Hey! Whatever happened to the reality-based community?

Do you remember how Progressives once identified themselves as “reality-based community”?  The phrase “reality-based community” actually originated from George W. Bush’s team in 2004, but the Left swiftly co-opted it.  For example, in that same election cycle, Al Gore, while campaigning for John Kerry, praised Kerry for being “a proud member of the ‘reality-based’ community.”  Progressives even made buttons to show that, when it came to reality, nobody does it better than a Progressive.

That “reality-based community” label seems sadly tattered and faded, though, doesn’t it?  It’s not just that their ideas, when finally put into effect, proved to be disastrous, with everything from economic ideas, to Obamacare, to national security failing to live up to the hype.  It’s that the proud members of the reality-based community prove to be living in a series of outright lies.

• Reality-based community world view:  Unemployment is at its lowest rate in years.
• Truth:  Unemployment is incredibly high, with the truth hidden only through government accounting lies.

• Reality-based community world view:  What the Charlie Hebdo killers did later that same day was just to “randomly shoot a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris.“
• Truth:  It was probably just random that, in Coulibaly, there was a map identifying all of Paris’ Jewish schools.  Likewise, it’s completely random that explicitly antisemitic attacks have doubled in England in just the past year while France has seen a 400% increase in less than year.  No reality to see here, folks.  Just move along.

• Reality-based community world view:  The world’s terrorist attacks emanate from a group of people with no relationship to Islam.
• Truth:  Apparently a lot of Muslims are confused about their religion.  Since 9/11, there have been more than 25,000 terrorist attacks, all committed by people who expressly claimed fealty to Islam.

• Reality-based community world view:  Obama’s views on gay marriage evolved from 2004, when he announced before Pastor Rick Warren that his Christian faith meant marriage could only be before a man and a woman, and 2012, when Obama announced that he supported gay marriage and, since then, has invested enormous energy in putting his executive authority at the service of the LGBT community.
• Truth:  Obama out-and-out lied.  Those of us who paid attention knew that, as early as 1996, Obama was swearing fealty to gay marriage, a position he only walked back when the White House drew near.  We knew it — and now David Axelrod admits it.  Obama’s lying again now, trying to claim that Axelrod is wrong, but Obama’s 1996 written support for gay marriage shows that, for once, Axelrod is telling the truth.

• Reality-based community world view:  Brian Williams is a hip, awesome, and totally honest journalist.
• Truth:  Brian Williams is a committed liar, although his lies are less egregious than Obama’s.  While Obama to advance an agenda Americans would not support if they knew the truth, Williams just lied to make himself appear more important.

Incidentally, I’m not asserting that, to the extent the reality-based community claims that Williams is an objective journalist, that too is a lie.  There’s no doubt that Williams is a supine Obama sycophant.  Views about Obama, however, are a matter of opinion.  The Progressive and media worship for Obama (but I repeat myself) is so deeply ingrained in their psyches that they are incapable of imagining that any sane person could dislike Obama.  Therefore, to the extent they are open in their worship, they are merely acting as sane and objective political observers and serving as a bulwark against the insane, racist hatred that conservatives harbor for Obama.

I have to write discovery requests now (oh joy!), but I’m willing to bet that all of you can find other, and better, examples of situations in which the “reality-based community” has staked its reputation and policies, not on subjective feelings or ideological hopes, but on out and out lies.  Damn those stubborn facts!

(As an aside here, you’ve probably noticed that I really haven’t had much to say about news stories making it increasingly clear that (a) Obama is an antisemite and (b) Obama is a compulsive liar.  I’ve been making these points since 2008.  The only difference now is that Obama is bothering to pretend otherwise as to either of those little problems.  The only thing I feel like adding now is that it’s going to be a long, long two years until the next president comes along — and that’s hoping it’s a Republican and not Elizabeth Warren.  She’s so bad she’ll make Obama look almost as good as Jimmy Carter.)