Seven

Abstract

This chapter addresses how the principle of unreality took over American foreign policy and, with it, the world. How did America get to the Iraq War? How did America get to the point where the flight from reality is solemnly made into a philosophical and practical principle? Karl Rove mentions the growth of American power, and that was no doubt a prevailing factor in the process. The powerless must adapt to the conditions and circumstances given by a recalcitrant world, while the powerful can impose their concepts and desires on reality. And, yet, power alone is not enough to explain how and why reality became an illusion. After all, power might be used to change the world, to transform it according to one's wishes, rather than to create new worlds. One needs a second principle. For someone to lose interest in reality it is first necessary that they have tried to change it without success; they have to give up on reality. Power and powerlessness: the two tempos of American fantasy.