I'm continiously floored by the lengths this administrations goes to in order to avoid confronting reality. The Ron Suskind article in the NYT article from before the election had now infamous quote from an administration official that denigrates the "reality based community" for depending on facts and logic:
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 quote really can't be cited often enough in order to understand what this administration is up to. Now we get the latest piece of news: the Bush adminstration official responsible for policy on environmental issues is a former Oil executive who has now been caught modifying scientific reports issued by the White House in order to reduce the certainty by which science knows that global warming is harming the planet. In other words, the adminstration makes its own reality by ignoring and changing the legitimate science to make global warming seem less certain, then gets to claim publicly that nothing needs to be done because the science is not certain.
This is how policy is made under this administration.
As I have said before, I am perfectly willing to engage in arguments about ideology and the "right" way to accomplish whatever political goals either party has. But everyone has to accept the science that reports whether your policies actually achieve what you say or not. A is A, no matter what else you want it to be.
Posted by baltar at June 11, 2005 11:18 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics