A Really Bad Case of "Reality"
Rosa Brooks
The Los Angeles Times
Once just an administration fantasy, a powerful Al Qaeda in Iraq fueled by Islamic extremism has become the world's nightmare.
Reality mugs us all, in the end.
In those heady post-9/11 days when the nation's stunned acquiescence made the neoconservative dream of limitless executive and U.S. power seem eminently attainable, the gang running the White House grew fond of quoting pundit Irving Kristol's aphorism: "A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."
In this smug formulation, "reality" was understood to mean violence and power - epitomized both by the terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in a hail of falling bodies and burning rubble, and by the planned U.S. response in Afghanistan and (later) Iraq. To the neocons, "reality" was bombs, blood and fire; the transformative effects of shock and awe.
In a much-quoted 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind described a 2002 conversation with a senior Bush advisor - widely assumed to be Karl Rove - who added an extra gloss to Kristol's aphorism, making it clear that "reality" can mean different things to different people.
As Suskind relates the story: "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. 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.'"
Those comments have been widely mocked by critics of the administration. What hubris, to imagine that your vision and actions can reshape the world according to your wishes! And for many people, recent events, in Iraq and elsewhere, have only validated this early scorn for the neoconservative understanding of "reality."
(Continued here.)
The Los Angeles Times
Once just an administration fantasy, a powerful Al Qaeda in Iraq fueled by Islamic extremism has become the world's nightmare.
Reality mugs us all, in the end.
In those heady post-9/11 days when the nation's stunned acquiescence made the neoconservative dream of limitless executive and U.S. power seem eminently attainable, the gang running the White House grew fond of quoting pundit Irving Kristol's aphorism: "A neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."
In this smug formulation, "reality" was understood to mean violence and power - epitomized both by the terrorist attacks that brought down the Twin Towers in a hail of falling bodies and burning rubble, and by the planned U.S. response in Afghanistan and (later) Iraq. To the neocons, "reality" was bombs, blood and fire; the transformative effects of shock and awe.
In a much-quoted 2004 New York Times Magazine article, journalist Ron Suskind described a 2002 conversation with a senior Bush advisor - widely assumed to be Karl Rove - who added an extra gloss to Kristol's aphorism, making it clear that "reality" can mean different things to different people.
As Suskind relates the story: "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. 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.'"
Those comments have been widely mocked by critics of the administration. What hubris, to imagine that your vision and actions can reshape the world according to your wishes! And for many people, recent events, in Iraq and elsewhere, have only validated this early scorn for the neoconservative understanding of "reality."
(Continued here.)
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