It was one of the most important phrases of the entire Bush/Cheney era. In October 2004, just a few weeks before the presidential election, Ron Suskind ran a lengthy, much-discussed piece: "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush." It included an exchange between Suskind an aide widely believed to be Karl Rove.
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.''
It was, to be sure, a rather twisted perspective, but the flippant use of the phrase "reality-based community" helped define an era of governing and policymaking in which facts were seen as an enemy worthy of disdain, if not defeat.
Nearly a decade later the phrase has a worthy successor.
Hillary Clinton blasted critics who have attacked her handling of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi.... Republican lawmakers who have accused the administration of seeking to deceive voters ahead of the November elections don't live in an "evidence-based world" and refuse to "accept the facts," she told the AP in her final one-on-one interview as secretary of State.
"Evidence-based world" is a keeper. When it comes to political controversies, policy debates, and the public discourse, it appears most of the players fall into two camps: those who operate in a world based on evidence, reason, and fact, and those don't.
This division proved to be critical in 2012 -- remember "unskewed polls," BLS conspiracy theories, and demonstrably ridiculous claims about welfare reform and the auto-industry rescue? -- and as Clinton suggested, surprisingly little has changed.
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I remember when folks who lived in "unreality" and worlds of their own making were considered delusional and locked up for their and our protection. It looks like the GOP is now recruiting from some of the people who were kicked out of the mental institutions that Reagan closed here in Calilfornia when he was governor.
World Net Daily . . . the place where facts & reality go to die. LOL
:-)
"Reality" is not singular. Each of us has our own reality. Rove knows this and has worked successfully over the years to create realities to reach target audiences. FoxNews, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs, all know this.
Creating and targeting a reality occurs thousands of times each day in the ads that we are exposed to. In an ad campaign, a product is touted as superior to another product and that it works for a targeted part of the population. FoxNews has created a reality that they call "fair and balanced" and that it is superior to the "main stream media." They target as their audience those who don't trust media that is "eastern and liberal" and who do trust media that says it supports "conservative and traditional values."
Any campaign to be successful must have access to the target audience and the money to finance it. FoxNews is part of the 80% of all media that is owned by a few .1%ers and so they not only have access, but they can deny access to alternate realities. FoxNews regularly censors and distorts news related to Obama and the Democrats. The Karl Rove campaigns have all the funding they need as a result of the Citizens United decision. So, access and money insures that their "reality" will get to their targeted audiences. Rove was wildly successful in the 2010 elections and almost as successful in 2012, except he didn't defeat Obama.
Obama realized that his reality would not get out through the traditional channels, so he turned to social media, in-person campaigning, and an awesome ground game. He won because he was able to target parts of the population that were being attacked by Rove and company. He was able to expose the "rape reality" as part of the "war on women" He was able to get people to register and to vote, even to stand in long lines to vote.
2013 and 2014 elections are upon us. If Rove and company are to be defeated, it will require all of us to do what Obama did. We need to work each day with our own targeted audience to persuade them to accept the American reality and to reject the Rove-FoxNews reality.
World Net Daily . . . the place where facts & reality go to die.
As well as NewsMax, Heritage, AEI and many others. American Thinker, New Republic...
I see right-wing politicians posing in national media in front of AEI, Heritage, etc. backdrops all the time. Dr. Maddow has speculated on a parallel media that despises reality-based media to the point that they produce a right-wing media candidate that runs for office solely based on right-wing media reporting. I also recall Mitt Romney appearing more often on Fox than traditional networks.
The reader is invited to reflect on the enormity of the right-wing media including Gary Bauer, Michael Reagan, Thomas Sowell, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Monica Crowley, Jonah Goldberg, Eric Erikson, and many others, ALL having the same message, HATE, hate American government, hate American elected officials, hate American institutions, and hate the American people itself, and base that hate on a continual steam of blatant lies and deliberate, misleading rhetorical fallacies. Reflect on its pervasiveness from television to radio to internet sites to books and magazines to youtube plants.
Reality-based media is not so great, either. It's is all corporate, including PBS and NPR, and frequently lies and distorts and serves the interests of the rich against the people. The more you attend the news the more you realize it is shallow and misleading.
"Reality" is not singular. Each of us has our own reality. Rove knows this and has worked successfully over the years to create realities to reach target audiences. FoxNews, Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch, the Kochs, all know this.
And to what end? Where do all the lies end up? Does anyone think this is all at random?
To what end, Covah? To the end of winning elections through the "wedge and win" strategy as Rove and company did in 2010 and 2012. When the anti-immigration segment of the voters is activated, that "wedge" group turns out at the polls and votes Republican. If enough "anti-wedges" are activated, then they form the majority of voters in a given race or races, and the Republicans win.
Rove knows how to identify the "wedges" for a particular election and will do so in 2013 and 2014. The only way to defeat Rove is to identify other voting groups and have them turn out in greater numbers than Rove's wedges. Obama did it in 2012, but Democrats must do it in 2013 and 2014 without Obama's name on the ballot. It can be done, but it is going to take a massive effort from each of us.
By "we create our own reality", this person really meant, "we create our own propaganda."
All of us need to develop our own bull pucky detectors.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQhEBCWMe44
That presumably Karl Rovian Ron Suskind quote has such a wonderful half-life, I just want it to go on and on forever!
I remember the day that article came out, and just devouring it. It was such a dark time, when thinking about the future of the country, in the hands of such people. Maybe that is hard to remember now, but those creeps talked seriously about "permanent Republican majority," the scorched-earth types who were precursors of the Tea Party.
I love the Hillary Clinton quote, and it is surely needed, but given its non-controversial understanding of the bizarre bubble so many Fox News watchers live in, I almost feel pity for those poor deluded souls (false consciousness? Or my Facebook friends from Alaska?)
Personally, to live on as the "money-quote" from Hillary Clinton to bookend not living in a "reality-based community," I prefer "vast right-wing conspiracy." Because, most importantly, it turned out to be completely and totally true. We see the fingerprints of it now, every day of our lives.
I prefer to refer to the Right-Wing pundits as "reality-challenged"...
FOX 'News' shocks you with their audacity,
And have BIG problems with their veracity,
But, concerning the drama
Of how they hate Obama,
You have to admire their tenacity...
TEA Partiers deny Anthropology,
History, Economics, Biology,
Math, Logic and Reason -
They see them as Treason,
And prefer to believe their Mythology...
Good one, David!
Another Ron Suskind quote that has such a wonderful half-life is Goerge Bush at a meeting was like a blind man in a room full of deaf people.
Suskind has written Confidence Men, a lengthy description of how the Obama administration brought in as its top economic officials the very guys who brought down the economy in the first place. The quote here is "Clinton would never have made these mistakes", i.e. never brought in those same guys.
Both have ripple effects across the masses, and we've seen the division and exclusivity of one vs. the diversity and inclusivity of the other.
NeedMore - I think you've distilled the political effects of such thinking.
The 2 comments above yours, from Joan and Alva, also sparked my thought process.
The leaders - the Roves et al - create the strategies and the phraseology by which the party manipulates its base. Those who don't have enough wherewithal to understand more than sloganeering and/or who don't have good bullpucky detectors become the included and the manipulated and - in extreme, fringy cases - lose touch with reality altogether and retreat into fantasy (they are dangerous and do need medical intervention).
How can we have a meaningful dialogue with someone who does not share the same reality as us?
Right now we can call the bluff of the fanatics when they threaten our fiscal security because their are still sane people who outnumber the insane but will the insanity spread farther?
Pat P11111,
We can't have a meaningful dialogue with these people who do not live in reality.
If you watch how Lindsay Graham, McCain and a Senator from Texas harassed Hegel at the hearing, you can see how they bully him on issues which are entirely irrelevant. The one thing Hegel has a stand in preventing is the rising rate of rape against women in the military. That, which he can, and will, (IMO) prevent, was almost not touched on at all. They also know that the reality is that Hegel agrees with Republicans and Democrats alike on Israel, but they fire away on "When did you stop beating your wife" questions that he cannot answer and which mean nothing, but get the crazies believing Hegel feels differently than they do about Israel. It's all a being turned into a circus by the right wing extremists. They talk nonsense, Hegel looks bad because he can't defend nonsense. They do this daily in the House and Senate. Consequently, nothing worthwhile gets done.
It is hard for me to believe that people actually see the world this way, but apparently, they do.
Look at Wayne LePierre's news conference. He doubles down on the NRA's egregious policies. Why? Because he knows full well that Rush and Fox will keep the fear mongering going to fire up the paranoid black-helicopter crowd. They will never allow Obama to pass meaningful gun legislation. They see him as their worst enemy.
Today the stock market soared over 14,000. But they see him as a socialist or communist.
The right wingers in the T-Party house of reps. are there till 2020. Did I hear you ask if the insanity will spread further?
Of course. That is the job of Fox, the gun lobbyists, the T-party, and the toxic talk radio shows such as Limbaugh's. This is their reality. The problem is, it ISN'T reality at all. How does one deal with that?
It's like trying to hold a meaningful discussion with a Southerner in 1860. We know how that played out.
Speaking of delusional, try this clip. funny how lies like this were completely overlooked,
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=15E7goj7Fmo
Has Lindsey Graham threatened to withhold dessert from the entire world until he receives a personal apology for this outrageous truth yet?
Sorry, just a minor thing, but when you write "Suskind an aide", don't you mean "Suskind and an aide"?
So because I believe that we need: reasonable gun control, to tackle climate change, and think that Congress should pass VAWA - I'm being unreasonable?
How low have we sunk as a nation......
Zora, #7,
Yes. And sinking faster every day. The T-Party minority is holding the country hostage to their whacky beliefs, their insane worldview.
Reason has been burned at the stake.
People don't value and even belittle what they don't understand. For instance, if I don't understand calculus, I think it's for geeks and chumps despite the fact that without it, most of the devices I use wouldn't exist. The problem is, that these people don't understand critical thinking, hence they have no use for logic or evidence-based arguments. It's amazing that an entire political party has been infected with this mind set.
There is a problem in dealing with people who stubbornly refuse to live in the "Evidence Based World"....
Mama always said never argue with a crazy person
There should be a way to challenge a lazy person to figure things out for themself. Somehow they need to realize that they are being used by the plutocrats for the plutocrats advantage and to their own disadvantage.
An example is the elimination of some state income taxes which are being replaced by higher sales taxes. The average person needs to understand who benefits most in this scheme.
Reminds me of a W.C. Fields saying, "Never give a sucker an even break."
There is a problem in dealing with people who stubbornly refuse to live in the "Evidence Based World".... Mama always said never argue with a crazy person
To themselves they are not crazy, we are crazy for wanting to take their guns away so they will not be able to defend themselves from authoritarian liberal tyranny. Obviously the world's scientists are engaged in a conspiracy to destroy civilization so the liberals can take over and make everyone slaves. They are engaged in a moral war to save the babies from baby-killing liberals who want to ban God and persecute Christians because they hate religion. Morally corrupt liberals use Hollywood propaganda to spread their anti-family homosexual agenda. They take other people's money to buy votes and fund public schools were liberal schoolteachers teach communism and atheism. They want to surrender America to global Islamist terrorists who want to convert America to Shari'a law.
I think, lost in that article your reference, is a highly important and key fact of the Bush, Cheney, et al. mindset. That of imperialism. If you look at the use of US power, military and otherwise, dating back to WW2 (or just after), through the lens of empire, many, if not most, of the national security and foreign policy decisions make a lot more sense.
Much of the uproar about Hagel (DoD) and Brennan (CIA) from the right has been imperialist railing against people and policies that are not.
Empire is a thread that runs through all of our recent history, it's evident in "Drift" as well, though I don't recall that Rachel frame it that way.
I think it's a key point to understand, historically and in the present about our country, especially politically.
Welcome to the "reality-based community." The fact that the United States has evolved into an "empire that isn't" the way Rome did after the Punic Wars is the problem. And if the imperialists win in destroying this constitutional republic the way they did the old Roman Republic, we will go the same way.
Speaking of Rome, I remember something about the writings of a Roman who wrote, that it was bad when the politicians were corrupt but became much worse when the military became corrupt. Is that the next step here?
Trekkie Translation: The rest of you are just a bunch of Redshirts.
Just the 73%ers - that's a data based statement.
Key Twilight Zone music....
black is white....war is peace.....guns equal freedom......climate change is a myth............Evolution is a myth.........be very afraid....the government is coming for your guns............the president is a communist.......war is good..........no more taxes...Medicaid is bad............Medicare is evil........social security makes people dependent.....
Why can't we all get along? Gee, I don't know.
Might be a good time to review this list of Newspeak words.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Newspeak_words
Adam, #12.2
Between this and the prevalence of cognitive dissonance, I think we are cooked.
Where is the common ground upon which the right and left could meet?
Another galaxy?
India,
The real problem is not with the population, but the politicians. There are a lot of centrist Democrats, Independents, and Republicans in the population who, while they disagree on various issues, are willing to compromise. The House and Senate however are bimodal - not much in the center anymore. They are driven by the love of campaign financing - the root of all evil - rather than by the people they are elected to represent.
Best idea I've had so far is for 50 or 60 million of us to incorporate. We could then afford to hire people to lobby for us. Oh - as a corporation we would finally be "people".
Adam_Selene Free Luna
Adam,
We could always throw rocks at offending politicians. I hear you have a lot of rocks...
John,
Guess I could reply "Wy Knott"?
Good one! Heinlein would be happy you remember.
Manny sends his regards too.
Adam_Selene
adam selene, #12.4
Yes, the one thing that needs to be done is the one thing they will never do in DC: Get the money out of politics. The entire system, both parties, has been hopelessly corrupted by it.
I like the idea of becoming a corporation.
The most striking thing about that quote, assuming it was Karl Rove, is that Karl Rove was never an elected official.
Imperial actors rarely are elected. They simply take action in the absence of a functioning legitimate government.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing" -- E. Burke
Is it as bad when mediocre men do nothing or is that a good thing?
adam,#13.2
That may well be a good thing. I see plenty of evidence for that.
Actually, it is bad.
The loss of democracy in this country more likely will be due to inaction of Congress than an overwhelming desire by a President to rule by decree.
If Congress will not act on matters needing resolution, such as drone attacks or the debt ceiling, the Executive Branch will have to act. This short-circuits our system and aggregates power in the hands of the President and future presidents.
Our Constitution assumes mediocre politicians acting within Congress to produce somewhat better than mediocre results.
They stand on the shoulders of giants - you would think they could do something.
There are two kinds of people - those who think there are two kinds of people and those who don't !
Every now and then reality intrudes in such a way that people are almost forced to pay attention. Voting results are a small example. On election night Karl Rove could not believe that Obama won, but even he probably accepts the fact by now. The Great Depression was an even greater instance of REALITY intruding on peoples' illusions. I wish the schools could do more to instill respect for evidence and rationality in general.
double post
The harshest reality in all of this is (for me) the simple reality that too many voters are too lazy to do their research. They have abdicated their responsibility to be informed, critical thinking, participants in their own gov't.
That is the end of democracy.
Larry, No Child Left Behind was simply the latest attack on public school attempts to foster critical thinking skills.
The genius of Rove is that he recognizes that reality is not really the foundation of political affiliation at all. We on the left like to think we are more reality based, and that thus we are superior (elitist perhaps?). What actually drives political affiliation is emotion. Rove and his ilk are masters of that. We must be too. I'm not saying we should necessarily use hate and fear in the same manner (though is is fair to be scared sh*tless by climate change, consolidation of wealth, rising health care costs, etc.) But neither should we be be overly enamored of beneficent emotions. Self interest is the *most* powerful political emotion, and almost all beneficent actions we value, in "reality" actually benefit ourselves (e.g. less pollution = I'm less likely to suffer cancer). We are better served by trying less to get folks to want to feel beneficent for "us all" and rather "for themselves". One can take this approach easily into demonization ("they want to let multi-national corps kill you with pollution!") and while this is dangerous for civil society, a bit of this is fair and warranted. However it is done, we need to to a better job of making people *feel* that a progressive agenda is actually better for them - personally. We know that it is true, and it is reality. But explaining that rationally is not enough. It needs to hit home. We can do this, but we have to get of our high horses.