•• Extreme Discarding Of Reality ••
Ron Suskind • In New York Times Profile Of Repub GWB •
Sez:
"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.'
And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in
late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser
to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the
president. He started by challenging me. 'You think he's an
idiot, don't you?' I said, no, I didn't. 'No, you do, all of you
do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks
in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you
in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by
folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working
people who don't read The New York Times or Washington
Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They
like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he
exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you
attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for
us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They
don't like you!' In this instance, the final 'you,' of course,
meant the entire reality-based community."
LINK: Faith, Certainty And The Presidency Of GWB
1:57:02 AM
