Reality

If you haven't read this before or even for the sake of refreshing your memory on who we are dealing with in the current U.S. government leadership. This is an account by Ron Suskind of a discussion with a Bush aid early in Bush's presidency:

"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.'' "

Reread it to feel the utter contempt for the media and,in saying that, also contempt towards Americans right to know what its' government is doing.

But that's only a sidenote. Here's my point. It is perfectly clear how Karl Rove operates as the Brain of Bush. To be honest, many others on both sides of the aisle have figured out how to manipulate average Americans thinking through the use of disinformation campaigns too. Rove, however, is the best at it. The neo-cons acted in the runup to the invasion of Iraq and created a "reality" that never existed. Saddam wasn't an imminent threat, no al-Qaeda connections existed, no nuclear program and on and on. That was empirical reality but Rove's new "reality" said just the opposite. And isn't it true, just like stenographers, the press reported the actions and words of Bush and Co., knowingly or unknowingly, to help mislead the public to get their support for the invasion.

Fast forward to the current demonstration of neo-conservative instigated destruction, this time in the country of Lebanon. Israel is systematically destroying so much infrastructure Lebanon will be set back decades if they can ever recover. That is discernable reality. But is that the reality George and Condi and Fox News and... and...and are repeating over and over? No. According to the "reality" the neo-cons and the Rovians are creating, this is all just part of the war on terror, "birth pangs" of a "new" middle east. Freedom is on the march. Terrorists hate freedom. You know the drill.

Now see, in Bush's own words in response to David Gregory's questioning, this grand new "reality" in all it's spendor.

Bush:"...instead of having foreign policies based upon trying to create a sense of stability, we have a foreign policy that addresses the root causes of violence and instability."

I thought reality would be that American fireign policy would try to "create a sense of stability" in the world. Silly me. See, Bush is acting decisively, as a decider would do, again, creating "reality". You see the new "reality" foreign policy deals with "the root causes of violence and instability". How? Through the use of violence and instability. Now there's a reality you can sink your teeth into, isn't it?

More Bush "reality". "For a while, American foreign policy was just, Let’s hope everything is calm — manage calm."

And I bet that you thought "managing calm" with our foreign policy would be an optimum reality to strive for. But see you would be wrong. The new "reality" is created by Bush's very words: American foreign policy is now,not managing calm, but being "aggressive in chasing down the killers and bringing them to justice". Now we are going to manage the opposite of calm, chaos.

This "reality is what we say it is" deception, I'm afraid, will lead to a soon to be announced "reality change" in Iran. Maybe what will look to us like a nuclear strike will actually turn out to be a refusal to give in to our "old reality" foreign policy of keeping things calm and stable. An attack on Iran is very posssible before the November elections.

Finally, how do you defeat the thinking that creates suicide bombers? According to George, "you defeat it with a more hopeful ideology called freedom."
Do you think 1 million displaced Lebanese think Bush's "reality freedom " is very "hopeful"? Me either.