'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.'"(Ron Suskind on an anonymous source, New York Times Magazine, Oct 17 2004)
Yes, suggested reading, Prospero to Ferdinand, that is advice from an old colossus to a neo-prince.
"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And--like the baseless fabric of this vision--
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant fades,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our litte life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Also, follow this link. Interesting discussion where both panelists are correct though they disagree with each other. Is this too nuanced for the American Colossus?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/middle_east/july-dec06/failed_08-21.html
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The Arab as Caliban:
You taught me language; and my profit on't
Is, I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!
Tom Engelhardt:
The hyperpower that loosed this singular round of force on our world seems strangely sidelined, while others move boldly to apply its most essential principles profligately, every one of them emboldened both by our example and by our dismal failure. Talk about Pandora's Box (without Hope anywhere in sight)!
What force has done, thanks to the Bush administration's utopian foolishness, is to tie the region's many competing groups, movements, and states into an ever-tightening, Gordian-style knot . . .
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