Empire creates its own reality faster than journalists can study it

Evidence

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” (Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty, and the Presidency of George W. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 700

Categorization

• XREF: This Suskind quote is the canonical statement of post-truth imperial power — connects directly to the reader’s framing of how political reality-construction (rather than fact) shapes Islamophobic discourse.
• SEED: Strong opening anchor for an essay or chapter framing: the power to create reality trumps the power to describe it, which is exactly why fiction’s reality-making is politically consequential.
• SHARE: This exact quote with its 2004 origin date would land well with a colleague working on post-truth politics or Bush-era discourse.