stef talks about this in a way that i hadn't been able to pry out of my head yet.

no, mom, i don't trust that the current administration wants to get to the same goals that i do, and that we just disagree on specifics. i think we're working on different goals. and i do not like or trust their (sometimes stated) goals.

stef says:

firecat: This scares me:

I guess I thought that most of the people in my country had the same ultimate goal - a better life for everyone - and only disagreed with the specifics of how to get there. But if many people in my country have the goal of being part of an empire where they try to remake the world in their own image...well, then we're on a road that might have lots more hatred, violence, and bloodshed than I imagined.

what stef is reacting to:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

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."

(from ron suskind's new york times magazine article, "without a doubt", from the october 17th issue. i am not providing a link because i'm not registered there, but go to stef's commentary and she has the direct link.)