Reality Based?

I was thinking further on some of the ideas I talked about at the top of last night's post, and I came upon a very disturbing thought. The subject was the weird place we find ourselves in, when against all rational thought, the Prez and his administration aren't in complete disgrace. We were lied into an unnecessary war of choice, and the Prez won't even consider pulling out or even pulling back in any meaningful way (despite what the mainstream press keeps telling us). The attorney general is running the Justice Department like a banana republic, and not only does he have the confidence of the Prez (and keep Dick Cheney as a "big fan"), but Congress is doing very little in response, just warning him to get his story straight. The Congressional reaction is not much more robust against White House staffers (and former staffers) who have completely ignored congressional subpoenas. How can all this be? Surely in a world of reason, we should expect a more reasonable situation.

And then I remembered a notorious quote a couple of years ago from a Bush aide. Ron Suskind wrote about a conversation he's had with the aide in a story in The New York Times Magazine.

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."

The left (and particularly lefty blogs) leapt on the statement, which seemed ridiculous. Many people identified themselves as "proud members of the reality-based community." After all, we live in the real world, so who doesn't want to live with an awareness of that reality.

But now, here we are, coming up on almost three years since that term was first published. And where do we stand? Pretty much in the same unreal situation we were then. What if the aide was right? In the light of some of the lowest presidential poll numbers ever recorded, it sure seems like the Prez is creating his own reality. That power doesn't extend far away from the nation's capital, which is why the situation on the ground in Iraq is so dismal no matter what the mainstream media insists on telling us, but inside the Beltway, it's starting to look like it's the only game in town.

In making the observation, unfortunately, I've got absolutely no suggestions as to how this situation can be addressed. If our national leaders and the press that's covering them refuse to acknowledge what's sitting right in front of their noses, we certainly can't force them to. Does anybody have any bright ideas?