Statements from the empire about the empire
I thought I'd add a short piece that summarizes nicely the mentality of the newly re-elected administration. This mentality certainly doesn't disguise itself, but it does not always appear as explicitly as it does in the words of the senior Bush advisor quoted below. Kerry attempted to play up the administration's failure to address reality and react accordingly, seemingly to no avail. However, I'm still hopeful that the appeal of a "reality-based community" might trump that of an "ideology-based community" the next time around, especially if the democrats can show that their values are not so out of synch with those of the apparently heartless Heartland (Kerry is no radical, after all!).
Laura
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Excerpt from a Boston Globe column (for which I thank my dad)
"Think reality, not ideology"
By H.D.S. Greenway November 5, 2004
CONGRATULATIONS, Mr. President. I would hope, now that you no longer have to face an electorate ever again, that your second term might be based a bit more on reality than ideology. One of your senior advisers told writer Ron Suskind that people such as Suskind were "what we call the reality-based community . . . [people who] believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." That, according to your adviser, was old hat. "We're an empire now," he said, "and when we act, we create our own reality. We're history's actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
posted by Laura Spagnoli @ 4:15 PM
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1 Comments:
Speaking of comments about empires, how about these two from the early 20th century for their uncanny modern-day relevance?:
"The National Government will regard it as it's first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built.
It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life."
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-- Adolf Hitler, Proclamation to the German Nation, Feb. 1, 1933
(I especially like the incorrect use of the apostrophe in "it's"--I like the imagine that Hitler too was a mangler of his native tongue.)
Then I was reading an excerpt from Walter Benjamin’s Reflections, “One-Way Street” (assembled 1924-28), in which he discusses his concerns with the Imperial Panorama, at the time essentially the economic direction in which Germany was headed, but altogether too prescient when one observes from the other end of history. He has this, also eerie, response:
“The assumption that things cannot go on like this will one day find itself apprised of the fact that for the suffering of individuals as of communities there is only one limit beyond which things cannot go: annihilation.”
Just in case anyone was starting to feel much better, now that 10 days have passed...
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