Book Review: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire by Kurt Anderson

Fantasyland provides much needed historical context of how America arrived into the current Twilight Zone/Black Mirror/my alternative facts best your alternative facts moment of history we currently inhabit. Anderson fills the book with well known and not so well known history, while some chapters seemed unnecessary, there's enough steady and entertaining analysis to sustain the full book.

Anderson documents how Americans have been dreamers since the beginning.The first Europeans to settle in Virginia were there for the pipe dream of gold. After decades of finding none they had to settle on a less glamorous life - agriculture. The Puritans threw religion into the mix, radicals who believed their way of life was superior. When the Puritans splintered among themselves, each faction certain they had discovered the truth of the gospel. 

Historically, America's split both ways. The rationalism of the framers left a marked impression, while at the same time magical thinking and paranoia continued to hold sway throughout the 19th Century. Most of the book covers the last thirty years when America took a deep dive into the unreal. Anderson traces the modern descent into craziness to the 1960s.

The counterculture's passion for The Lord of the Rings, New Age, and drug experimentation led to a certain way of thinking, the truth is within you. Facts and evidence don't matter. Meanwhile fundamentalist Christianity experienced a resurgence. Tired of science challenging sacred biblical history and public schools banning prayer, holy rollers took aim at science. A creationist world view makes sense because was say so. A plague of both your houses goes the argument. 

Fantasyland helps explain what happened in 2016 in a tangential way, a year many viewed as an anomaly. Anderson looks at fits of paranoia in the past, the only difference is that William Jennings Bryan or Joseph McCarthy were never elected president. While people rage at the phantoms on the internet, there are millions of people getting things done and keeping things rolling. There's enough room for the crazies and the dreamers, lately it appears a threshold was crossed. Can we go back?

Coming of age in the 90s, conspiracy theories was such a part of the Zeitgeist. While I found them fascinating, less so as I got older, they were to be taken with a grain of salt. Taking them all seriously is a trip down the rabbit hole.  While the media realized stories on Roswell and the Kennedy assassination brought high ratings, they were always done with a note of skepticism. Now, people take these things as the Truth and act on that information (not helped by a certain national leader who traffics in them.) Anderson's optimistic that the pendulum will swing the other way. I hope he's right.

Anderson, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History. New York: Random House, 2017.