Remember this statement made to Ron Susskind by an unnamed Bush official (commonly thought to be Karl Rove) back in 2004?
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."
It led to one of the most over-used aphorisms to describe those of us who post to left wing or Democratic Party blogs: “The reality-based community.” It led to the idea that our side — those of us at Daily Kos or Talking Points Memo or any one of a number of left wing websites online that arose in the wake of the Bush reign —was the one whose ideas, opinions and policy proposals were based on actual identifiable facts. That we were the only rational thinkers on the American political scene. We were supposed to be the the vanguard of truth, the good guys who didn’t fabricate lies to sell our agenda. We were the white hats who never told a lie, never overlooked any facts that might discredit or undermine our message. And to some extent, this is not a false narrative, but it is also not entirely a true one either.
The truth is that nothing in our society is that black and white. We live in a world much more nuanced than that. Frankly, many on the left and/or in the Democratic party manufacture realities, as well, or accept the manufactured realities created by others. Let me provide you with another quote, one by Philip K. Dick, a twentieth century American science fiction writer whose literary reputation has increased markedly since his untimely death in 1982. Here he is speaking about the issue of defining what is and isn’t reality:
[T]oday we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups—and the electronic hardware exists by which to deliver these pseudo-worlds right into the heads of the reader, the viewer, the listener. Sometimes when I watch my eleven-year-old daughter watch TV, I wonder what she is being taught. The problem of miscuing; consider that. A TV program produced for adults is viewed by a small child. Half of what is said and done in the TV drama is probably misunderstood by the child. Maybe it's all misunderstood. And the thing is, Just how authentic is the information anyhow, even if the child correctly understood it? What is the relationship between the average TV situation comedy to reality? What about the cop shows? Cars are continually swerving out of control, crashing, and catching fire. The police are always good and they always win. Do not ignore that point: The police always win. What a lesson that is. You should not fight authority, and even if you do, you will lose. The message here is, Be passive. And—cooperate. If Officer Baretta asks you for information, give it to him, because Officer Beratta is a good man and to be trusted. He loves you, and you should love him.
Scary how even then, in an era before the internet, before social media, he recognized the main problem our society faces — the ease with which so many of us ‘buy in” to the realities created by others more powerful than us. And I’m not just referring to conservatives or fundamentalist Christians here. An entire generation of Democratic leaders bought into the reality created by conservatives that the era of the “New Deal” and “Big Government” helping to create positive change in the lives of its citizens was over. I was reminded of this recently upon reading the story of Hillary Clinton’s reaction, in a private meeting in 1993, to the arguments advanced by two doctors for a single payer health care system.
Shortly after President Bill Clinton took office, Hillary Clinton was tasked to assemble a health care reform proposal. As a part of that process, she met with advocates of different approaches, including two physicians who advocated for a single-payer system, in which the government, rather than private insurers, pays for all health care costs. [...]
“Towards the end of the session after we had gone back and forth with Mrs. Clinton about the details and the advantages and some of the questions she had about it, she said, ‘You make a very convincing case that single-payer would be a good reform, but is there any force on the face of the earth that would counter the money the insurance industry would spend to defeat it?’ ”
Himmelstein said he replied that the presidential bully pulpit would be the counterweight — an argument that did not end up convincing Clinton of the political feasibility.
I point to this incident not to castigate Ms. Clinton, but to demonstrate the mindset of the Democratic establishment as far back as the early 90’s (and doubtless long before then) that enactment of a single payer system was simply not possible in the United States. Now recall, similar things were said in opposition to social security when it was first proposed, and later Medicaid and Medicare. But those arguments were not accepted as part of the our political reality among the leading members of the Democratic Party at that time. The Civil Rights legislation LBJ passed through Congress in 1964 and 1965 was also at one time considered to be unrealistic. Yet those pieces of landmark legislation and the programs that formed the foundation of our social safety net were achieved because enough elected officials did not accept the “reality” that such things simply couldn’t be done in America.
Now, however, the reality manufactured by the conservative movement ais seen as the only legitimate reality by millions of people. Indeed, far too many Democratic politicians accept the precepts and assumptions of that reality — they merely argue for a more ‘humane” or sensible approach to dealing with the “problems” that the right has framed, such as the deficit, or our public school system, or the need to privatize government functions, etc. Does anyone recall Obama’s proposed Grand Bargain to resolve the issue of ‘entitlements’ and the ever increasing federal deficit? It was a gambit that resulted from his acceptance of the reality manufactured by conservatives and the beltway media that our so-called budget crisis was the single greatest threat to our nation’s economy.
But one doesn’t have to look at how the one Democratic president reacted to a Republican controlled Congress to see these same forces at work. The ACA itself was the result of the administration’s acceptance that single payer and/or a public option were simply not realistic choices, even at a time Democrats controlled both houses of Congress. The same attitude that Hillary Clinton expressed back in 1993 dominated the thinking of leading Democrats within and without the administration during the health care debate. In effect, they simply accepted that such proposals were impossible to achieve because of the reality of the “power” of the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
It would seem that this “staus quo” reality cannot be overcome, that it is now a feature ofm our political landscape. But is that really true? Consider the issue of same sex marriage. In the 80’s numerous states passed legislation to ban same sex marriage. This trend continued in the 90’s. Indeed, in 1996, Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, a/k/a DOMA, a law that effectively denied federal recognition of same sex marriages, barring same sex couples from any federal benefits granted to heterosexual couples. Even many activists in the gay rights community opposed pursuing the issue, seeing it as divisive and counterproductive. In 2008, the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama and Clinton, refused to openly call for the right of same sex couples to marry.
And yet here we are in 2016, and same sex marriage is a reality in all 50 states. What was once thought impossible, what was once claimed to be unrealistic and divisive, is now legal in all 50 states, and accepted by a large majority of Americans. It seems that the manufactured reality its opponents fought so long to preserve was not insurmountable, afer all. Indeed, the legality of same sex marriage went from being a hopeless dream for LGBT people only a decade ago, to essentially a non-issue. And this came about in spite of those in the Democratic Party who supported the ‘status quo.’ Most of them, like President Obama and Secretary Clinton were late to jump on the marriage eqaulity bandwagon, and did so only after a majority of Americans expressed their support for this new reality — one in which two people could marry one another even if they shared the same gender.
None of us is free of the illusion that our reality is the only reality that exists. All of us can be influenced by those who seek to shape our perception of reality to their advantage, whether that be Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Corporate Media or even the leadership of our political parties. It’s easy to fall into the trap that what we see and hear and accept as real is definitive and immutable. Much as the imaginary humans described in the analogy of Plato’s cave, what we think we see as real, may only be a cheap imitation of reality; may even be a false reality.
These manufactured realities often lead to some very bad consequences. Think of the underlying assumptions behind the war on drugs— drugs are universally bad so drug use must be criminalized and drug users must be incarcerated. And what did that lead to? The largest and most dangerous organized crime syndicates in the history fo the world, an easy source of funding for those who would advance violent and hateful ideologies (see, e.g. any jihadist movement around the world), and a burgeoning prison population filled with non-violent offenders, most of them minorities and poor whites. The manufactured reality that our public school system can only be fixed by constant testing and the promotion of privatized “charter schools” is ruining our education sytem. The conservative movement’s maufacured reality that government is always bad (except when our military is killing people in faraway lands in order to defend our freedoms) has led to a crisis in governance and the loss of essential services all across the country. In some cases, such as the notorious case of the poisoning of the people in Flint, Michigan, it is literally causing long term damage to the health and welfare of entire populations.
This election year we are being told by both party establishments that the staus quo must be preseved or chaos will result. And yet, who are the two candidates everyone is talking about? The ones the status quao establishment despises. These two persons, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, could not be more different in what the advocate to resolve the major problems our country faces. Yet it’s clear that a large number of the public, right, left and center, are dissastified with the manufactured reality that has been sold to them by the media, by the large corporate interests that dominate this country and by the establishment politicians in each party. That is the reaon for their appeal. that is why the Republican establishment candidates are flailing about, and why the consensus choice of the Democratic prty elite, Hillary Clinton, is now in the midst of the political fight of her life, despite all the money and connections and other advantages she has over Bernie Sanders.
You see the trouble with manugacturing realities for mass consumption is that eventually they fall apart under the weight of their own faulty assumptions, half-truths, lies and unforeseen consequences. Manufactured realities rely upon the public’s acceptance and belief in them. Right now in America, millions of people are no longer willing to accept what they have been told is real by our political, corporate and media elites. As the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, once posited, the only reality is that things change. The current supporters of our status quo, many of whom have been in power for the last tow to three decades in both parties, are no longer trusted or believed by many Americans. Times have changed, in large part because of the actions taken and policies promoted by those who have held power and and advanced the ideas of the status quo — neoliberlaism, smaller government, less help for the vuilnerable in our society. Their old answers are no longer considered valid. The standard model of our political system is breaking apart at the seams.
Manufaturing realities is a dangerous business. And when they collapse the danger only increases. There’s a reason a neo-fascist like Trump is beating the other contenders in the Republican party. He offers a new vision of reality that appeals to the despair, anger, and frustration among a significant segment of our country. It’s an ugly, undemocratic reality, but it has the advantage of offering easy solutions to complex problems, and for many the emotional appeal of what he proposes is hard for them to resist. Even if he does not eventually obtain the Republican nomination, whoever does will be forced to adopt many of the same principles and rhetoric that he has employed so relentlessly in his rise.
The question I leave for you to consider is whether a person who is enmeshed within the status quo and the “realitiy” that goes along with it, is the best choce as the Democratic Party’s candidate to oppose Trump (or whoever manages to claw over trump to claim his supporters). The electorate this year is demonstrably anti-status quo. In a critical election, perhaps the most critical in my lifetime and yours, is a status quo candidate the best chance our party and our country has to prevent the ascendancy of a right wing pseudo-populist to the White House?