Men and Supermen

The feature article in today's New York Times magazine needs to be read in full -- a fascinating and ultimately scary account of the extent to which a cult of personality that draws its power from Christian fundamentalism is now rooted in the White House. It's tough to pick the most damning excerpt, but:

The [senior White House] aide said that guys like me [Ron Suskind, the article's author] were ''in what we [White House] 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.''

UPDATE: Many blogs now declaring themselves proud to be in the Reality Based Community.