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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBook Review explaining Trump: "Fantasyland," by Kurt Andersen
Youre probably going to hear this book described as the one that explains how Donald Trump got elected president.
It does, but youll need to read more than 400 closely reasoned pages before you reach that point. And by the time you do, Trumps election may not seem so surprising.
In Fantasyland, journalist Kurt Andersen co-founder of Spy magazine and host of public radios Studio 360 takes a long look at how we got to the point where wed elect a bankrupt casino operator, mail-order meat vendor, lewd beauty-pageant huckster and reality TV star to the office once held by Lincoln, Washington and Truman.
The answer, which Andersen develops masterfully, entertainingly and just a bit long-windedly, is that weve taken leave of our rationality. As a nation, weve given ourselves over to make-believe, thinking more like children than adults.
Andersen traces the blame back to Martin Luther, who made the case that Christians needed no priests, no church hierarchy. Everyone could read the Bible and interpret scripture for themselves. In doing so, Luther planted seeds that would come to full flower 500 years later, when a frightening number of our fellow citizens feel free to believe anything they want to.
(snip)
America was founded by a nutty religious cult, he declares. He compares the Puritans to Al-Qaida, refers to holier-than-thou zealots and sprinkles in descriptors like berserk, crazified and extra-nutty.
Andersen turns Americas founding story upside down. The real founders of America are the Shakers, the Quakers, the Mormons, the snake handlers, the fire-and-brimstone preachers: in short, the people who took the nation imagined by its rationalist creators and put their own vivid stamp of irrationality on it.
Jumping ahead through the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, Andersen examines a dizzying array of phenomena, including Buffalo Bill, the Scopes Monkey Trial, Disneyland and the internet.
They all contributed to, in Andersens words, the breakdown of a shared public reality based on widely accepted facts. Andersen began writing this book long before Trumps election, but he calls Trump the apotheosis of Fantasyland.
http://www.startribune.com/nonfiction-fantasyland-by-kurt-andersen/444516883/
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Spouse already downloaded it and it apparently starts by Oprah who gave us Dr. Oz with his own line of bullshit.
Hard to imagine Oprah a member of "60 Minutes.."
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,735 posts)The author's theory is that Americans, in particular, are inclined to find their own realities. I'm not sure it's Martin Luther's fault, despite his claim that people should be able to read the Bible in their own language, but regardless, after the Reformation various sects developed, some of which wound up in what became the U.S. This is where the real craziness started; there were plenty of Protestants in Europe by the 17th Century but they weren't as nuts as the ones who settled in the New World.
What the Puritans, the Pilgrims and the sects that came later had in common was a rejection of the conventional theology of the Church of England and a whole lot of weirdness involving supernatural beliefs in witches and demons. There weren't a lot of countervailing traditional religions to tamp down the weirdness. People were already disposed to believe in the supernatural; then along came the Mormons, various snake handling churches and speakers in tongues. During the early 20th century there were proto-televangelists like Aimee Semple McPherson, believers in spirits, seances and ouija boards, and illusionists like Houdini.
Fast-forward to the late '60s and you get LSD and peyote, Carlos Castaneda, the notion that whatever you wanted to believe was real, plus crystals and other non- (or anti-) scientific woo on the Left, while at the same time the evangelical Christians with increasingly off-the-wall theologies were gaining popularity on the Right. Other fantasies were being fulfilled by Disneyland, cosplay, theme parks, and other activities that allowed people to step away from reality. The central principle is that American society encourages the notion there is no absolute truth and no scientific proof you can rely on. If you don't want to "believe" in climate change, or God, or vaccinations, you don't have to. So, when Trump finally turns up, a lot of people are ready to believe bald-faced lies because there is no real truth.
It's a very thought-provoking book.
question everything
(47,487 posts)I have often felt sorry for people looking for magics, for gurus, for something to fill their lives. I have felt sorry for them that they were having difficulty with reality that they were looking for alternatives not based in facts.
The trouble starts when they want to impose their alternative reality on the rest of us, and when we have a president for whom facts are something that one can use or ignore, then we are in trouble.
Girard442
(6,075 posts)Believe a mule won't kick you because you think happy thoughts? The mule has a different take on reality and his take is attached to a hard, hard hoof.