It&#x27;s a <i>lot</i> more dangerous than mere rhetoric.<p>The &quot;outrageous, provocative, and aggressive&quot; comments are exploiting <i>political faith</i>, and are said by people with the hubris to believe they can shape reality with their will.<p>The 2004 New York Times essay &quot;Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush&quot;[1] has a very enlightening description of these ideologies.<p><pre><code>    In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House
    didn&#x27;t like about Bush&#x27;s former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting
    with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House&#x27;s displeasure, and then he
    told me something that at the time I didn&#x27;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 &quot;in what we call the reality-based community,&quot;
    which he defined as people who &quot;believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study
    of discernible reality.&quot; I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles
    and empiricism. He cut me off. &quot;That&#x27;s not the way the world really works anymore,&quot;
    he continued. &quot;We&#x27;re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while
    you&#x27;re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we&#x27;ll act again, creating
    other new realities, which you can study too, and that&#x27;s how things will sort out.
    We&#x27;re history&#x27;s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.&quot;


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[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;17&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2004&#x2F;10&#x2F;17&#x2F;magazine&#x2F;faith-certainty-a...</a>