ROVISM

an introduction

It is an accurate name, for something not very nice. Trump happens because of him, for this outrageous genius – Karl Rove – changed the whole nature of modern politics. We need to know who to give credit to, for our current situation. We also need to know what he did and how he did it, if we want healing

Rovism is a kind of inverted buddhism, … the absence of compassion for other living beings. Numbers are more important than hearts.

History may or may not mark him, but if we are wanting to fix something in America, we need to understand the structure, the system he put in place. The movies disregard his role, both in the movie “W” – about Bush – by Oliver Stone, and the movie “Vice” about Dick Chaney, written and directed by Adam McKay. Rove was treated like a piece of furniture in both, and no one has seemed to notice how much influence such a mind could have, when working with ambitious men who did not appreciate the true nature of his far too clever intellect.

Karl Rove was born on December 25^th, 1950. In accord with the season (perhaps) his birth name was: Karl Christian Rove. He was nurtured into the dark side – “dirty tricks” – of Republican politics by no less a master than: Lee Atwater.

Karl described himself in high school this way: “I was the complete nerd. I had the briefcase. I had the pocket protector. I wore Hush Puppies when they were not cool. I was the thin, scrawny little guy. I was definitely uncool”

[facts and quote from Wikipedia]

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When George W. Bush ran for Governor of Texas, it was because Rove had sought him out and talked him into it. Rove got him elected to two terms as governor, and two terms as president. Something more that luck is involved here.

“The whole art of war consists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive, followed by rapid and audacious attack.” Rove campaign memo from the early years in Texas.

“Rove is the greatest political mind of his generation and probably of any generation. He not only is a breathtakingly smart strategist but also a clever tactician. He knows history, understands the moods of the public, and is a visionary on matters of public policy. But he is not a magician.” Fred Barnes, conservative commentator, editor The Weekly Standard.

“He [Rove] could carve up constituencies with the best of them, and divide the country as easily as columns on a spreadsheet — and with no more thought” diarist “Hunter” DailyKos Aug.2007.

I watched an interview with an intern, who worked with Rove in the White House, and she described him as able to pull a spreadsheet of numbers from a printer, read it, and then make a call to local precincts – which were where the numbers came from – giving exact instructions to be carried out by his word alone.

“I’m looking at 68 polls a week. You may be looking at four or five public polls a week that talk about attitudes nationally, but that do not impact the outcome –” Karl Rove in a radio interview late October 2006. “You may end up with a different math, but you’re entitled to your math. I’m entitled to the math.”

Keep in mind that data-mining was already an art in service to the wheels of commerce. Then imagine Rove with access to the spending habits, and reading habits, and television habits of all potential voters, with detailed numbers at the level of neighborhoods.

“President Bush’s powerful adviser is one part spreadsheet-carrying, vote-counting political wonk, and one part no-holds-barred, brass-knuckled political operative” Dan Froomkin.

“Rove’s method is to plot out elaborate strategies well in advance of the campaign, and stick to them vigilantly. John Deardourff, Rove’s media consultant for races in Texas and Alabama, says, ‘This rap Bush has of never changing his mind and never admitting a mistake-that’s Karl! That’s where it comes from.’ It is a tribute to Rove’s strategic skill that he is so often right.” Joshua Green Atlantic Monthly 2007.

Sound like Trump’s playbook, yes?

Here’s Rove on the use of power …

“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“ Senior white house official, assumed by everyone to have been Karl Rove, summer 2002.

Then there is infamous Trump base, … Rove set up a system …

Craig Unger*, In an interview with Amy Goodman, mid-November 2007: Well, LeHay** is one of the founders of the Council for National Policy. Now, this is a not-very-well-known group, but it’s an umbrella group that oversees dozens of Christian Right groups, like Focus on the Family, which is James Dobson’s group. The Moral Majority was part of it, and so on. And within it was a much smaller group called the Arlington Group, of about fifty religious leaders. Now, they were in regular contact with Karl Rove. And what you have in the Christian Right is as many as 80 million adult evangelicals. You have about 200,000 pastors, and they operate almost as precinct captains did in the labor unions for the Democratic Party. So this is a vast populist movement that operates as part of the Christian Republican Party, and they have regular contact with the White House. [emphasis added]

[*author of: The Fall of the House of Bush: The Untold Story of How a Band of True Believers Seized the Executive Branch, Started the Iraq War, and Still Imperils America’s Future. **one of the authors of the Left Behind series of novels on Armageddon.]

In Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, he writes of an adviser to a King and gives him the name “Wormtongue”. Rove, an unnoticed cold heart, with a clever mind, had effects on others only few would notice.

“Mr. Greenspan described his own emotional journey in dealing with Mr. Bush, from an initial elation about the return of his old friends from the Ford White House – including Mr. Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, secretary of defense – to astonishment and then disappointment at how much they had changed.” New York Times book review describing Alan Greenspan’s (former chairman of the Federal Reserve) book: The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World “…much to my disappointment, economic policy making in the Bush administration remained firmly in the hands of the White House staff.” He was clearly referring to the political team led by Karl Rove at the White House. Mr. Rove was a neighbor of Mr. Greenspan in a leafy enclave near the Potomac River, but the two men almost never had a conversation.” [emphasis added]

Around the time of the movie the Matrix, which introduced us to the fictional synthetic intelligence as master programmer: the Architect … this observation was made

“Dubbed the “architect” and “Bush’s brain”, Rove plotted the rise of George W Bush and departed the White House after the disastrous 2006 mid-term elections. Successful punditry is a combination of real political experience, intellectual nimbleness, a provocative turn of phrase and a coherent point of view. Rove, a Fox News commentator and contributor to Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal, has all these qualities.

Rove isn’t perfect, and was not above cheating if there was a way not to get caught. I recall him on Fox News, as the 2006 bi-election was clearly headed to give the House to the Democrats, insisting over and over again that the numbers would be different than they actually were. He was wrong.

Why? Because he is blind to real people’s feelings – no empathy. His numbers ran aground on changes of heart that only appear in the voting booth, at the last moment. Still …

“Democrats may protest that they would rather see him in jail than on their television screens but they can’t help noting what he says. Whether outlining what the Democrats should do or outlining John McCain’s rocky path to victory (and McCain has followed his advice almost to the letter), Rove’s take is important and often surprising. Expect the name Rove to come up frequently on the campaign trail – and in coverage of it.” Comments in the British newspaper The Telegraph, who ranked Rove (since leaving the White House) as the number one (of the top 50) pundits in U.S. Politics, Friday, May 2nd, 2008.

Then there is something he instituted all the way back in Texas, and for which most who know of this, don’t realize the genius in it: the infamous Talking Points.

They changed daily as needed. From Rove’s offices there would come the themes of the day, and these were sent to Fox News, to all the conservative radio hosts, and even smaller television stations. Those who received these talking points realized the effect of one story repeated over and over again everywhere. The truth didn’t matter at all. Just repetitions of vague platitudes and wild assertions, all helping folk find that source of news that fits their already existing biases.

Rush Limbaugh anyone?

Rove created a number-savvy mechanical process that eats the truth, and bends every event and tragedy into a political question. That’s Rovism: Truth’s irrelvant. Change the narrative everyday (a constant stream of red meat for the always looking for the sensational major media).

Trump’s political luck was born in Rovism, and Trump’s base had been indoctrinated in the Way of it for years.

Rove is someone people are inclined to lean upon, given his advice on campaign matters is so acute. He has come. He has taught and pioneered a garden of liars, all feasting on fake news, fake personalities, and vague promises. When Obama choose to not punish BushII&company for lying us into two disastrous wars (one of which just became the longest war in our history), weeds and dangerous seed of Rovism remained in place, which eventually delivered the first over-ripe&decaying fruit: Donald Trump.

The garden of democracy is in need of new blood. Will we be civil? That tale is yet to tell itself.

{For a dangerous excursion into shamanistic territories, here is a link to “Outrageous Genius”, where I out Rove as the incarnation of the Ice-Geometry-near Divinity Ahriman, in the terminology of Rudolf Steiner’s Spiritual Science. Abstract Intellectual Thinking – without the heart’s warmth&compassion asserted inwardly to moderate it – leads to folly. http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/genius.html }