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, Oct. 17, 2004, relating a conversation with Karl Rove
Whenever I’ve read this or read commentaries on it Rove has seemed hubristic and delusional. How could a political consultant, or anyone for that matter, be taken seriously when they talk about creating their own reality? This has seemed something to be dismissed out of hand.
I was reading this evening of an anti-war march in LA being addressed by Jimmy Dore, a comedian. Acquaintances respond to social media posts with „likes“ or one-liners about how they „feel“ rather than with sourced arguments of any complexity. I find myself wondering if Rove’s lack of prescience is to be found in his mistaken use of a single adjective, if perhaps actors like Obama, Trump, Schiff, Pelosi, Grenell are in fact quite successfully creating and recreating reality, and Rove’s failing was in his assuming there would be judicious study of it rather than simply unthinking cheering or shrill scatological denunciation.