Telling Quote Re: The Bush Administration.

[SirNitram]

Link

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.''

There's quite a bit more article, but nothing cuts to the heart of what's profoundly wrong with Bush.. And his would-be successors in the GOP, and the lapdog-like Blue Dogs and GOP congressmen and Senates.. And that's the fundamental refusal to treat facts and reality as anything other than something to be manipulated. The central idea that you do not study reality, but attempt to force your version onto it, really does explain just about everything that's gone wrong.

[Darth Wong]

This gets to the heart of something that Stuart and I were briefly discussing in another thread. If one subscribes to certain self-aggrandizing notions of the role of a global Hegemon (as the Bush Administration clearly does), then one tends to connect those theories to history.

In the past, the victor has been able to write history. What these people do not yet seem to recognize is that the information landscape has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Information flows far more freely, far more quickly, and comes from myriad sources, not just whoever is most powerful.

One could argue that the ability of the victor to arbitrarily rewrite history to suit his whim no longer exists, but the Bush Administration is unaware of this fact, and still believes that it can rewrite history in its image. Just look at the way they have declared war on media critics, by trying to paint them as enemies of the state. They believe that the lesson of the Vietnam War was that you must attack critics more vigorously, and limit the flow of information. But the information is flowing despite their efforts, and criticism of the administration will outlast the administration itself.

[Illuminatus Primus]

There's quite a bit more article, but nothing cuts to the heart of what's profoundly wrong with Bush.. And his would-be successors in the GOP, and the lapdog-like Blue Dogs and GOP congressmen and Senates.. And that's the fundamental refusal to treat facts and reality as anything other than something to be manipulated. The central idea that you do not study reality, but attempt to force your version onto it, really does explain just about everything that's gone wrong.

More importantly, its basically a verbatim rip-off of the Inner Party official O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty Four, explaining that truth is literally whatever the party says it is, and that this solipsism-subordinated-to-power is the heart of their ideology. A key plank in complete totalitarianism, as it happens.

[Admiral Valdemar]

It reminds me a lot of the way The Patriots in MGS2 are trying to "create context" with digital information. By using their newly developed AIs to filter what memes are regarded as useful, they attempt to maintain their status quo which is threatened as they lose control thanks to the web and the rest of IT.

[Spyder]

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.''

Right Wing Authoritarianism, meet Post Modernism. You two are going to have such fun.

This isn't the first time this has popped up. "Shaping new realities" is part of the exact language in which the PNAC is written.

It's agonizing to think that people in such powerful positions can be so painfully stupid.

[Andrew J.]

How does that quote go again? "The powerful and the stupid have this in common; instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they change the facts to fit their views." Which gets the Bush administration coming and going.

[The Guid]

This is something that has been reflected over the pond in the Blair administration. I will look for telling quotes but I am away from my books; Peter Oborne's The Art of Political Lying has a lot of good analysis into it.

I have had to convince people to admit that the grass is green in so many political arguments I have had on this topic, literally. That's not me exaggerating, that's not me using metaphor.

I had to convince them to admit that the grass is green.

Eventually I got an "It is either green or it is not green" from which I could build.

[Patrick Degan]

How does that quote go again? "The powerful and the stupid have this in common; instead of changing their views to fit the facts, they change the facts to fit their views." Which gets the Bush administration coming and going.

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they never alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be rather disturbing, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

—The Doctor, "The Face Of Evil" (1976)

[Admiral Valdemar]

The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: they never alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views. Which can be rather disturbing, if you happen to be one of the facts that needs altering.

—The Doctor, "The Face Of Evil" (1976)

I do love reading that quote out to people now and then. And kudos to you for the last one in your sig. The Doc always has a good lesson for us to totally ignore.

[NeoGoomba]

The Maladministration's main problem with this is that unlike Oceania, the US has outside forces who do NOT agree with the worlds status quo, and so undermine their "reality" at every opportunity. It worked in 1984 because the world was basically 3 superpowers who all had the silent agreement that change was bad for the upper echelons.

Sadly, the White House considers it the US vs. The World, and The World just isn't playing by Orwell's rules.