Funny how the same meaning expressed by different people led to so much outrage...
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.''
I always thought that this quote was probably fabricated. When a Tribe B reporter encounters a "man on the street" , "black friend", "highly placed source" or in this case "an aide" who is ostensibly a member of Tribe A, yet goes on to issue a quote that is more or less a call to arms for B I'm immensely suspicious.
I could still buy it though, if the aide talked like the protagonist of his own story. But he's just an orc, snarling his hatred of applause lights to the innocent reporter. I don't buy it.
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: