On the Other Hand

Every time I start thinking that it doesn't really matter who wins the election, I come across something that either frightens or appalls me. This, which I found a few days ago, does both:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend—but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

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."

—Ron Suskind, "Without a Doubt," in the Oct. 17 New York Times Magazine

This is really frightening. It describes an administration that's not only out of touch with reality, but proud of being out of touch with reality -- contemptuous, actually, of people who aren't. The arrogance is absolutely breathtaking, and scary as hell.