Reality in our century is not something to be faced. — Graham Greene

There has been much talk about “reality” in political discourse in the blogosphere as of late. It was sparked, I think, by the piece by Ron Suskind in the NY Times Magazine last October …

crossposted from Liberal Street Fighter

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.”

Many on the left, and the centrists in the Democratic Party, chortled at that observation. Of course we are, we’re PROUD of it. However, it raises a question … how do we decide what “reality-based” means? This is not a metaphysical question, but a very practical one. What do we mean by reality, and how do we decide what is “real” within the political sphere?

“Reality can destroy the dream; why shouldn’t the dream destroy reality?” — George Moore

Is political reality fixed, or created? If it is created, does it become so by fiat, from “leaders”, or does it arise through foment and debate? Are “fringe” ideas counterproductive, or vital, to the development of political power? There are some who would argue that “fringe” ideas, “conspiracy theories”, diminish the chances for political success. History would argue otherwise.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. — Philip K. Dick

The Republican regime we face now was based on fringe ideas. They succeeded because a group of people on the far right refused to be silenced, and built a broad-based infrastructure to feed their agenda. The aide Suskind quoted was speaking a political reality — the current regime EXISTS because a united group of people on the right willed it into existence. Isn’t our purpose, as liberals, to assert that we need to create political consensus through debate and measurement and process? Are we so lacking in our faith in a government, a political system based in those ideas, that we think we need to echo a movement that is so much the opposite of that which we hold dear; reason and debate?

I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality. — Salvador Dali

Is that a political “success” that we on the left want to replicate? As believers in the Enlightenment, in the idea that human reason can help us to create a better world for ourselves, do we want to reenact the way the right gained power? The greatest successes of the left came from a vibrant and healthy debate. People told Martin Luther King and Malcolm X they were too radical. The Suffragists were told that they were never going to win the right to vote for women if they kept making wild statements and claims. THAT is the history of how progressive change has been accomplished in this country. Why, then, are so many on the center-right calling for lockstep thinking and a silencing of “fringe” ideas? Have we become so intellectually lazy, so bereft in our faith in the power of reason and discourse, that we feel that political debate must be limited?

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. — Friedrich Nietzsche