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Sunday, October 17, 2004

Just like another failed revolution:

Everybody's been quoting this exchange from Ron Suskind's New York Times Magazine article on Bush: (emp add)

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.

Consider this:

From Paul Johnson's Modern Times (p 267of the 1983 paperback edition), in the section on the economic situation in the late 1920's in the Soviet Union. (emp add)
As one of [Stalin's] economists, S.G.Shumilin, put it: "Our task is not to study economics but to change it. We are bound by no laws."

posted by Quiddity at 10/17/2004 05:49:00 PM

1 comments

What I was reminded of by the Bush aide quote was Shakespeare's Henry V, in Act V Scene 2. Courting the French princess, who is reluctant to kiss before their betrothal, Henry observes, "O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of manners, Kate..."

Bush already fits the Henry V paradigm quite well, with his transformation from wild Prince Hal to fearsome ruler on 9/11/01. It sounds as if he and his courtiers also expect nice nations to curtsy to great kings, who mold the manners of those that serve them.

By Karen, at 10/19/2004 9:58 AM