Tis true, ’tis pity, And pity ’tis ’tis true.

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.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html

The above quote comes from 2004 and the Bush Administration. It was long attributed to Karl Rove, but he denies authorship. Myself, I’m fairly certain it originated in the office of then Vice President, Richard Cheney: if not with the heartless one himself then maybe with Addington…but my money is on Libby,

The article goes on to claim (however ridiculous it might seem, now) that George W. Bush was ‘one of histories great confidence men.’ Oh, the naivete. From our vantage point, here in 2019, the fecklessness of 2004 seems rather staid and, dare I say it, avuncular.

The quote, as far as I can tell, is the proximate cause for the gestation of Blue Mass Group, a once healthy blog that embraced the whole notion of being earnestly and straightforwardly ‘reality based.’ Of course, reality is known to be depressing and, sometimes, even makes you want to crawl under a rock… so basing any commentary on reality is inviting some of those feelings into your life.

 Tis true, ’tis pity, And pity ’tis ’tis true.

Now BMG is undergoing a ‘rethink’ because… well, I’m not sure. Some ‘good commentary’ was purportedly driven away by purported ‘bad commentary.’ But nowhere was it suggested that the supposed ‘bad commentary’ diverged from reality. Maybe it did… but the lack of calling out on those grounds, as opposed to others, suggests a certain uncertainty of purpose in the editors.

Gandhi said, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” and by extension misery might just be when what you think, what you say and what you do are not in harmony….