The instinctive president vs. reality-based initiatives
From Ron Suskind’s scary article in the NYTimes about Bush’s aversion to facts:
Forty democratic senators were gathered for a lunch in March just off the Senate floor. I was there as a guest speaker. Joe Biden was telling a story, a story about the president. ”I was in the Oval Office a few months after we swept into Baghdad,” he began, ”and I was telling the president of my many concerns” — concerns about growing problems winning the peace, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanding of the Iraqi Army and problems securing the oil fields. Bush, Biden recalled, just looked at him, unflappably sure that the United States was on the right course and that all was well. ”’Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘How can you be so sure when you know you don’t know the facts?”’
Biden said that Bush stood up and put his hand on the senator’s shoulder. ”My instincts,” he said. ”My instincts.”
Biden paused and shook his head, recalling it all as the room grew quiet. ”I said, ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough!”’
Another snippet:
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.”
Yeah, that famous Bush instinct. As he said after his first meeting with the tin-horn Stalinist Putin: “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.” Good call, George.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Bush: question reality!
David Weinberger links to Ron Suskind’s NY Times article on the Bush administration’s attitude toward reality, quoting this bit (suspicions confirmed): In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn’t like…
This goes right to the core of my insistence that “faith” is one of the most dangerous human pitfalls. Believing in things for which there is no evidence can be fairly benign, but it can, on the other hand, have horrific consequences. More to the point, there is no built-in mechanism for distinguishing one type from the other. Belief without evidence, without reason, without question leaves no room for meaningful evaluation of any kind. Besides, “benign” articles of faith are of dubious value anyway; I don’t see where believing in falsehoods can, in the long run, benefit anyone.
Doesn’t anyone find it the least bit disturbing that a man who holds his finger on the button professes belief in supernatural beings and make-believe realms which are purportedly far more important than this real world we all share? And that this barbaric and superstitious cosmology has the world ending in a great big violent conflict? Anyone? Bothersome?
I recommend reading, in addition to the NYT article by Suskind, an article called The Madness of George W. Bush. This article explains not only Bush but also the community that supports him with blind faith. It is very good.