Here we see the White House in its usual Rovian posture, simply inventing reality out of whole cloth, never mind the mind-bending absurdity of it all. If it is advantageous to describe black as white, up as down, Kerry as coward and Bush as courageous, Iraq as necessary to our security and its opponents as America-haters – then just do it. They have very good reason to continue in this Wonderlandian mode. It’s worked brilliantly for years, and hardly anyone – certainly in the press – ever has the courage to inject silly stuff like facts and reality into the discussion. Moreover, if someone is ever foolish enough to do so, there’s always the politics of personal destruction to rely upon. Make an example out of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, and the rest will get the idea.

If you want to see how far we’ve come, though, take a good look at the last paragraph in the passage quoted above. It’s what the nice folks in the media biz like to describe as "context". Not so long ago, had this article run, that paragraph would have been missing – completely AWOL. The administration, and especially this ridiculous imbecile of a president (but wasn’t it just so endearing how he mangled words and didn’t know the name of the president of Pakistan?!) could make any claim, no matter how absurd, no matter how contrary to known fact, and you wouldn’t find such corrective context anywhere in sight, let alone in the same article. It was crucial that the nonsense go unchallenged, and so it did. Of course, to inject such contextual background into a story of this sort is arguably to add a political slant to it, something that a ‘neutral’ American press fancies that it doesn’t do. What they don’t tell you, however, is that failing to add such context in the face of known absurdities (like the notion that the Democrats spiked the president’s immigration bill) is just as much if note more of an act of politicization as is adding it. Worse, it is also an act of cooptation.

And, speaking of absurdities, notice also how far we still haven’t come. Someday in the future, perhaps, there will also be some qualifying context behind this jaw-dropper: "Democrats are failing in their responsibility to make tough decisions and spend the people's money wisely". Imagine how differently – and how much more honestly – the piece would have read if the next paragraph had said: "George Bush inherited America’s biggest budget surplus in history, and turned it into the biggest deficit in history, because of which the national debt is now at $9 trillion, or about $60,000 per taxpayer, and rising, and accumulating additional interest every day. When Republicans took control of government, they went on a spending spree that dwarfed anything Democrats had ever done. Bush never vetoed a single spending bill."

Of course, the media – like Congress – have been way behind the public at virtually every step of this process, and that continues to be the case today, so that even though the public views the administration (albeit still too generously, merely) as dishonest and inept, it will be some time before anyone inside the Washington establishment can hint at such a perception, despite that it is fully rooted in fact. Outward acknowledgment of any (and every, real or fabricated) pejorative quality is, of course, reserved for Democratic presidents only.

And then, of course, there is Bush himself to consider. Fully seventy percent of the public are now reported to want the troops out of Iraq by April. My guess is that that number will skyrocket even further now that it has been revealed that the cost of the war is running $12 billion per month. The president is due to report to Congress this week on the progress made in Iraq, but there isn’t any. Literally. Reported one story, "The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter". Is it therefore any surprise with these guys that, as another headline put it, "Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains", and that they are furiously trying to lower expectations in advance of the report? In yet another media report, the categories they invented trying to gussy up the corpse of Iraq were described by one insider as "bizarre". No doubt. Perhaps they’ll be citing the Iraqi government for increased efficiency in addressing the problem of the global population boom. Could that be a category?

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled his trip to Latin America this week and National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley bagged his family vacation, both returning to Washington in a hurry. According to ABC, an insider described the White House as being in "panic mode" as members of Congress are trying to ditch Bush and Cheney faster than a nasty case of the clap picked up on some overseas junket.

Meanwhile, the usual suspects from the rabid right are desperately trying their level best to keep the poison flowing, of course. The New York Times was attacked by conservative papers for capitulating to some very, very bad people in the Muslim world, while the Washington Times attacked both Democratic and Republican members of what it dubbed the "appeasement caucus", who are "are poised to send another unmistakable message of weakness to the jihadists". I had always thought that spending half a decade and half a trillion dollars only to see the entirety of your empire’s land forces get the shit kicked out of them was a pretty good definition of sending an unmistakable message of weakness to your enemy, but what do I know? The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, cautioned frightened Republican members of Congress that "their best prospect for making Iraq less important in 2008 is military progress that allows for a reduction in US forces with honor and a more stable Iraqi government". Hmmm... "Peace with honor", "Peace with honor" – where have I heard that gem before?

In any case, the old magic doesn’t work anymore, especially when applied to former stalwarts from their own party. While we may have passed the point where anyone in the public cares enough about them that trashing wobbly GOP legislators appears at all unseemly, it nevertheless is certainly missing more than just a bit in the way of credibility. I don’t think many Americans are going to be angry at these Republicans for only supporting an insane and hated war for four-and-a-half years, instead of for "a generation", as the White House has suggested.

We have very far to go, to be sure, but the project of regressive politics and the Bush administration to which it has been intimately tied is crumbling before our eyes. Like David Labowitz, quoted at the top of this piece, voters have lately been clocked departing the GOP at speeds approaching Mach 5, horrified and shamed at their own foolishness for ever associating with such monsters in the first place. And still the worst tales of greed and deceit and murderous violence have yet to emerge from the bog that produced Bush, Cheney, Rove, DeLay and Scalia, of that I am as sure as can be. Imagine how it will look when more – and the worst – of the truth is revealed.

It’s worth considering how far we’ve come, and how perilous was the fate of the republic, only a short time ago (and, unquestionably, still to some degree today). The most chilling words ever to emanate from this or any administration were surely also the most honest these guys ever spoke. In the summer of 2002, a "senior advisor" to Bush (my guess has always been that it was Rove) spoke off the record to reporter and author Ron Suskind, and in so doing revealed the true project of the regressive movement, now firmly lodged in the White House. Suskind reported this conversation in the following paragraph from his 2004 article, "Without A Doubt", and the words have been frightening many a thoughtful reader ever since:

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."

Fortunately for the entire world, it turned out a bit differently.

History’s actors are now history’s acted upon. Perhaps they are stunned to find that they are mere mortals, like the rest of us.

And the empire has gone the way of every other empire before it. Only a lot faster.

And they did, indeed, create realities through their actions. Those realities are called Iraq, global warming, Katrina, the debt, and more.

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