I was just looking at some of my bookmarked sites, and this one jumped out at me, I think it is real important we have our discernment caps on given the war noise that has come out of the woodwork over the last week...

..“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

These words are from a brief but memorable conversation the journalist Ron Suskind had with Karl Rove, the chief political adviser and Machiavellian ‘teacher of tricks’ to the Bush dynasty. Rove was senior adviser and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W Bush administration, as well as heading the Offices of Political Affairs, Public Liaison, and Strategic Initiatives. The public knew him jocularly as ‘Bush’s Brain’.

Rove had a way with words, and these particular ones were spoken in a low-key aside, not exactly an unguarded moment but one which acknowledges — in carefully chosen words — what both parties know.

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 a 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. (Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush, The New York Times Magazine)

full text
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-sucker-brigades.html