Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire 

When someone says something absurd, just say, "I don't believe that." It's powerful.

I read this book close to a year ago... he's dead on. I was thirteen and fourteen years old when Reagan ran for president and his schtick that he banged on incessantly was: "We can cut taxes, increase defense spending, and balance the budget." Even as a pot-addled adolescent I knew this to be total horseshit: "Grown adults actually believe this shit?!"

I am reading this book. Once I thought people could believe anything. Now I know it. Excellent explaination of American absurdity. Well written and not in the least boring. Just so densely packed with information I can only absorb a chapter at a time.

Watching reality television and believing it is real. Astounding

FANTASYLAND WE CALL IT THE LARGEST LUNATIC ASYLUM .

“We are acting ungodly” because being religious makes you profoundly LESS tolerant of of peoples beliefs. Ask an atheist.

I just finished reading this book and I highly recommend it.

The Soviet Union defeated fascism. 70% of Hitler's armies fought in the east. Brian Fenwick

As a fringe dweller I find this very interesting. I refer to my being a fringe dweller? I am a life long musician, anti war, anti corporate, tree hugger, pot smoker, mushroom taker, agnostic! I avoided hum drum work, I avoided being tied down yet I managed to make a decent living and passable retirement by being???? My sister descibes me as a free spirit but that, coming from her, isn't a compliment. You could say i tried to control the reality I wanted from life not the reality of conventional wisdom.

Love Kurt Anderson and this book. Can't believe nobody mentioned that the first audience question came from John McWhorter!

Charles Dickens in his book 'Martin Chuzzlewit' is another very interesting outsiders view of the 'peculiarity' of the American grifter and grifted inclination. It's a very interesting, and uncomfortably accurate insight that being an insider is hard to see. When the book reached America it was not well liked by many. A too truthful mirror? Very likely.

I would add to this list the fact that critical thought is not being taught in schools. We need to teach kids to be skeptical and highly critical if the information presented to them.

Excellent conversation ! 👍👍👍🇺🇸

Thank you, excellent and thoughtful discussion. I guess the wheel of life will keep turning. Most of the world looks on in some sort of amazement........but now has stopped being interested and are going back to their own futures. What an enormous contrast to the emerging Asian nations - and thank goodness for One Belt/One Road.

Halway through this interview, it seems like discussion for discussion sake. Great minds talk alike... Cheers.

I appreciate this man's intellectualism, his vocabulary, his research, his point. It's good to hear someone address this topic in full. I have to say, though, that I can't finish the vid. His inability to form a sentence, commit to it, and FINISH it has rendered me annoyed. As hell. Not less so because I want to hear it. But his speech pattern has got to go.

@55:30 Answer: Mental Compartmentalization It comes along w/ being told ad nauseam all one's life that slave-traders pretty much invented freedom.

I think Kurt Anderson has some insightful things to say, but I think his assessment needs some tweaking. As we cast our gaze back to the 1960s, I think history is going to label the counter culture movement not as liberal, but as libertarian. Just think about the hallmarks of the classic 1960s hippie. A deep seeded resentment of "the man," strong resistance to foreign wars (Vietnam at the time) and the acceptance of alternative lifestyles such as recreational drug use. Every one of these pillars is lockstep with libertarian ideology. As the boomers have gotten older, we can clearly see these libertarian mindset embedded in their cultural DNA. There is little to no class solidarity among them. There is an intense emphasis on individual "freedom" over collective progress/sacrifice. Boomers are the first generation in American history to their consumption levels continue to increase as they progress in to their elderly years. Just look at the Presidents of the 1960s, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson. A left leading republican and 2 democrats responsible to the creation of our welfare state; you have to ask...who were the boomers rebelling against? When understood as a libertarian movement, the boomers current political leanings make a lot more sense. Trumps bread and butter were silent majority / boomer whites. We need to stop thinking of the boomers as sellouts; they were never on the side of American liberalism to begin with.

America went from the land of invention.innovation and personnel wealth building economy to a service economy.Today we all live in servitude. A polite word for slavery.

I'm a generation X'er and the sixties was the sigil often waved as the birth of new-age thinking inspiring the eighties children through the nineties. Whereby freedom of thought and sexuality was key to a person's emotional maturity. I totally agree with Claudermiller's statement that there was not an "I don't care attitude" amongst the left because they were clearly the ones protesting for the Vietnam war to end. They gave up lives to face the evils of McCarthyite policy which was a typical right-wing/gain votes with lies idiocracy. Their quoted plan to dumb down the public. But I think what everyone is missing is the non-coincidental relation between the rise of the religious right and the ensuing challenge of global warming. When I was a junior-6 or 7 yrs old I made a lunchtime buddy at school. She was ethnically Indian(sub-continent) with Hindu culture. I liked that. It was exotic. Anywho...I had observed the gradual loss of snow from winter and in my mind at least it definitely had something to do with the sudden rise in car ownership and industry. Especially having recently heard the UN report by Prof. Hansen. So I'm sitting there eating and I have asked my (former) friend-"What do you think of this climate change?" She simply said " We can't do anything. Only God can change the weather." I replied simply with the word "God?!". To which she responded with a scowl and said: "We aren't talking about this anymore." I won't go into the repercussions of me questioning "Gods" authority on this issue because it is simply evil and designed by her Christian evangelical out of school friend. I basically got witnessed. Pretty much ruined my life. However, that is not my point. In the seventies, Texaco circulated a letter amongst oil companies stating the danger there was with a policy of continuing to burn fossil fuels. The majority if not all of the employees at home and abroad were god-fearing Christians. Ever since then the parents have been telling their kids that only God controls the weather all the while knowing that it's their actions which were causing the problem. All those associated with big oil have been covering up the problem with suggestion and emotional bribery. It is one and the same thing. It is simply the biggest conspiracy of all time(I am not a conspiracy nut but on this issue, I have way too much-connected information to ignore it) and all the supposedly spiritually pure humans have been going along with it based on the idea that they will be saved having each been told so but left short of the numbers involved. ergo millions of others are going to be fighting for food and water but a child doesn't need to hear that and thus ignorance abounds and the child never hears the truth. They just have to carry the belief in God to believe they are safe and not a threat to the coverup. It's not insane. It's an evil incarnate.

Some people get to study their whole lives, others have to work

Teaching media literacy in elementary school through college would be good.

Jeffery , it is so nice that you guys up I Aspen are so incredibly tolerant and accepting of people of all walks of life .... yes SO accepting and tolerant. Oh and polite and cordial as well and of course with no condescending or contemptuous slanted demeanor that many aspire to but few obtain. Oh what an Exceptional talk only attainable by someone of your statue, I salute you and your guest...

If a large group of us had an inkeling of what we are missing and how much is a psychological construct with little attachment to what is real, we could establish new paradigms of how we function and deal with the new!

Excellent read!!!❤️❤️❤️

One point of disagreement I have is the claim that the internet is largely responsible for the misinformation that we see. Other industrialized nations also have the internet, and they are not experiencing ignorance and belief in outlandish ideas to nearly the same degree as Americans are. Kurt Andersen only quickly mentioned that the internet is international but then never followed up on that. Europe, Canada, and Australia all have the internet and social media and yet they are not experiencing American stupidity. Also, I don't agree that social media or the internet necessarily leads to tribalism. If people don't have these things then their circle of relations is greatly reduced. They are only influenced by people close to them and don't have easy access to opinions from people in different parts of the world.

How can you believe anything when the basis of that information rests on acquiring capital not health like Monsanto GMO.

If the book is anything like this presentation, I'm impressed by its vacuity. I'm now regularly amazed by how dull the thinking is today among our elites. "The experts who know things" works as both shorthand for the bias broadly shared among them and a measure of the self-delusion. Kurt Anderson gives his educated Liberal audience exactly what they already believe.

I've been to Aspen, and it sure isn't where I would go to find empirical truth, but good talk anyway.

Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe ill have a scotch on the rocks

Andersen's thesis makes sense. However, how to correct things remains a mystery. And the nation that has gone haywire has the ability to destroy us all. That is also part of American exceptionalism.

10:00 Great point. Need the dynamic polarity.

OK, it sounds very interesting, and like it hits the American eccentricity nail on the head. But, I kind of feel the way so many people are coming out with clever books that spin an amusing experience are like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That is, what do I need to know this for? I seems true from what I have read at Amazon and in the reviews, but does it talk about what this means and how understanding this might help us change it, or figure out what to do about it?

Read the American Chapter in Charles Dickens' "Martin Chuzzlewit" if you would like to discover an impressions of a visitor to America from the middle of the 19th century which chimes with Kurt Andersen's analysis to a remarkable degree.

Stay grounded and have an open mind. The truth is. There is no truth

"...The wealthy, therefore, would be outvoted in a democratic system and government would be overrun by the majority of working people. To prevent the working class from attaining political power and expropriating the property and wealth of the rich (“an agrarian law”), we have to “wisely” ensure that government “protect the minority” of the rich against the majority of the poor.” ~ James Madison, 1787 while debating the constitution.

"America is the country of the grifted and the grifter." Bingo.

America: "A mad bull, lost its way."

I wonder if reading John Rawls might better inform him and lead to a more successful book?

Already on page 12 of the book...the premise is very legit.

The tendency of Americans to believe whatever the hell they want and the facts be damned is the fatal flaw of America. This country is going to crack up and sooner rather than later but probably not until the 2030s.

Hard to have a stage-discussion on understanding reality better with a “believer”, even a smart, open-minded one....

I believe that our gullible culture has alot to do with marketing.

This will go over big at the Aspen Institute. No elites there, just sensible common folk.

It does seem to me that suspicion of GMOs in food is justified given the that their presence is not legally required to be disclosed (in the US where I and many others reside) and as far as I can tell, the US government doesn't regulate them at all (due to very successful industry lobbying). This means that the public is expected to take the word of distributors that "nothing is wrong with GMOs" pretty much on faith (just as there is "nothing wrong" with chemical additives to food; making organic foods the sole province of "new age space cadets" according to old stereotypes). Then we have the question of whether it is in the public interest for a handful of corporations to patent a large fraction of the food supply; and minimal information about any supposed benefits to the consumer (who is not the direct customer). In any case, the lack of transparency assuredly exacerbates public suspicion, regardless of whether one believes that lizard people from another star system secretly rule the world. PS: There is a distinction to be made between religious belief and sectarianism. One can believe that one is divinely commanded to love one's neighbor as oneself and still believe that eradication of supposedly false beliefs and practices (by any means necessary) is a moral duty. Indeed, it is logically completely consistent for religious and nonreligious people alike to believe the latter.

Truth is an opinion based on the perceived conditions combined with prejudice to form a conscientious hypothesis of cause and effect which the perceiver relies on as a constant of the moment. The question why is the path to the truth. Also, in a dynamic environment truth is not constant. It's this kind of thinking that got us to the MOON and harnessed the power of the atom. I suspect that in America today most people won't understand these words.

i know mainly through the internet. to be honest i have noticed. madness is the status quo it would seem. i've not been in the states for years. but in the past 3-4 years, madness has taken hold, true madness. i can tell. i can tell.

I immigrated from England where drug commercials are banned... Imagine an evening without drug commercials.....

There is an old saying which I believe is an Americanism "" If you want to keep your friends never discuss religion or politics " perhaps social media allows too much sharing, lol

I find it interesting that the audience seems to need to have little laughs throughout. Even if things are quite serious.

Andersen and I are about the same age and we remember the 60s differently. You can create your own truth and Esalen institute and the like were not the mainstream of the culture. They were on the fringe. Those movements had a bigger impact on the privileged, and on the coasts, and among researchers looking for evidence of their influence, but the vast majority of the country had no idea any of that was happening. It had no impact on ELECTIONS and the power structure of the country in the way that "create your own reality" people have now.

My recall of this phenomenon is sitting at home with my mom listening to right wing talk radio,and asking my mom “how can this guy just lie “ without someone calling him. On it!

Good insight.

I remember a common retort of fellow liberals "Well, that's your reality." In response to any negative observation.

How naive we were just four years ago. What they discuss had only just emerged to the surface of our culture. We didn't know what was coming.

At 55:20 The answer is, there is a huge difference between religion as a belief system, and religion as a team to belong to.

So it sounds like this discussion is exploring the various way the technic of critical thinking has broken down over the last 50 years or so.... it might be in the book but the methodology of mass education would seem to be a good place to explore these subjects...

One of our problems is that religions have gone crazy, so you need to distiguish between relatively sound religious ideas and crazily barbaric medieval ones becaue trying to stop the extremism might be possible but trying to get rid of religion is just unreal. and we are not at a point in time when we can dream of unreal goals. New religious extremism seems to have gone global, the Orthodox Russians apparently being an ever bigger influence in the new puritanical turn in Russia,, so puritanical that homosexuals get done to death. The protestants groups are becoming out and out crazy and Catholics too, just read "REgain" the catholic sect, "the Legion of Christ's" "awareness site", to see how crazy Rome has become. Rome supports The Legion of Christ., It does not do for their extreme brain washing tendencies. The young people who get caught up with this group get brainwashed, that does not only mean that the information they receive is controlled, it also means, they get asked to deny themselves,to say that before they entered the group they did things for mean motives they had not had, who knows what is in the depth of their hearts or at rock bottom? so as to make them despise their upbringing and take up the rule of the group. Denying oneself is part of brainwashing techniques as is pain, and denying ones old self causes psychic pain as does the extremely critical atmosphere recruits are subjected to, under the understanding that any niceness about their character or what they do, will make them fall into the sin of pride, as inflicting pain in order to make people want to find relief from pain by falling in with their torturers ideas is also part of brainwashing, I wonder if such extreme methods of reducing pride are really done in order to inflict pain and a wish for relief from pain in their recruits. The trouble with this site is that it is very Catholic and so its most shocking content can change. In Catholicism the puritanical part of Catholicism that in my childhood was that of un-eduucated South American countries, is taking over the faith. There is a North American bishop, I think the Boston one, who encourages older people to talk of Catholicism in the sixties, so I am not the only one who feels this religions is taking a bad now. The religions have been thinking how to catch more public to judge from the rise of extreme members of each religion, which I suppose is due to an increase in the ability of these to pull people into extreme stances, They have all become more puritan and they ask their followers to vote for the right, so they have become a great source as voters as well as because they are becoming cruely puritanical. The only way to understand them all getting more puritanical and better at selling themselves and selling more "outre" iway out, ideas the world over, is to think they copy each others ideas on how to do so and so we need to spy on their propaganda efforts get so much better at refuting them. One thing they d and accept the crazier idea of religion though the Suffis who use extatict states are the most reasonable part of Islam.

Very interesting

I live in Germany and there, we have two kinds of Christians: Catholics and Protestants. And the Protestants call themselves Protestants. Perhaps it's a language problem. The official adjectives are "katholisch" and "evangelisch" but the members are called "Katholiken" and "Protestanten". To give you an example, the former are the ones who say that the wine transforms into Jesus's blood while the latter say that the wine is Jesus's blood the whole time.

That's John McWhorter asking the question

Are we still the author of our own lives? Present day events may beg to differ that we are not.

They make the perfect yin and yang together

Interesting stuff...but Morris Berman has been talking/writing about this stuff for decades.

Was that John McWhorter asking the first question? Very similar voice.

Surely this was all covered in "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" in the 1850's - modern media have just added more fertiliser (polite word) into the situation.

I highly disagree with his point that ring wingers are more likely to be anti-truth and not willing to listen to facts than left-wingers. While I realize this is not empirical data, on my college campus I have a far easier time arguing with and having disagreements with people who generally lean right than those who lean left. From the experience I have had, those who are to the left typically get emotional and irrational far quicker than even the most radical people I have met on the right.

Thomas Paine Age of Reason.

48:48 "I love my children. They made my life possible." Your children made your life possible? What do you mean by that? Did you misspeak?

Also New Age is really just Matthew jumping off the pages of the bible. Sure there was plenty of New Thought going on and Hermetic currents well before even the Victorian era but they didn't seem to have quite the megachurch credulity that goes with new age, The Secret, etc. etc.

He says, in so many words, that the science on GMOs is as conclusive as the science on climate change. I've not been getting that impression from reviews in scientific journals?

It's interesting how the Christian interviewer does not see himself as part of the problem rather than the solution.

Facts matter. The truth matters more!

Sounds like an interesting book, however, I think much of this boils down to Americans consistent and growing wish for "simple solutions" to complex issues. Examples of this include: white wealthy male privilege, obsession with sports, religion, short term money making schemes, and an eagerness to jump to using war as a "quick solution" to many problems. This also explains the "anti-intellectual" thinking that allows con men like Trump to rise to power.

I would be more convinced by the thesis if it helped me understand how Americans can tolerate incarceration rates, guns, wealth inequality, unending wars, torture... Yes, many Americans believe crazy things but they also seem able to ignore the suffering they cause each other.

Earl Nightingale was the minister of Trump's, as a child. That explains a lot of how he can be so positive in the withering storm of negative press.

Read the book Fantasyland.

You need to go back to a New Version of the System you had before 1980

What is the basic meaning of democracy? Government by the people Full Definition of democracy: Government by the people especially : rule of the majority. b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

A Genius and a Dingus appear on stage. Drum roll please!!!

I’m writing this partway through the book as well as the video so who knows? I’m 73 and I very much lived through all of this and also the 50’s. What I got out of the 60’s was 2 pronged. First was the political rebellion and the anti-war movement mixed in with the very important feminist movement. No fantasy in these things. Rational actually. Then there was the new attitude towards sexual freedom. Extremely important and still going on. My first remembered TV experience was watching the McCarthy hearings. Then there was the music, dominated on the East Coast by the folk influenced Bob Dylan, Joanie Mitchell etc. Quite rational and politely oriented. Yes we all took acid and went a bit nuts but I don’t remember indulging myself in the anything goes stuff. Ibtwas as I say quite political and that was rational and mostly not at all religious. Then we also were into exploring new ideas and other spiritual paths as in meditation. Science has now studied meditators and finds that there are great benefits. i could go on and on. BTW as a New Yorker I can assure you that Donald Trump was always about the most hated human being in that city. Finally, it seems to me that the people who support him were not and still are not the counter-cultural people I have always engaged with been but rather the less intellectually inclined ,who are not intellectually curious and his appeal is to their fears and their irrational racism and stupid religious beliefs. An intelligent person cannot even bear to listen to such idiots with their shallow thing as Limbaugh and Conway

Americans have a great sense of humour. They can laugh at everything.

Yeah-- many people are so insecure with their own shortcomings & knowledge-gaps that respect for and trust in anyone more capable or "smarter" entitles to be incredulous.

How about metaphysic, parapsychology? Quantum physics?

Damn he's more right today than he was 4 years ago.

This guy is out there and full of it

Also "Bunk" by Kevin Young

at 8:36 "new religions" . . . "Joseph Smith" . . . how about L. Ron Hubbard?

he said "... tend to believe things that are... unproven" he did not even want to say "things that are untrue"

America: One big hustle.

I didn't know any more people in the 60s who believed in whatever they felt to be true than I did in the 50s. Maybe fewer. If someone had an unusual experience in the 60s unless they were religious they tended to attribute it to whatever drug they were on at the time of the experience. The angriest people I know at this time in our history are those who listen to right wing talk radio, especially if they do so regularly. There are also some very resentful religious factions. The two behaviors usually go together. The religious who do not listen to talk radio are often very kind people.

Jeffrey practices a form of self immolation only a Buddhist monk could appreciate

Fantasyland is great!

The Newhart runs strong in this one.

Joseph Smith was a Creative Writer! Hmm?

Interesting

Love the statement all we can do is what we can do. It is what it is

Its easy to say i believe Ots harder to comment to those beliefs

It's just a ride.......(BH)

I don't know which of these two says, "uh", more.