Naturellement, when stuff like science and advanced technology, research and development are set aside, nay, actually relegated to the lumber room in favor of faith and belief, various scams of that sort, superceded by a contrived reality as opposed to the real events of the world, faux weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, faux secret meetings between Al-Qaeda and Iraqi officials ... for eight dark years a battle has raged between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion....
Speaking of The Dark Ages of Bush and Cheney:
"I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do." Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: "This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .
"This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts, ... he truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence... But you can't run the world on faith."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Ron Suskind goes on to make the following points:
The faith-based presidency is a with-us-or-against-us model that has been enormously effective at, among other things, keeping the workings and temperament of the Bush White House a kind of state secret. ... one key feature of the faith-based presidency: open dialogue, based on facts, is not seen as something of inherent value. It may, in fact, create doubt, which undercuts faith. It could result in a loss of confidence in the decision-maker and, just as important, by the decision-maker.... "what we call the reality-based community," which he [a senior adviser to Bush] 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."
The Empire of Created Reality. Leveraging on exaggerated assets, falsifying the ratio of indebtedness to to equity (leveraging to the eyeballs), derivatives derived from derivatives ad infinitum..., the whole new world of faux economics and faux mathematics and faux ratios...
So, mix up the chaotic Republican school of free-market mathematics with creationism and corporate greed in this psychotic new "created reality," a "reality" actually engendered to destroy the American Middle Class (or working people) and America itself in a way that one wonders if the Neo-Cons of the New Belief System are not totally in league with Osama bin Laden...
'Tis time for a heady dose of reality. And science. And making sure that that science and technology, research and development, funding education, that all of these wondrous goodies of reality be part of a reality-based jobs recovery and economic stimulus package.
Behold! Some stolen talking points from ScienceDebate 2008:
TALKING POINTS:
A) Science & technology have produced half of the economic growth of the United States since WWII.
B) Spending on basic research is the single greatest economic engine this country has ever known.
C) Funding to federal granting agencies is about as "shovel-ready" a stimulus as you can get. If the granting agencies lower their score thresholds for awards across the board the money will be flowing within months, leading to rapid hiring and increased purchasing from technical service and supply companies that are largely American, and creating thousands of the kinds of high-quality jobs the country needs.
http://www.sciencedebate2008.com/...
Back to the world of Reality-Based Reality! Forward Harch!