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

damien

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.''

Really good NY Times piece on Bush and his faith and how he really believes he is doing God's work.

Cached Copy here: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/sloth/2004-10-16b.html

The quote above is from about 2/3 of the way down.

Paddy20

Imho, President Bush is a paranoid schizophrenic, he reminds of Maggie Thatcher, he worried me with his war mongering threats in his first days as President, and now he worries me even more in his final days as President :eek: . Hurry up the inauguration !.

shotamoose

Whoever said that sounds too articulate to be a Bush aide. It's an interesting perspective though, and reminds me of something George Bernard Shaw said:

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Manach

he reminds of Maggie Thatcher
Really, you think Bush is a visionary leader who will lead American into greatness. Well we will just have to see how he does in his 2nd term.

As for the article, it is just further confirmation of the Pax America of this century, which may bring a peace but also a desert <with apologies to Tacitus>.

Moriarty

This century? What was the last 50 years so?

Paddy20

Manach,

No, I mean Maggie Thatcher was another Paranoid Schizo! Catch yourself on.