of "not my president." Legitimate election concerns are now easily brushed off as the whining of sore losers by whichever party succeeded, with legal challenges being held up alternately as an inability to recognize reality or rightful defense of enumerated rights.

I often wonder if Al Gore has any regret over his legal challenges in 2000 and the harm it has done our union. I do not think that in his waking hours he would ever admit it, nor would he ever dare utter a word to that effect out loud. I am fairly certain that he does not have enough self-awareness to do so and am very certain that his ego would not survive it.

But I do like to think that on occasion, just sometimes, particularly with the oncoming election, he wakes up in a cold sweat, uneasy with a deep concern for something he can't identify.