Karl Rove once said this.
“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.”
And now…Donald Trump is making that attitude manifest in so many ways.
For the hands thing Trump should use the large prosthetics like Charlie Kelly’s uncle Jack in Always Sunny.
So they removed all the sharp objects from his office and then turned around and gave him a felt tip marker.
Well, that turned out to be a mistake.
Creating your own reality has its…..drawbacks. Like Rove insisting on national TV that Obama hadn’t won Ohio in 2012, because Rove’s reality had Romney winning it. Everyone had a good laugh at that, as I recall.
Laughter won’t stop our Fantasist-in Chief, though. He needs more stringent measures. I truly think that, if he loses the 2020 election, we’ll really be in trouble. Like, at the very least, security will have to forcibly drag him out of the White House.
Harold and the Purple Crayon. And you thought it was just a kids’ book.
Wikipedia explains it a lot better than I could. “The protagonist, Harold, is a curious four-year-old boy who, with his purple crayon, has the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it.”
Now we have Donald and the Black Sharpie, older and less curious, and with the stakes set a lot higher.
Somebody sharpy a pair of horns on 45 and circulate it to the fundies as proof that he is the actual devil.
I expect to see DONALD AND THE BLACK SHARPIE in the parody section next time I hit Barnes & Noble. Seriously, that one’s going to happen.
Well you know my name is Simon, and the things I draw come true..
It would all be adorable if he was in preschool and not the White House.
Did Ron Suskind (or anyone reasonably reliable in a position to know about Suskind’s interview with an unnamed Bush II White House source) confirmed that Rove (and not some other deranged Bushevik) actually said this?
Meanwhile, over in the other party, the candidate touted as “most electable” now says he was against the 2003 Iraq invasion when he, like the rest of the DLC, was famously and publicly in favor of both Iraq invasions. He was VP of an administration which expanded ICE and deported a record-breaking number of immigrants, and tried to detain immigrants indefinitely but was slapped down by the courts, and handed out guns to anybody who professed to be willing to attack Assad which famously ended up including both Al Queda and ISIS, but somehow he is perceived as being less dangerous and better for immigrants than Trump is. He says he’s “too busy” to outline his plans to combat climate change or student debt, and that the very rich are “good people”. No reality denial over there, nope.
It’s not that “both sides do it”, it’s that there is only one side, and we are only offered a choice of aesthetics: we can be loud and tacky with Bush and Trump, or dignified but still odious with Obama and Biden. Either way, the rich get richer, the environment gets burned for profit, and we fight endless wars to “protect our freedoms” against people who couldn’t have attacked us if they had wanted to. Anybody offering odds that if Trump loses in 2020 he won’t be prosecuted for a thing? Because at this point I’d be willing to bet money on that, and history shows that it would be a safer bet than any stock market investment.
He can’t draw that good. He has to have one of his sons draw those for him.
Pierce R Butler@10–
According to Wikiquote the original quote was reported by Susskind in 2004, and Mark Danner in 2007 claimed that it was “widely known” to be Karl Rove. As far as I can tell Susskind has never clarified and Rove himself has denied it.
chrislawson (#13) – True or not, it’s how they behave, expecting ideology to trump reality (no pun intended). Just look at the clowns saying, “we can pray away a hurricane!” and “we’ll be welcomed as liberators!”
Intransitive@14
It took George W. Bush’s presidency for me to figure out that they don’t even care if anyone believes their lies. The more ridiculous the assertion, the greater the show of power in asserting it. Whatcha gonna do about it?
chrislawson @ # 13 – Thanks, that’s what I thought. The sheer arrogance of that statement apparently reflects the entire Shrub maladministration, and our esteemed host should hedge his attributions accordingly.
Well you know my name is Donald,
And the things I draw aren’t true.
Oh, the pictures take me, take me over,
Over this border wall I drew.