Butler, Smedley D. _War Is a Racket_. Veterans for Peace, 1995. “Phantasmagoria. Note: A Couple People Asked Me To… | by Ned Resnikoff | Medium.” Accessed October 16, 2025. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220121074008/https://medium.com/@resnikoff/phantasmagoria-3beac7fe516d](https://web.archive.org/web/20220121074008/https://medium.com/@resnikoff/phantasmagoria-3beac7fe516d). “The New Military-Industrial Complex and the Israeli-Hamas War | Global Policy Journal.” April 10, 2024. [https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/04/2024/new-military-industrial-complex-and-israeli-hamas-war](https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/10/04/2024/new-military-industrial-complex-and-israeli-hamas-war). _Wikipedia_. “Vladislav Surkov.” September 13, 2025. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vladislav_Surkov&oldid=1311039524](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vladislav_Surkov&oldid=1311039524). originally appeared in [a 2004 _New York Times Magazine_ article](https://web.archive.org/web/20220121074008/http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-and-the-presidency-of-george-w-bush.html?_r=0) by Ron Suskind: > The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “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.”