Reality-based community

Reality-based community is a derisive term for people who base judgements on facts. It was first attributed to a senior official working for U.S. president George W. Bush by the reporter Ron Suskind in 2004. Many American liberals adopted the label for themselves, using it to portray themselves as adhering to facts in contradiction to conservatives presumably disregarding professional and scientific expertise.

Ron Suskind, the journalist who attributed the phrase to a White House official

Origin

The phrase was attributed by journalist Ron Suskind to an unnamed official in the George W. Bush administration who used it to denigrate a critic of the administration's policies as someone who based their judgements on facts.[1] In a 2004 article appearing in the New York Times Magazine, Suskind wrote:

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.' [...] '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'.[2]

International relations scholar Fred Halliday writes that the phrase reality-based community (in contrast to faith-based community) was used "for those who did not share [the Bush administration's] international goals and aspirations".[1] The source of the quotation was guessed to be Bush's senior advisor Karl Rove,[3][4] although Rove has denied saying it.[5]

Reactions

Political scientist and former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski characterized the encounter with the senior White House aide, as reported by Suskind, as exemplary of the "arrogance that swept the Bush White House".[6] Journalist Steven Poole compared the phrase to Hannah Arendt's definition of totalitarian thinking, which she described as having "extreme contempt for facts".[7]

Many American liberals adopted the term as a badge of honor.[3] The words "[Proud to be a Member of the] Reality-Based Community" appeared on blogs[8] and T-shirts.[1][9] The term was used to mock the Bush administration's funding of faith-based social programmes, as well as a perceived hostility to professional and scientific expertise among American conservatives.[3]

The phrase was given a second life by growth of so-called post-truth politics.[10]

See also

References
  1. Halliday, Fred (2010). Shocked and Awed: How the War on Terror and Jihad Have Changed the English Language. I.B.Tauris. p. 306. ISBN 978-0-85-771875-4.
  2. Suskind, Ron (October 17, 2004). "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush". The New York Times Magazine. ISSN 0028-7822.
  3. Greenberg, David (2010). "Creating Their Own Reality: The Bush Administration and Expertise in a Polarized Age". In Zelizer, Julian (ed.). The Presidency of George W. Bush: A First Historical Assessment. Princeton University Press. pp. 199–200. ISBN 978-1-4008-3630-7.
  4. Engelhardt, Tom (June 19, 2014). "Karl Rove Unintentionally Predicted the Current Chaos in Iraq". Mother Jones.
  5. Schonfeld, Zach (September 8, 2017). "The Curious Case of a Supposed Karl Rove Quote Used on The National's New Album 'Sleep Well Beast'". Newsweek.
  6. Brzezinski, Zbigniew (2008). Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower. New York: Basic Books. p. 137. ISBN 0-4650-02528. reality-based community.
  7. Poole, Steven (2006). Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 978-1-5558-4872-9. suskind reality based community.
  8. Rosen, Jay (December 20, 2006). "The Retreat from Empiricism and Ron Suskind's Intellectual Scoop". The Huffington Post.
  9. Savan, Leslie (2005). Slam Dunks and No-Brainers: Pop Language in Your Life, the Media, and Like ... Whatever. New York: Vintage Books. p. 212. ISBN 0-375-70242-3.
  10. Andersen, Kurt (September 2017). "How America Lost Its Mind". The Atlantic.

Further reading
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