the timboucher experience

I’m gonna steal this quote from Dispositive, which is actually from a NY Times article about “President” Bush. Supposedly, this quote came from a senior administration official. Here’s the whole article. (PS. Try out this site for a registration if you don’t have or want one)

“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.”

That really toasts my tacos to hear it all spelled out like that. Gotta go read this whole article now…

UPDATE!

This article is really really good and intense. I highly recommend it. Whoo, and this is probably one of the best most accurate quotes I’ve ever read about the whole situation:

And for those who don’t get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ”You think he’s an idiot, don’t you?” I said, no, I didn’t. ”No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!” In this instance, the final ”you,” of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

Of course, this is EXACTLY why an article like this means nothing in the end, because as Outkast says, in Humble Mumble, “Speeches only reaches those who already know about it” and all the rest, they don’t want to know about it to begin with.

Also, the other problem I have with this article is that it basically rests on the assumption that Bush pushes aside complex analytical issues in favor of faith. While this seems dangerous to reasonable people, it seems good to the people described in the above quote. Further, nowhere in this article do they mention the fact that it isn’t Bush calling shots or making decisions. That’s why he can be so sure and brush aside real inquiries into what he’s doing. Because he’s just a mouthpiece. And not of God…

• Age of Empires, Part 2
• A couple things before I force myself to go to sleep
• New Age Embarrassment?
• Youthful Creativity
• What are you trying to do, show off?