Living in Fantasyland
America gone haywire
Has our country gone mad? Has anyone examined the head of America?
Kurt Anderson has, shortly after the 2016 election; and his conclusion is yes, we have gone mad and it was bound to happen. He wrote the bestselling book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. In it, he presents an alternate history of the country as a kind of case study of America’s madness.
Anderson lays out the course of the disease, going all the way back to the Reformation, which established the ability of every individual to judge for himself what was right. Then we were settled by fevered gold seekers and separatist true believers. Soon came witch trials, Joseph Smith, quack cures, conspiracy theories, and chronic anxieties about foreigners. Add on the magic of Pentecostalism, the firmness of Fundamentalism, middle aged people thinking they’re still young, Disneyland, and the epistemological relativism of intellectuals. Things really went off the rails with reality shows, the internet, science deniers, and the gun lobby. By now, what Anderson calls the Fantasy-Industrial Complex has taken over a large part of the economy and this book was written before QAnon. Is it any wonder a conspiracy theorist would get elected?
Fantasyland is not a comfortable book to read, in part because it’s guaranteed to deride some of your most…
