For many millions of frustrated and highly concerned about the growth of irrationality in post-1980 America, there is a book for you.  It is bestselling author Kurt Andersen’s “Fantasyland, How America Went Haywire.”  Andersen provides a 500 year history of craziness in America; significantly, nearly half the book is about post-1980 “delusions and magical thinking.”

Andersen doesn’t mind that one lives in a bunker with 10 years food; or manage a fantasy NFL team; or are a Civil War general on maneuvers; that you’re prepared for Jesus’ imminent return; or speak in tongue4s; believe people who said they died and went to heaven; dress like a feudal baron or wizard; believe that believing you’ll get rich will make you rich; believe burning sage cleared your house of evil spirits; believe alien spirits taught us how to build computer chips

“So what if there are lots of Americans with various screws loose?  So what if they dream and stew in their own mad, mad, mad, mad dreamworld?  Ignore them let them alone, let them be.  Right?  Aye, there’s the rub.  There are real consequences in the real world.”

“Delusional ideas and magical thinking flood from the private sphere into the public’ become so pervasive and deeply rooted, so ‘normal’, that they affect everyone.  Some American fantasies have become weaponized, literally… our pockets ARE being picked and our legs ARE being broken.”

“”As  the more fantastical ideas of alternative medicine are mainstreamed, millions of people are cheated, which doesn’t break your or my leg; but when their diseases deposit them in the actual-doctor-and-hospital healthcare system late in the treatment game , paid for by my insurance and the government, that does pick our pocket.  The belief that childhood vaccines cause autism was a fantasy that directly produced disease and death among people who happened to be in the proximity of unvaccinated and infected children.  As disbelief in science grows, our whole society may become less prosperous and more vulnerable.   as religious belief drives government to make legal contraception and abortions more difficult to get, the rest of us will have our pockets picked in all kinds of ways for years to come.”

This is the beginning of the price to be paid for “doing our own thing, i.e., ” believing in “alternative facts.”  How long does America remain competitive if half of us don’t accept evolution, the basis for modern science and medicine?  How long do we remain competitive if we don’t accept global warming, like the rest of the advanced world?  The adults reading this will most likely be dead when the predicted, and now occurring, consequences reach catastrophic levels.  But, your children and grandchildren will, for a while, not die.  They will ask why you did nothing while you had the chance.

How long will America remain competitive denying science and reason in general?  Parents are free to send children to almost any school.  But, what if those children are deliberately taught falsehoods?  How do they communicate with kids from other countries who were taught accepted truths?

How long does America remain competitive when one major party is increasingly antagonistic to the very idea of good government?  When this party opposes taxes in general, but most especially on the top 1% – the supposed “job creators?”  How long do we maintain a fiction our ballooning post-1980 national debt has no relationship to the fact that the top 1% have been given numerous loopholes and tax dodges, and have foreign tax havens?  And because of this debt, we don’t invest in America?

How long do we survive as a rational middle class society if the American population is continually bombarded with falsehoods by a major TV network, by talk radio hosts making millions to incite people with lies, by misinformation, not only by the Russians, but by many Americans on the internet?

How long do we survive, supposedly divided and hating the other half?  Who gains by the lower 90% being confused and misinformed?  Who gains when civility and decency, basic respect for other human beings, slowly disappears?

Mr. Andersen;s fine book stands by itself as a classic.  Unfortunately, it is not the first to discuss some aspect of America’s self-destructive post-1980 lapse into irrationality.  Our parents and grandparents left us a great functioning democracy.  We are allowing this great world treasure to fall apart around us.  Shame on us.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan:  You are entitled to your opinion.  But you are not entitled to your own facts.:

Kellyanne Conway:  “You’re saying it’s a falsehood.  And they;re giving… our press secretary gave alternative facts.:”

 

Hannah Arendt:  A mixture of gullibility and cynicism have been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality…In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached a point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing….Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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One wonders what Shakespeare would create of 1980-20l8 America! Probably his greatest tragedy. Think of the material he has to work with! The world’s greatest “democracy” is slowly transformed into a theocratic plutocracy, and…many people support it. The lower 99% conditioned to see their greedy Scrooge-like ( borrowing from Dickens) oppressors are really the “job creators!” The ruling top 1% has reduced its taxes by 50% from the middle class golden age of 1947-l973 – but – this is “good.” It means more wealth can “trickle down!” Think what Shakespeare could do with millions of poor and middle class people voting against themselves! The U.S top 1% has outdone Goebbels! Defeat is victory! OK, he borrowed from “l984” too.

How would Shakespeare treat 1980-2018 Republicans who run for public office with the intent of sabotaging government – and – rewarding their top 1% donor patrons? Yes, some Democrats are guilty too. What villains would Shakespeare have portraying successive cabinet secretaries ruining the environment and aiding polluters in the name of “public service?” How would Shakespeare portray crooked politicians (the real D.C.’swamp) taking billionaire’s money, and then writing laws favoring those same people?

Think what Shakespeare could do with Nixon-Reagan-Bush II-Trump! Would this be a separate comedy? Or several acts of the entire tragedy? Think what Shakespeare could do with Watergate! Or Iran-Contra; or with “weapons of mass destruction” that didn’t exist; or war crimes like Abu Ghraib or massive lying; or taxpayers paying for family business trips’ or hypocrites claiming to stand for “family values” doing the same things they’re legislating against!

Think what Shakespeare could do with a Supreme Court ruling (Citizens United) that facilitates billionaires corrupting government in the name of “freedom of speech!” And a Court that says paper people (corporations) are the same as real human people for legal rights (top 1% wins again). How would Shakespeare portray the arrogant, greedy billionaires using donor-anonymous “charities” to subvert democracy tax-free?

How would Shakespeare portray American voters who’ve supported and voted for politicians who’ve blatantly lied to them, demagogue people’s fears;used divide and conquer diversionary tactics covering the real 1980-2018 villains’ the top 1%

How would Shakespeare portray the children – the dead at Sandy Hook, the dead at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas- for whom the adults did nothing; actually worse than nothing by refusing to listen to them? And the living children and young adults, the outraged thousands of high school and college students protesting against being potential victims? What could he do with this ultimate irony of gutless adults being forced to see massive corruption, by their own children? How would he show who really is the real “adult in the room?”

Would this be Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy? The innocent, idealistic, truthful children, representing the true American ideals – are deliberately sabotaged by the “adults.” You can see it now, the stage slowly empties, then grows dark, while the music softly ends. The movie version ends with these words from Teddy Roosevelt’s Mount Rushmore plaque: We here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men. Dickens had his Scrooge redeeming himself at the end. 2018 (or 2008 Scrooges) are not that generous, or even caring about what they’ve done.