'We're an empire now ... we create our own reality'

[quaoar]

The following is a passage from an Oct. 2004 NY Times Magazine story on Bush. I don't remember ever reading it, but it crystallizes the thinking of the Bush Crime Family:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html?pagewanted=7&ei=5090&en=890a96189e162076&ex=1255665600&partner=rssuserland

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.''

[tanyev]

1. Yeah, how's that working out?

Not so hot, as far as I can tell.

[The2ndWheel]

7. I'd say it's working well

The highlighted statement is pretty much right. Still in Iraq, appointing guys from Northrop Grumman for the top spot in the Navy, Bolton to the UN, Wolfowitz at the World Bank, continuing to take billions from the tax payers, never going to face a day in jail, killing people day and night, building prison camps the world over(including floating prisons), building more weapons systems, who knows what DARPA is doing, and the list goes on.

All the while we write angry letters, maybe make a sign or two and protest, and talk about what they're doing.

[Spinzonner]

2. Apparently the 'Real Reality' hasn't been conforming to

their made up one.

And you know what happens when worlds collide - disaster.

[jobycom]

3. Yeah, Hitler thought like that, too

No rules, no laws, only what we can do. Amazing that they would admit this.

[Burried News]

4. Nightmares from the Id as we create the Forbidden Planet

Krel on Earth.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049223/

[jobycom]

6. 1984, where they say 2+2=5, and force you to believe it.

Problem is, 2+2 doesn't equal four. You can only force people to believe lies for so long. Faked elections, faked economic figures showing fake recoveries, fake victories in fake wars with faked reasons... Sooner or later the people you are conquering fight back, people realize that they have no money, voters realize that the numbers aren't coming out the way they should. Sooner or later, people are forced to add again.

[Burried News]

11. We can see the future if we look to Russia - Another Vodka please

Didn't Trotskyites make a small contribution to the mortality and morbidity there too?

Bottoms up. Pass the surgilube. We're all out? Dry is better? Nope.
Make mine Stollys please - a double and keep them coming.

[JHB]

13. Neocons on film...

:evilgrin:

[Burried News]

15. Perfect - where did you find this? Just great.

The nightmare captured - wow just wow.
PS It prints great too.

[JHB]

17. Just Googled...

...for "id monster", and checked the images. There's a couple of copies of this which came up. This one seemed the least likely to block direct links.

[Burried News]

21. Thank you - I googled Krel - sig line powerful by the way.

"If conservatives hate Communism so much, why are they so hell-bent on replacing the economic system that defeated Communism with the one that spawned it?"

My view is that they are deliberately creating a radical left because they can only rule in a climate of fear and hatred. It may be the ONLY way anyone can rule? They need a hard core, radical, domestic, left.

The way to beat them is down the middle. Unfortunately unlike a pendulum the mid point position is not a point of stability - it requires a constant expenditure of energy. Perhaps a Rothschild figured that out a hundred years ago?

[calimary]

27. It's one of the big thrills in an old movie called "Forbidden Planet."

It's the monster from the id.

One of my all-time favorite movies: Walter Pidgeon, Ann Francis, and Leslie Nielsen before he let his hair go white and his acting turn to comedy and satire. Just a first-class kick-ass movie! Rent it if you can. It's. Just. Wonderful. HIGHLY recommended. Fifty thumbs up!

[Burried News]

29. Have seen it many many times but never realized it was a

Krel. I remember the odd shapped doors in the various scenes and Pidgeon saying thay were shapped for the Krel. Bit I left the movie always wondering what they looked like - fifty years of wondering until today - what a hoot.

[getmeouttahere]

5. This is a fantastic, and disturbing, article...

I even purchased it so I could forward it to friends when necessary. It lays out this thing called "the faith-based presidency" perfectly.

[quaoar]

23. And if that article could have been condensed to a bumper sticker

We might have won the election.

[htuttle]

8. We've BEEN an empire for some time -- it's collapsing now

In fact, one might say the US Empire is in it's 'last throes'...

[melissinha]

9. yeah

Makes me think that we should stop referring the war in Iraq as bringing democracy.... its a watered down democracy they want everywhere its all about corporatism plain and simple. Faith based this and that is just a cover story to engage the people....

[getmeouttahere]

12. Yes, their version of democracy is a farce....

it's simply unfettered capitalism. But make no mistake, in addition to destroying the social safety net, all decisions are made through the faith-based governance prism, which relies heavily on perpetual war and perpetual fear.

[Burried News]

19. A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by ar

Here's to sweet dreams and the intelligence to understand and come to terms with the nightmares.

[peacetalksforall]

10. I don't think they are as brilliant as this spokesperson believes they

are. Mostly, they are transparent and predictable.

We are breaking through 'their reality' and the revelations are hard to take, but just as they fight lousy wars, their reality creating abilities are limping.

There are several huge events that they could still pull off.

A biochemical reduction of the population from which they will figure out another way to profit.

An acknowledgement that most Democrat leaders are one with them and the corporations and that our vote has been abolished and that our children will be forced to enforce their rule.

A confirmation that all of them are partners with the largest corporations and that no one will have employment, housing, access to medicine, basic freedoms unless we accept their work and behavior principles on and off the job.

The reality is that the middle section of this country pays for everything while obeying the law. That is their operating platform. Their objective, therefore, is to have the lowest end be the slaves of the higher end and if they are not compliant or do not move into the middle section - they will be taken care of in their profit making prisons or as brainwashed corporate policeman and spies or as transported laboring slaves in other parts of the world.

I think all they have done is borrow the rules of ruling from history and science fiction and processed it through their think tanks to see what works by theory or trial. Through ample funding of the think tanks and by partnerships with the media they rule, they progress.

Transparency and predictability is working against them.

Citizens who cling to old realities and cliches work for them. Example: The Defense Dept defends and does not participate in imperialism.

The hubris of the characters they select to be in our face work against them.

[LouisianaLiberal]

18. Great post.

They are not brilliant. They are ruthless. But they see that ruthlessness not as a moral shortcoming, but as a justification for seizing power.

"Morality" to them is quaint, something to keep the masses compliant.

[manic expression]

14. Pure delusion...

No matter how insane people are, you can't change reality. Simply pure delusion....

Orwell was wrong.

[bananas]

16. Reminds me of "The Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson

http://www.americanempireproject.com/bookpage.asp?ISBN=0805077979
<snip>
Among Johnson’s provocative conclusions is that American militarism is putting an end to the age of globalization and bankrupting the United States, even as it creates the conditions for a new century of virulent blowback. The Sorrows of Empire suggests that the former American republic has already crossed its Rubicon--with the Pentagon leading the way.
<snip>

[getmeouttahere]

20. Yes, great book...

and when I went to my local Dem Club meeting last night (with featured speaker Maxine Waters!) a guy was selling some DVD's and among them was excerpts from "The Sorrows of Empire"...that should help get his work more into the mainstream of political thought.

[deutsey]

22. Practically right out of "1984"

O'Brien silenced him by a movement of his hand. " We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation - anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of Nature."

" But you do not ! You are not even masters of this planet. What about Eurasia and Eastasia ? You have not conquered them yet."

" Unimportant. We shall conquer them when it suits us. And if we did not, what difference would it make ? We can shut them out of existence. Oceania is the world."

" But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny helpless ! How long has he been in existence ? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited."

" Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older ? Nothing exists except through human consciousness. "

" But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals - mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of."

" Have you ever seen those bones, Winston ? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing."

" But the whole universe is outside us. Look at the stars! Some of them are a million light-years away. They are out of our reach for ever."

" What are the stars ? " said O'Brien indifferently. " They are bits of fire a few kilometres away. We could reach them if we wanted to. Or we could blot them out. The earth is the centre of the universe. The sun and the stars go round it."

Winston made another convulsive movement. This time he did not say anything.

....

Anything could be true. The so-called laws of Nature were nonsense. The law of gravity was nonsense. " If I wished ", O'Brien had said, " I could float off this floor like a soap bubble." Winston worked it out. " If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens." Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind : " It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination." He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a " real " world where " real " things happened. But how could there be such a world ? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds ? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

[RandomKoolzip]

24. I really wish we knew who said this....

The words send a chill down my spine, but in my head I'm imagining the speaker is some nerdy type with thick glasses who used to get beat up all the time in front of the girls' locker room in high school and has taken his beef against the world to the highest levels of government; he probably feels vindicated ("Call me a dork NOW, assholes!") by all the power he has in his hands...in any case, these are not the words of a well-adjusted adult, they're the parboiled revenge fantasies of the ideologically impotent.

Was it Rove?

[GarySeven]

26. There's an entry in Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_based_community

Unfortunately, it doesn't answer your question.

[Burried News]

30. No not Rove but the name escapes me - the person isn't

well known.

[GarySeven]

25. It's not a Culture War - it's a Reality War

I've been thinking about this for some time and what we are really seeing within the conservative movement is an effort to gain control over the definition of "reality."

One prime example is evolution in schools. They are trying to get a myth treated as reality and trying to have that reality fundamentally alter scientific thinking among our young. Its an almost perfect example of what Orwell said in 1984 - the constant reputation of something we know to be opposite - freedom is slavery, for example - becomes the "new reality." What this speaker is talking about, plain and simple, is that conservatives are trying to alter reality by simply saying something is so that isn't. This is, strangely enough, a lot of what Carlos Castendenda, the psychic guru, preached.

What do you folks think?

[Burried News]

31. You got it but lets take one more step. You see how they can

twist what we already know. But consider two more issues/possibilities:
1. Interfere with quiet time or better yet make us work more hours a week so that creative thinking is minimized.
2. Control the flow of new ideas.

They can throw so much shit at you that you never get time to think, contemplate and formulate new paradigms. Consider that Robert Maxwell owned Newspapers, professional journals (Pergamon Press). They decide what music you will hear, what science will be funded, what books will be published. Think of all the dumbass shit on TV - think they aren't happy to dumb us down while they go off to their Aspen Conferences with the finest minds in the world.

Have they succeeded? Partially.
Are they to blame for all this? No -we are lazy asses.
Is the guy who runs a bar responsible for the drunks?

Last thought - in the 60's the music helped drive the Peace Movement.
Where is that kind of music today? Think it's an accident- I don't.

[Uncle Joe]

28. Actor is the keyword, they are not the real thing.

"We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''"

They are not real leaders, they just play them (and fourth rate at that) on television. They are not real Americans or real Christians, they just cover themselves with the flag and hide behind the cross. They are self made treasonous bastards (with apologies to all the bastards out there). They are false prophets and their minions are leading the real faithful straight down Hell Blvd.

[Lisa]

32. Ozymandias ...

""My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."