«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 adviser to former president George W. Bush,
as quoted in the New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004,
cit. in Noam Chomsky, Making the Future, London,
Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Books, 2012