Bill Berkson

Exhibit A

     I had a meeting with
a senior advisor 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.”

[from Ron Suskind, “Without a Doubt,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004]