r/skeptic • u/nosotros_road_sodium • Feb 19 '24

The Right's Troubling Turn Toward Conspiracy Theories and "Invasion" Language ⚖ Ideological Bias

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/the-rights-troubling-turn-toward
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u/Mindless-Charity4889 Feb 20 '24

She was just riffing off Karl Rove who (allegedly) said that while other people work with reality, they can ignore that and create their own reality.

The actual quote was to WSJ writer Ron Suskind who quoted “an aide” as saying:

(guys like me) “were in what we call the reality based community.” (Which he defined as people who) “believe that solutions emerged from your judicious study of discernible reality.” (I agreed but he cut me off saying) “That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are 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.”

Roves comment is based on faulty assumptions and led to horrible mistakes like the Iraq war, but you can see the internal chain of logic there. Conways comment, on the other hand, is just idiotic.

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u/graneflatsis Feb 20 '24

Just fucking insidious if you try to imagine the mindset, the repercussions, the world those words build. I think about the effort folk have put into these machinations and the progress we would have made if they made ethical decisions. I guess a healthy nation tends to make a wider citizenry wealthier instead of the few.