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.'—Ron Suskind, Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush.
(h/t to TomDispatch)
How is this different from religion? It's all about making shit up and calling it true (or real).
"How is this different from religion? It's all about making shit up and calling it true (or real)."
ReplyDelete[sarcasm] Wow, you're really negative, Larry. This unamed yet proud Amuricun is just explaining how he's a part of the making of epic history. He's "living his dreams" and you shoot him down (just like our enemies. Except they use reality based triple-A, of course). [/sarcasm]
I'm thinking you might want to add a couple of tags to this entry, like Manifest Destiny or Christian Dominionism. Yikes.
Sounds weird and made-up, like something a liberal would make up. Sorry -- unnamed? Just skeptical that people actually talk this way. It's how we know they subconsciously *think* (how stupid does it sound to say we know how 'they' subconsciously think?), but would someone actually articulate it in so many words, and if they did, would they use this 'empire' language?
ReplyDeleteBah. Not buying.
I think it fits right in with the hubris and blatant denial of reality we've seen from the Republicans and Bush groupies in the last 6 years.
ReplyDelete"You're doing a great job, Brownie!"
Terri Schiavo "certainly seems to respond to visual stimuli."
"We'll be greeted as liberators."
"Major combat operations have ended."
Sound familiar?
And unless the N.Y. Times has allowed itself to be Stephen Glass-ed, I think we have to accept the quotation as accurate.
ReplyDeleteI added the "scary shit" tag to the post.
ReplyDeleteUNFORTUNATELY, 'Reality' is not confined to this rather crass anglo-american molecular level of our scientistic ooh-ing & ah-ing over things to "smoke, fuck or wreck" -- thought is profoundly real in a host of ways it will be the task of the next civilisation to take a bit further.
ReplyDeleteIN The meanwhile, an alternative metaphor, or one additionally to be employed profitably in a discussion of this sort, is that of the evil magicians.
THEIR Evil consists in utilising the /objective/ creative power of phantasy in harness to the old & usual, dull-normal, penis-goals of ageing patriarchs & 'their' disagreeable wimmen. In other words, evil is at bottom simply (but, very hard of remedy!) the common short-sighted biophysical and (grin!) reward-punishment systems of conditioning. This conditioning-method is common to all of the the religions, including from this wider & more-mature view-point, precisely, 'science', reason (/sic/), New Cunt-conservatism & ALL of the varieties of the contemporary neolaborofascisti swindles.
HOW So?
RELIGION As a social tool coerces compliance with promises of heaven & Hell-fire, not un-enhanced with inquisitions, terror-bombings & thieving Tee Vee-preachers.
SCIENCE, Likewise, coerces compliance with promises of 'our approval' if one but agrees to drivel along in this narrow little argot. And, likewise, the fires of Hell and thermo-nuclear attack rain down on the heads of the outsiders, non-participants and, especially, the non-tenured.
IN Another even more God-damnable parallel, the crude paradise-promises of religion and the by-now 'eternal', but never-to-be-attained, goal of controllable fusion-power is a snug hotbed of preferment and big pay that has got to be seen by historians one day to be on all fours with the Vatican -- lots of cash down the sewer, for (you guessed it!) NO sex.... This stuff, like 'heaven', is ALWAYS 'thirty years away'. It was in the 1960s -- and, again, on 'Radio 4' just last month!
CORRECTLY Perceived the moral difference is derisory in any of this stuff & that is why it is best to remove the 'moral' question from the task of simply trying to improve our evolving perception. Indeed, if the perception is improved (and, this can be done utilising one or another of the tools, be it /any/ of the religions) then the active nature of reality will take care of the 'moral problem'.
WHY I am banging on like this is, of course & very-first-of-all, to assert my precious superiority of view & that at EVERY point of the compass. This primary motive, objectively, is the reason why anyone of us opens our cake-hole in the first place, writes anything whatsoever or otherwise makes of themself a God-damned public pinhead & fool.
UNFORTUNATELY, This blinkered conceit, the result of our experience of isolation in these competing physical bodies, also misleads us, one and all, into 'thinking' that any one narrative-frame 'can' be all-sufficient & that reality is what I say it is (true enough!), but -- alas! -- ONLY in this reduced, chimp-miserable & "fuck you, I'm right & you're wrong!" texan sense.
ROBERT Anton Wilson (pbuh) did yeoman work in his lifetime, blowing up herd-religion -- including the filthy crypto-jesuitical pretensions of consensus-science:
/THE New Inquisition/ repays a careful (re-)reading by anyone interested in the common struggle we all face with one another's usually-absolutely-asshole [99.9% -- objective Sufi-statistic -- MuHammad Nejmi, ed] texan 'objectivity'!
s/Bodwyn Wook, CC [/retd/] & Guantanamo Consultancy Corporation, Ultd