The American journalist Ron Suskind, recalling a meeting with a senior White House adviser during President George W. Bush's first term, describes a curious turn in the conversation. The aide suggested that journalists such as Suskind are "in what we call the reality-based community," where "people believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." However, the aide was about to disabuse Suskind of any such assumption: "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 study that reality—judiciously, as you will—we will 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"

QUESTION: This is a profound claim about power and reality — worth exploring how the 'reality-based' vs. 'empire' framing has played out since 2002.

Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, loc. 700