REALITY OR ABSURDITY? WHICH WILL IT BE?

I've noticed that many of my political journal buddies have added "member of the reality-based community" to the tag lines for their journals.  And I'm wondering where this expression began - did it begin with Ron Suskind's NYT piece on Dubya's faith-based madness, "Without a Doubt?"  That's the first place I came across it.  Did someone else coin it before Suskind?  I like the expression a lot, although it seems to posit that faith is no part of reality.  And I do think it can be, though certainly not in the way that our leaders are currently experiencing (or at least that's what they're telling us) faith.  Faith also includes a lot of doubt, something our leaders haven't yet acknowledged.  Of all the many things that infuriate me about this administration, and this current load of hogwash about a Christian Nation, the most infuriating is the way that faith and Christianity have become some bizarre sword and shield of inflexible morality and a basis for terrible inhuman actions and decisions. 

Were Jesus to get John Ashcroft, George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, et al, together in a closed room, I don't think he would be particularly gentle with them.  Same goes for most of the leaders of the Christian Right not actually sitting in Washington.  Likewise the talk show hosts spouting Christian Nation nonsense over the radio waves.  I think we'd hear the pissed-off Jesus who drove the money-lenders out of the Temple giving these guys a piece of his mind.

So, anyway.  Reality-based community.  I thought about adding it to my tagline here, too.  Then I read a swell article called Time to Hit the Barricades, on salon.com.  The writer, one Katharine Mieszkowki, posits the "unthinkable" - what will you do if Bush wins?  And then asks a varied group of bloggers that question.  It's a lot of fun, actually made me laugh a couple of times.  Get the daypass and go read it.  My favorite was the "nebbish in chief" of a blog called internebbish, who said "I think I will give everyone I know a lot of duct tape to try to hold their skulls together so when Bush talks their brains don't shoot out of the back of their heads."

In the group quoted was a Professor John-Paul Spiro, of a blog with the great name everything's ruined, who said he would no longer call himself a member of the reality-based community.  He would become a member of the absurdity-based community, and live in an absurd universe for four years.  I kind of like this idea, myself.  So - I am reserving my decision until after the election is decided.  Will it be reality I live in?  or absurdity and fantasy?  It all remains to be seen.  None of the people asked what they'd do for this article said they'd move out of the country.  And I myself have decided that I will stay and fight on.  My sister in DC told me the other day she'll be going for the molotov cocktails and matches if the Junta comes back.  She thinks anarchy is the only hope.