Author: Les Lane

In the summer of 2002, reporter Ron Suskind met with a senior advisor to George W. Bush who famously accused Suskind of living in the “reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from (a) judicious study of discernible reality.” Suskind writes:

“I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment (sic) 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.'”

Continue reading FACT. REALITY. TRUTH.

In 1950, Republican senator Joseph McCarthy brandished a piece of paper and declared “The State Department is infested with communists. I have here in my hand a list of 205 that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” There is some evidence that that piece of paper was blank, but the claim fanned the anti-Communism fear that was smoldering in America into a raging forest fire. “In the next few weeks,” according to the History Channel’s “This Day in History” for February 9th, “the number fluctuated wildly, with McCarthy stating at various times that there were 57, or 81, or 10 communists in the Department of State. In fact, McCarthy never produced any solid evidence that there was even one communist in the State Department.” Notwithstanding the obvious contrivance, it became a sensational story that led to a tsunami of media attention for the junior senator, stoked hysteria, helped spread fear of debate and dissent, destroyed lives, and brought the American constitutional political process to its knees.  Continue reading SCHLOCK

A previous blog (August 2015) postulated that there are two bedrock principles, first premises if you will, that separate contemporary liberals from conservatives and everything else in both camps is built upon these. They were first, a conviction that the world is either a.) more dangerous than interesting or b.) more interesting than dangerous, and second, a conviction that humans are either a.) naturally bad or b.) naturally good (by the time they are born).   Continue reading KARMA