BS: Thats not the way the world works ...

Subject: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: dianavan
Date: 31 Oct 04 - 09:08 PM

Forgive me if this is a repeat of an earlier thread. What do you think of the remarks made by the Bush advisor to Ron Suskind?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

My local, community newspaper is having a heyday with this.

Excerpts include, "Reality hems people in, limits them, takes away their hope. Reality is the enemy of freedom, and therefore an instrument of evil. This nation has not done enough by denying reality-its time to declare war on it."

or this,

"Don't misunderestimate me," said Bush, leaning into the podium, "fancy-pants degrees and foreign words like 'Kyoto' aren't going to save the realists. Bookshelves won't provide them cover. They can read, but they can't hide. We're gonna smoke 'em out."

At first I thought it was an honest editorial! I then realized it was all tongue in cheek. Phew! I am so happy to live in Canada.

d

Subject: RE: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: Mudlark
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 02:35 AM

Pretty scary, when it's impossible to tell the difference between parody and reality. Scarier yet when the reality is even further out than the parody.

Subject: RE: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: chris nightbird childs
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 03:15 AM

Sounds too witty for George. Can't be real...

Subject: RE: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 04:33 AM

What an excellent article. Have just read the whole thing. Thanks so much. Here are some rather telling excerpts...reminds me of a song "King Goerge III by Hugh Blumenfeld:

Speaking of the early days of dubya's term in office: By midyear 2001, a stand-and-deliver rhythm was established. Meetings, large and small, started to take on a scripted quality. Even then, the circle around Bush was tightening. Top officials, from cabinet members on down, were often told when they would speak in Bush's presence, for how long and on what topic.


Referring to one of dubya's top aides: 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.''

Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: ''Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you.'' When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, ''Look, I'm not going to debate it with you.''

Referring to dubya's "faith": 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.

Subject: RE: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: katlaughing
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 10:37 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: BS: Thats not the way the world works ...
From: Amos
Date: 01 Nov 04 - 10:40 AM

ANother:

"''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''


A