''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

[donsu]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/16/73538/264#392


-snip-

You think Bush has little respect for science and rational thought? Put yourself in the shoes of a reporter as it dawns on you that the logical, rational way of approaching the world just got thrown out the window:

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.''

-snip-
----------------------------



it's true, they are insane

[grannylib]

1. That just makes my blood run cold...nothing more to say.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. Really extraordinary.

Even Orwell would be amazed. I'd sure like to know who that aide was.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."


"Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. That is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston. It needs an act of self-destruction, an effort of the will. You must humble yourself before you can become sane."

[bluestateguy]

4. Souds like right-wing post-modernism

n/t

[MichiganVote]

5. He left out the part about re-writing reality when it serves their

unrealistic purpose. And BTW, this is a "reality" that is hardly new.

Me thinks they are far more impressed by their assumed omnipotence.

[ScrewyRabbit]

6. Yup, 1100 dead Americans and tens of thousands of dead Iraqis

That's a reality they made, alright.

[peacetalksforall]

7. I don't think they're are any REALISTS who are going to accuse other

REALISTS of wearing a tinfoil hat if they believe this. It explains nearly everything. Now we know, mind control and brainwashing are alive and well. Read the entire DailyKos words about this.

[kiahzero]

8. Not insane, drunk with power.

Look at the language... it's all about power. "We're history's actors," and "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

It goes back to Suskind's thesis: they think that they're God. No wonder they get along so well with the Moonies.

[Selwynn]

9. Brutal - but damn, pretty true.