A victory for reality - The real meaning of the 2006 mid-term elections

The recent mid-term elections were nicely framed between the “reality-based” community and the Bush II Administration, as this quote from journalist and author Ron Suskind shows:

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.'"

Thus like ancient gods of myth and lore did the Bush II Administration believe they could create the reality in the world we all live in all by themselves. And when you control the most powerful military the world ever seen, one has the means to make all sort of realities I suppose.

But alas the would-be gods have failed and their failure was confirmed in the latest accountability moment. It seems that other people and forces have a way of affecting reality too besides “history’s actors” and ultimately they bended reality to their will rather than the Administration’s.

Those realities include the Iraq insurgency, which was a reality none in the Administration admittedly foresaw or chose to ignore despite repeated warnings. Then there was the reality of hurricane Katrina, an act of Mother Nature that was compounded in its magnitude by governmental incompetence that shattered any illusions that “history’s actors” could read their lines. The Mark Foley scandal exposed the reality that there was a culture of corruption that permeated throughout the leadership of the Republican Party in Congress, not mention a homosexual cabal that occupied staff level positions of a party who’s members often preach their damnation. Then there was the reality of our undefended borders that in this age of 9-11 and mass immigration that can no longer be kept out of sight and mind. All these realties combined until the voters finally realized what was reality and what was fantasy.

Reality bites, doesn’t it?

Thus reality got its revenge against those who thought they could control
it, shape it, fix it, spin it, and do whatever they could to make reality conform to their own fantasies. In doing this, the current Administration has shown themselves to be no better than their predecessors when it creating illusions they tried to pass off as reality, which is interesting when you recall that they were supposedly elected in a backlash against the Clintonite spinmeisters. I guess you can’t beat them, join ‘em.

Yet, to the end, history’s actors tried to prove all was well and prove that they could not be defeated. Supposedly reality was microtargeting Republican voters, 72-hour Projects, spending millions more than their opponents and residing in safe, gerrymandered districts. They tried to convince the reality-based community everything was going there way with help from their allies: the conservative radio talk-show enablers, the pundits and bloggers all across the nation.

But then came the final reality that they could not control, actual votes. And when those votes were counted the reality was they were out of power on Capital Hill and in many statehouses and they could not act to change it. Money and political machinery are nice things to have, but the reality in politics is that no amount of machine muscle or TV commercials change voters mind when events, real events, dominate their thinking. And Iraq and Capital Hill corruption were plainly on their minds as they entered the voting booth.

Thus the fantasy that history’s actors tried to pass off as reality was shattered into itsy-bitsy pieces and first to feel the affects was Donald Rumsfeld. Whether the rest of the Administration sees the world the way it is rather than how they wish it to be remains to be seen. As far as their allies go, some have reacted better to being hit upside the head by the reality 2x4 than others. In full spin mode have the Limbaughs and Hannitys describe the election as a victory for conservatism and call for the GOP to return to so-called Reaganite principals. That’s a funny statement considering that even Ronald Reagan never lived up to own principals, so why should we think far lesser men will be able to do so? The true reality of Reagan as far conservative principals go is less than the mythology that has been created around him. That myth is largely based on the Reagan the campaigner, not Reagan the governor of California or Reagan the President. To believe the reality the talk-show jokers are trying to create, you would have to believe that a group of alien body-snatchers took control of the GOP and only pretended to act like Republicans and that if we just get rid of them all will be right once again.

But alas, the reality is old conservative movement is long since gone away what has replaced it is in reality, right-wing social democracy masquerading as conservatism. What is needed is not a return to a past that never was, but a new movement altogether. Once that is based on what’s real, like blood, soil and faith, rather than the unrealities of finance, power and self-righteous hypocrisy. Only then will we all be back in the real world instead of arrogantly trying to create it in our own image.

---By Sean Scallon