Kurt Andersen makes the case that Donald Trump is the personification of this dream world. If you disagree with him on anything, you’ll see him throwing a tantrum. He paints Trump as a guy who is dismissive of facts and news he doesn’t like; he casually asserts that whole ethnicities or religious groups are dangers to American ideals; and when things don’t go his way, Trump goes ballistic. This approach is nothing new in the world of Donald Trump, according to Andersen (Andersen 131). His delusional ideas and man-child conduct are typical of a long-standing tendency in the United States. Individuals are willing to put aside truth in favor of fiction that better fits their distorted worldview.
We may use Anderson’s argument as a starting point for further discussion of the issues we face today. “Opinions and sentiments are the same as facts,” according to Andersen’s view. When it comes to hucksterism, credulity, and dubious ideas, “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire” is an extraordinarily timely history of these things (Andersen 131). I think it’s vital to clarify that this book isn’t actually about President Trump, given how much time we spend talking about and reading about him in the current times.
No doubt that the last chapter is dedicated to Trump, who Andersen labels “the ultimate representation of a dream industrial complex.” Yet Andersen is more interested in discovering why so many people in our country believe anything and how this impacts us all as a result. According to Kurt, half of the public does not believe in man-made climate change, and one in four individuals believe that Barack Obama is the Antichrist, while twenty percent of those questioned believe that 9/11 was an inside operation.
According to Andersen, Americans have been enamored with magic, relativism, and fancy explanations for hundreds of years. Small and grandiose imaginations may either soothe or scare people. In the United States, there is a widespread belief in magical thinking, anything-goes relativism, and the fancy explanation of everything. The unhinged right in the United States, he says, has grown and become more prominent in the past quarter of a century than the unhinged left has. Both liberal and conservative readers may find Andersen’s ideas distasteful.
In my own life and the lives of others close to me, I’ve seen echoes of Anderson’s theory. As he argues with trademark disdain, the Puritans, an outlandish theological sect, were responsible for founding this nation, which is established on the irrational belief that only they had access to the truth. He calls them “the moderns” and “the dedicated magical thinkers.” It wasn’t until the 1960s that many of this latter group came to see the Bible as “100% nonfiction” (Andersen 131). Over the last decade, evangelicals have built up their own media empires and begun exercising their political might in local and national elections. According to Andersen, Conservative Christianity in the United States has a significantly more significant impact than it does in other prosperous countries.
Activist writer Arundhati Roy thinks that authors should speak out against injustice. Roy highly opposes Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist administration, calling it “micro-fascism.” As she says in interviews, authors shouldn’t be content with just selling a product; they should speak out for their convictions and defend them despite how controversial they may be. As a result of her opposition to the emergence of rightist nationalism in India, Roy has received considerable backlash. However, when she travels outside of India, Roy is hailed as an American hero and a patriot.
Arundhati Roy and Kurt Andersen might get into a heated debate if they were thrown together in the same room. On issues such as violence against women, nuclear weapons, and the free market, Arvind Roy’s opinions are invariably critical of the Indian government. Instead, Kurt believes that the odd, post-truth, “fake news” period we’re now experiencing is not anything wholly new but the final manifestation of the country’s character and direction (Andersen 131). Dreamers, magicians, genuine believers, and the hucksters and their victims were all involved in the creation of the United States of America. There’s no doubt in their minds that the world needs a remedy for all of its woes.
Response
Andersen’s creations From Kurt Andersen’s book, ‘Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire.’
This book examines how people like P.T. Barnum and Donald Trump have contributed to the spread of conspiracy theories, self-delusion, and magical thinking in the United States. It explains how the space of false information may lead to unrest. According to this book, the great American experiment in liberty has gone off track, which is a beautiful tool for understanding. To understand how ultra-individualism is linked to epic dreams, Kurt adds that any citizen is allowed to think or pretend that they are anyone. ‘Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire,’ by Kurt Andersen, was written by a well-known author and is an excellent resource for finding books on topics such as fake news and mistaken ideas, as well as advice on how to assist oneself or others.
References
Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland: How America went haywire: A 500-year history. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2018.
write