Karl Rove, Master Hyperrealist

I must admit I have some admiration for the fat ass. He went from a student Republican wonk to the architect of the most transparent coup America has ever witnessed. A direct-mail operative with no life to a presidential adviser responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of lives. Say what you want about the guy, but please stop calling him stupid. Same goes for his obsessive love interest, George W. Bush. These monsters are not stupid. They are brilliant. They've played and mastered the game that could drown us all.

I know I have been crowing about hyperreality a lot lately, and I apologize to those who are getting tired of the term. But when Karl Rove goes on Charlie Rose to mind-wipe America by insisting that Congress led the march to occupy Iraq and secure its oil reserves, I'm pulled back into hyperreality's vertiginous vortex without resistance. It is everywhere, kind of like The Force, or Jesus. It's the webwork we're caught in, all of us. There is no escaping it, especially if you live in the reality-based community. After all, it was most likely Karl Rove himself who told Ron Suskind the following:

"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."

Creating reality? I thought reality created all of us -- before I read Jean Baudrillard or Aldous Huxley or Karl Rove or any number of hyperrealists who understand that perception is reality, as marketers and advertisers have been telling us for decades. And while Suskind was right to dredge up the ghost of the Enlightenment and empiricism, he forgot to mention that the former is just a word that fell apart under the weight of class and resource wars, while the latter is incomplete for our purposes. Empiricism, after all, can only get you so far, because you can't see or experience everything. And if you're relying on those who can experience more than you, in the end, you're merely relying on their word.

And we know how that usually turns out.

From the Declaration of Independence establishing equal rights for everyone except women, slaves or the Native Americans we nearly exterminated to control North America to the Constitution and Bill of Rights which still to this day cannot establish our total access to habeus corpus, free speech or any other rights, we are at the mercy of language and those who manipulate it for our lives. And Karl Rove? The dude knows how to manipulate with force.

He understands that, decades down the line, the party line on the Bush administration will blur, as Americans, who have a hard enough time remembering what happened to them yesterday, forget the intricacies and details of geopolitical dilemmas past. This is, of course, why America could get behind an invasion and occupation of Iraq, or the political assassination of Saddam Hussein, a man we placed in power for the specific purpose of controlling the country's oil reserves and murderously pacifying its populace, who themselves are drunk on thousands of years of tribal differences that amount to nothing. It is why they could forget, barely two years after 9/11, that Saddam had nothing to do with it at all. Or why they could forget that the Saudis, who bankrolled and mostly comprised the terrorist group that attacked us, were our real enemies.

It is also why Rove's Office of Special Counsel spent much time erasing every incriminating piece of email he could with the help of a group called, hilariously enough, Geeks On Call. The nerds gave his hard drive a level-seven mind wipe, I kid you not, which is what Rove and his pals have spent the last two decades giving an all-too-willing American populace, who woke up too late in the procedure to stop it. By the time their polled dissatisfaction caught up to "reality," Rove's hyperreality had already replaced it.

And it will again, if Charlie Rose is any indication. The media, to mangle McLuhan, is the message, Rove understands, and it doesn't matter how large the lie is. All that matters is that the media repeats it, over and over again. Eventually, through the powers of language, apathy and consumption, the lie will become truth.

So yes, hyperreality is here to stay for the reality-based community. The exponentially increasing ubiquity of the internet and media in American life mandates it. We unplugged from the real world and jacked into MTV's Real World a long, long time ago. Revisionists like Karl Rove and Rupert Murdoch may not be anything new -- the Germans had Goebbels, the Romans had Nero, the Catholics have the Pope -- but in the information age, their reliance on erasure and drive-wiping is more than manipulative. It is inevitable.

Comments

[TomR]

Tellmethetruth, Joebaggadonuts and Morphizm, thanks for your replies.

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Also, your comment on consciences as being impairments to rational decision making was great.
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Just to clarify, I was referring to the lack of, or deficiency within, their conscience.

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Separating "emotion" and "intellect" into components isn't viable.
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What I find interesting is the battle that goes on in people between these components of their being. That's how cognitive dissonance can result. I've concluded that emotion trumps logic (intellect), especially when that emotion is fear. (Arianna has written posts on the lizard brain.) Conscience is also tied to emotion, since those who have strong consciences don"t feel comfortable engaging in unethical or immoral behavior.

So, what you see as separating components, I see as identifying parts that make up the whole.

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Separating the sociopaths from the normals works if the sociopaths are the only danger¦The enablers are the thing.
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Something IS going wrong within the knowing enablers, either being ruled by greed for money/power or some other pressure acting upon them. They too, are able to disengage from their consciences. Jonathan Turley recently stated that Nancy Pelosi promised Bush that there would be no impeachment hearings during the rest of his term. Turley implied that Pelosi"s motivation was lust for power for the Democrats, not wanting to upset the apple cart for the Dems (I would argue that her inaction will do the opposite). Somehow, I think there is some fear involved on her part as she has seen Bush up close, and he"s way scary from a distance.

There are numerous manipulation tactics to be aware of such as lying (including by omission), denial, minimization, selective inattention, rationalization, diversion, evasion, covert intimidation, guilt-tripping, toxic shaming, playing the victim role, vilifying the victim, playing the servant role, seduction (charm offensive), projecting the blame, feigning innocence, feigning confusion, and brandishing anger (false outrage).

To learn about these tactics in depth, I highly recommend a book on Amazon called "In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing With Manipulative People" by Dr. George K. Simon.

- Tom

[milo9]

Back in my mid-century California, a far simpler and more bigoted time, Texans were commonly thought to be braggarts and liars. I'm not saying anything I'm just saying.

[pimothy]

So HYPERREALIST is the new euphemism for PERJURER.

[Not Blind]

Karl Rove is not at all stupid. He indeed is quite brilliant. He knows well enough to have his hard drive erased, so emails and letters he wrote no longer exist. The reason for that is, he knows when and if there is ever an investigation about the manipulation, fake threats, outright lies, hand-picking intel to justify a previously planned war (PNAC), and exposing an active CIA agent, then he could be subject to criminal prosecution. Alberto Gonzalez has been on the lecture circuit recently, begging for funds for his criminal defense expenses. This only proves that he knew for certain suspending Habeas Corpus, wiretapping and all the other little dirty tricks of the administration (master-minded by Rove and Cheney) were in fact illegal.
The only glimmer of hope in this, is that with the internet, people can readily look up all the speeches Bush gave to Congress and the American public, review his comments and urgency to get Congressional approval for a war in Iraq. Regardless as to what Rove says now, the records speak for themselves. He may hope that by visiting Bill O'Reilly and a few other spin media propagandists, the repetition of his lies may convince a few brain-dead, apathetic or lazy souls into actually believing him.

[dadumdee]

Liberals make the admirable, but strategic mistake of speaking to the people. Yes, it can work if your messanger is as brilliant as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, John F. Kennedy, or even Bill Clinton, but it usually doesnt work. Besides, we all know what happened to them and it wasn't coincidence that they were relentlessly attacked. Karl Rove's and the conservatives' genius is that they speak to the institutions that speak to the people. As a result, they shape the debate, amplify their own agenda, manipulate stories through overt pressure, planted sources, etc., intimidate opposing viewpoints (see Joe Klein for the most recent example) and, as Thrill says, create their own truth or reality. Look at all the irrelevant debates that have taken place in the last few years. Immigration (of Mexicans)? How can you debate Mexican immigration without once mentioning NAFTA? Gay marraige?!? Are you kidding me??? Political debate over a religious ceremony? Thats not even accurate, let alone relevant, yet, by speaking to the institutions that speak to the people, they were able to mire us in that debate in a time of WAR. It is imperative that we change the business model of your media. It is pay to play, which benefits the Republican party of the 'have's' over the majority of us 'have not's'.

[charon]

Reminds me of how the delusional right has tried to resurrect Reagan and Nixon into heroes. Every time I hear of Reagan Int'l Airport or the Reagan Freeway, I think of the hundreds of thousands tortured and murdered in Latin America and Asia by forces aided, trained, and assisted by Americans under Reagan. How disgusting.

Rove is delusional, like Nero and Jesus, et al. It helps to be delusional when you work on creating "realities." Some delusional people work for good, some are harmless, and some rare few are among the greater monsters of history. Rove belongs in the last category. Let's he has exited the stage of history.

[vippy]

If Bush would have had worked for the real world in a job with such results he would have
been fired some time ago. But most people are too aloof, don't care about politics, too busy to make a living, while always being brainwashed that the US is the best country,
and they believe it. You see, it does not take
all that much.

[racetoinfinity]

William Burroughs is also prescient and brilliant in his conception of "the word virus" in shaping public reality by the powerful interest in his book "Nova Express" and his non-fiction writings.

[mommadona]

They have all been bound by their words.
So far, so good.

Karl's has worked out quite well, actually.
It's like a Chinese finger puzzle, Karl.
Think about it.

Delusions of Grandeur
Illusions from the Ash Heap
Rove, thy name is nothing.

http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/morris/kelmscottjpeg/DSC_0233.jpg

[SeriousBlack]

As to the conclusion Thill makes in his last sentence--I hope not. If so, we all might as well slit our wrists and be done with it.

[Jazzylady26]

So, Scott Thill, are you just going to buy into Rove's lies like all the rest of you white people? I didn't buy into that bullcrap and I refuse to do so now. But you see, there is a problem with that; I can't do anything about it. You see, I am a brown person, and woman at that, which, sadly, doesn't mean squat in this world, and especially not the political world. I am left out, marginalized, ignored, and just plain old invisible. Rove pulled the wool over millions of eyes because he had studied all those whites who consider themselves evangelicals, values voters, soccer moms, protectionist moms or whatever the hell anyone names them, along with the Nazcar dads, all whites, and he played them like a banjo playing the theme from Deliverance. He and that whole bushcabal didn't believe a damned thing they were saying, but he knew that they did. Not only that, he played to the hatred of the evangelicals for the Clenisvagina and he had a field day. Rove played on their hatred deep and long and gained wealth beyond measure for it. I don't think he's stupid, just evil and incredibly ugly. The stupid ones continue to be the evangelicals, who just like so many people in bad marriages never learned to discern anything about the partners they were either screwing or dating before they married them, then cry foul when they discover horrible truths about that person. They know by now that they've been played, but look at how they haven't learned their lessons yet, and are once again looking for the knight in Rovian armor who can save them. Shame on them.

[darker]

By lying, misrepresenting and cheating, the frat-brat K Rove sold us bad goods:
GWBush.

Voters should have a class action suit against ad-man Rove and have his lying ass sent to jail.

Enjoy the Bush-Cheney out-of-control, deregulated, greed-driven, irresponsible
frat-bratty, war-profiteering economy.

[Bongborg]

This morning I was unwillingly subjected to Fox "News" at my mother's house as I did some electrical work on the room she is adding on. Much as I tried to tune it out, I still got the gist of their story on Drew Peterson, a case where there are lots of allegations, few facts, and no corpus delicti...I gathered that all the allegations are being presumed to be "evidence" by the people reporting the story. I think the problem is not so much that Rove says these absurd things, but that they are actually reported, analyzed, and broadcast. if no one listened to him, his slant on reality would not matter. Until we have a fourth estate, which is worthy of that name, one that actually reports hard news impartially, then people like Rove will have a platform to get up and place their memes in the empty heads of the "great unwashed", or perhaps I should say of the "great brainwashed".

[FearAndSmear]

What a fatally ill-timed ploy on Rove's part. He's Austin Powers without his mojo now. Flaccid. Inept.

And Arianna was dead right that this play might have actually grown some legs if these were still the days before all the meddling kids on the internet interfered.

[niftyjwn]

you're wrong. rove is not brilliant. he's not even smart. he's an idiot who was lucky enough to be in his position when the current state of our union is stupid. currently, americans are generally stupid. i used to consider myself to be an american, but i'm smarter than that. so now, i'm un-american or for those of you who aren't smart, i'm un-stupid. rove's reality is just that, rove's reality. it is not real. repetition does not make it real. someone stating that the media's debate of whether black is white and up is down will cause those things to actually be the reality is truly, truly american. that is, they are stupid.

if we want to be smart americans, we need to be able to learn and we need to be able to teach. right now, neither one of those happen very often in this country.

now let's all sing--

oh, i'm glad to be un-american . . .