Screw the village; it takes a reality-based community...

I just finished reading The New York Times Magazine piece on the Bush presidentcy and faith. It's an extremely chilling story that everyone should look at before they cast their vote in 2 weeks. The piece focuses on Bush's consistant use of Messianic language and his stubborness and false confidence masquerading as faith. The author Ron Suskind has been far from the White House's good graces for some time, as a writer for Esquire and the author of The Price of Loyalty. But Suskind has talked to aides on the inside who try to explain the way they all think in the Bush administration. Apparently, they do not care to focus on reality or science or empirical rational. But don't take my word for it. By their own admission:

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.''

This is the kind of righteous indignation that permeates this administration. This hubris is what will lose the election for them. That and their total incompetence. It's hard to wrap my head around people who think the way they do. But they tried to explain to Suskind the differences.

"And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

They really do not have much respect or even understanding of most Americans in between coastlines. There are plenty of liberals in these states and plenty of good Republiacns who will stand up and say no to a leader who is getting closer and closer to the totlitarianism in language, if not entirely in deed. Faith is great for a lot of people. But blind faith in bad government is as unAmerican as it gets.

America is about invention, about equality, about hope, and about progress. But above all else it is about reality and enlightenment.

It's no about God, Mr. President. It's about people.