triadruid

I am proud to say that I believe that solutions emerge from judicious study of discernible reality. Despite being a pagan, maybe because of the type of pagan I am, I can say that with a straight face.

Why does this come up, you might ask? In discussion with

kittenpants and

featherynscale the other day, I discovered that they hadn't heard about a comment from the White House about "you're just working from a reality-based perspective". I somehow assumed everyone in my socio-political circle had heard the quote, so I had to go look it up:

Ron Suskind did an article for the New York Times entitled, "Without a Doubt" on Oct. 17th, 2004. (cached copy here). In it, he details this exchange:

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."

The chaos magician comment comes from another blog I came across in the search, which compared Bush's faith-based Administration to Aleister Crowley and the chaos mages.

Sorry, folks: I was trying to find something cheerful to post, but it looks like today isn't that day.