Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Happy Monkey]

Ron Suskind has an interesting philosophical discussion with a Bush advisor:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

My personal opinion is that questions of creating our own reality should be left in the philosophy classroom, and government policy should be firmly rooted in the reality based community.

[SteveDallas]

And you thought Conservatives were disdainful of theory and deconstructionism!

[Elspode]

So, to paraphrase this guy, "Whatever we say and do *is* reality, and all other considerations are irrelevant."

Did I mention that the Bush regieme is starting to act more and more like a monarchy. I truly begin to wonder if Bush isn't the first American fascist.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Well, the dude was right, they're creating reality. Unfortunately, that sucks.

[Happy Monkey]

I think this attitude explains the following complaint:

"The Bush campaign should be able to make an argument without having it reflexively dismissed as distorted or inaccurate by the biggest papers in the country," says spokesman Steve Schmidt.

They have gotten so used to the press accepting reality as presented by the administration that they are aghast when the press actually starts fact-checking them.

[DanaC]

A few times now I have seen American spokespersons and politicians interviewed on the main British news programmes. I have noticed that the ones who are there as representatives of the current administration have a peculiar attitude to the interviewers.

Often the interviewee will make some statement of fact (such as the existsence of WMD) or some intimation of facts ( linking 9/11 with the war in Iraq) which then gets picked up on by the interviewer. The response to being challenged is often to switch to what I can only presume to be an attempt to intimidate the interviewer. I've noticed it a few times now. They seem to adopt a tone that seems vaguely threatening and make some attempt to turn the legitimate challenge into a vocal support for terrorism or they seem to take grave offence at what's been said to them and with that comes a vaguely threatening undertone that to me seems designed to make the interviewer back off.

I can only assume this is because in America these people are very very powerful and could if they so chose wreck an interviewer's career fairly effectively. Either that or the accepted norms for interviewing are very different in the two countries and they are genuinely offended.......Either way it generally doesnt result in our journalists backing off. Maybe because that particular set of frontmen and dreamweavers have little power over this particular set of journalists and interviewers. Thus far attempts to exert such power over the press here have resulted in very public battles that have shaken the foundations of Downing Street and the British press.

I hope that the journalists and interviewers over here manage to hold onto that independance and adversarial style. There's nothing especially great about the british journalists and there's nothing especially weak about their American counterparts. If your people can have their teeth drawn then so can ours.

[Catwoman]

It is ironic that the first honest statement to be released from this administration is an admission of ultimate dishonesty. A paradox that will no doubt keep this reality alive for longer than we think. George Dubya will win the election because Kerry doesn't exist.

[Elspode]

It is a fact that, if you question *anything* about the War on Terrorism or any facet thereof, you are immediately branded as un-patriotic, and quite possibly a sympathizer aligned with the terrorists. It most definitely is a form of intimidation. Same thing for the Patriot Act. If you question it, you must therefore support terrorism.

These are typical responses from a despotic ruling class, because, after all, they are divinely ordained, so to question them is to question God Himself, right?

[warch]

Join the Presidential Prayer team.www.presidentialprayerteam.org

[Catwoman]

That is very disturbing warch.

[Happy Monkey]

More non-reality-based attitudes:

ROBERTSON: I met with him down in Nashville before the Gulf War started. And he was the most self-assured man I ever met in my life.

You remember, Mark Twain said, he looks like a contended Christian with four aces. He was just sitting there, like, I'm on top of the world, and I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.

[Bush:] Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.

When Pat Robertson is more reality-based than the President, we're in trouble.

[Happy Monkey]

In response to Kerry's comments about the missing explosives:

"This is a pattern we've come to expect from John Kerry," said Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the Bush campaign in New Hampshire. "He's once again grasping at the latest headline because he doesn't have a record he can talk about, because it's so far out of the mainstream."

Let me get this straight - Bringing up massive Bush failures making headlines all over the world is some sort of suspicious "pattern". Gee why would he bring up 370 tons of high explosves being missing unless he was trying to cover something up! It's not like that's newsworthy, or anything.

[Happy Monkey]

The President must not be permitted to see any dissent.

[Happy Monkey]

More on the handling of dissent, an experiment.
Procedure: Send people into campaign rally, some wearing opposition t-shirts, some changing into them once there.

Results:
Kerry campaign: told that they could be ejected if they got rowdy. Kerry supporters with signs hid them from press.

"We hold the right to remove you, but other than that, enjoy and hopefully at the end of the event you'll want to wear a Kerry T-shirt," he said.

Bush campaign: Shown the (police-guarded) door.

I'm sorry, but they're Kerry shirts," a female Bush volunteer said. "We were told not to let people with Kerry shirts into the rally."


... "Hey folks, it's a private event," he said. "Can you find your way to the nearest exit? Maybe some law enforcement can help?"

And now, at long last, the campaign is over.