Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Your Own Reality?

[Mathieu O'Neil <oneil@homemail.com.au>]

Here is an extract from an extraordinary article by Ron Suskind which  
goes to the heart of who exactly George W. Bush is, what he stands for  
and what his faith-based convictions and policies means for the rest of  
us:

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.''

You can read the rest there:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html? 
oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=