Without a Doubt
Sadly, this article probably isn’t going to sway any undecided voters. But for those who already know we’re in the shit, it’ll let you know just how deep it is.
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.”
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ”Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ”Look, I’m not going to debate it with you.”
I’ve deliberately avoided posting about politics here, ‘cause, frankly, I was boring myself. But this is a must-read.
(Via just about everyone by now, but I saw it first at Amygdala)
Much as I may not like his politics, I have to admit the guy has a point. You can respond to situations, or you can create situations, and the latter is the more powerful. The most effective way to counter this type of action is to take the war to the enemy. Create a reality that the ruling power has to deal with, instead of dealing with what they hand you.
Jefferson and Adams understood this. So does Clinton. Unfortunately I don't think that Kerry does.
Posted by Jimcat on October 21 2004 05:33
This dude's going way beyond advocating acting over reacting, though. He's asserting that it's right and proper to act without forethought, and count on the sheer rightness of his position to achieve a desired outcome.
Posted by Zed on October 21 2004 07:47
"George W., drunk at a party, crudely insulted a friend of his mother's. George senior and Barbara blew up."
Don't know what he said then, but here's an earlier event that might give one an impression, about 1966:
"Barbara Bush, who never minced words, gave her drunken son a tongue-lashing during his Christmas break from Yale when he upset one of her dear friends at a cocktail party by asking, "So, what's sex like after fifty, anyway?""
JH Hatfield, _Fortunate Son_ p36, first SoftSkull edition.
In the fullness of time, all will be revealed.
Posted by asdfdfa on October 21 2004 21:14