The Process

For  a score or more years now, people in advertising, po;itics and government have used an expression called "The Process".  A great many ideas and proposals have been subjected to the workings of The Process in order to validate their worthiness.
I never really understood what The Process meant.  For me, it remained a vague abstraction and therefore eluded my understanding.  The first President to use (even overuse) the expression was George Herbert Walker Bush.  It was obvious that he knew what it meant and how to use it.
It was also about that time that Joan Didion, a writer I admire, provided an explanation for what The Process is or means.  I have extracted three quotes from her writing on the subject:

"the traditional ways in which power is exchanged and the status quo maintained."

"consisting of a self-created and self-referring class who tend to speak of the world not necessarily as it is but as they want people out there to believe it is."

"they prefer the theoretical to the observable, and to dismiss that which might be learned empirically as anecdotal.."

Thank you, Ms Didion