The Reality-Based Romney

Apparently I have been living in the reality-based community far too long.

"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.'' 

That was 2004. That was a Bush aide in a New York Times Magazine article written by Ron Suskind.

(Link to full article)
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html

It came to mind as I watched clips of Clint Eastwood and The Chair.

And I continue to think about is as it is within the realm of possibility that an empty suit who, during the 'speech of his lifetime', looked as if he couldn't decide whether to burst into tears or shit his pants could be elected President of the United States.

And it came to mind again when I read this quote from the Doesn't-Like-Romney-But-Obama-is- Satan brand of 'conservative',

"Women want to be secure in how their kids are going to have a better education, they want to know if they can get jobs, they want to know that their country is going to keep growing," Dau said. "They don't want to live in a country that's going toward the Bangladeshian. I mean, I feel sorry for those people, but we don't want to be them. And Obama is going in that direction in every way."

(Link to full article)
rhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/01/mitt-romney-convention_n_1846625.html?ref=topbar

In kindergarten this kind of thing is called Opposite Day. In the reality-based community where I live if you switch the name Obama to Romney, I and others feel the same albeit without the 'Bangladeshian' part. But we understand the concept of a permanent underclass for whom basic necessities of life may be out of reach. We see this as the direction the country was headed under Bush and will again turn back to under a Romney presidency. We see a reality-based Romney. And our reality-based Romney and his corporate overlords will lead us 'toward the Bangladeshian'.

We also see a reality-based Obama. We see a pretty conservative guy who inherited a shitstorm of an economic disaster and two wars on layaway.

We see a reality-based economy that is making slow upward progress. Not nearly as robustly or as quickly as we might like but moving nonetheless.

We see a reality-based Affordable Care Act that while far from perfect helps real kids checkups and immunizations, real kids with lifelong illnesses who can no longer be denied health insurance because of preexisting conditions, real kids who don't get kicked off their parent's coverage when they turn 18 or graduate from college.

We also see a reality-based Republican party in Congress. A party that cares only for themselves and their corporate masters. The party whose 'top political priority' according to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell 'should be to deny Obama a second term.' And this is exactly what they have tried to do since 2010.  They have done nothing obstruct and they are counting on the propaganda arm to keep the base riled up enough over gay marriage, abortion and evolution to let them get away with it.

In the reality-based community we see they get away with it far to often.
 
The reality-based community has a responsibility. Aux barricades, mes amies! We must tell the truth. Some famous guy said 'the truth shall set you free'. I'm too much of a cynic to believe either side tells the absolute truth absolutely all the time. We have to live with some degree of 'un-truth'. We don't have to live with blatant lies.