Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History in CFI West Book Club

Nov 02, 2019 Ross Blocher rated it it was amazing

Fantasyland is a sweeping, masterful explanation of America’s fascination with unreality. By examining our history and singular makeup (from an expansive 500-year vantage point), Kurt Andersen seeks to explain how we arrived in a post-truth, alternative facts, fake news culture with Donald Trump as president. Andersen can claim some prescience, as this book was well into its formation before Trump became a “serious” candidate and proved the premise. The phrase “Fantasyland”, a nod to Walt Disney Fantasyland is a sweeping, masterful explanation of America’s fascination with unreality. By examining our history and singular makeup (from an expansive 500-year vantage point), Kurt Andersen seeks to explain how we arrived in a post-truth, alternative facts, fake news culture with Donald Trump as president. Andersen can claim some prescience, as this book was well into its formation before Trump became a “serious” candidate and proved the premise. The phrase “Fantasyland”, a nod to Walt Disney’s creation but also a catch-all term for the alternate realities we construct, offers an explanatory filter that is simple and clear, yet explains much. This is one of those rare books that will change the way you see… pretty much everything.

Of course, the United States is not the only place where absurdities and flights of fancy can be found, but “we are Fantasyland’s global crucible and epicenter.” While our constitution and founding fathers were products of the Enlightenment, there coexists a strong, earlier core of religious fundamentalism, witch-burning zeal, and hunger for gold and the fountain of youth (Jamestown was a failed gold rush) that shaped our national character and preoccupations. While we laudably value free speech and personal conviction, we seem poorly equipped to counter those convictions when they pick pockets and break legs (to paraphrase Jefferson).

The scope here is truly staggering: Andersen intelligently weaves together people, places, events and movements that are the products and progenitors of Fantasyland, peppering each discussion with relevant details, quotes, fun asides, and his own sharp commentary. We visit topics as diverse as Martin Luther, the Puritans, witch trials, Jamestown, Anne Hutchinson, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Ann Lee and her Shakers, Joseph Smith and Mormonism, the Millerites and other end times prophets, spiritualism, Mary Baker Eddy (who was influenced by quack medicine before founding and discovering Christian Science), satanic panics, P.T. Barnum, Harry Houdini, snake oil, homeopathy, water cures, mesmerism, phrenology (a phrenologist told a young Ray Kroc - founder of McDonalds - that he would be in the restaurant business), speaking in tongues, Bugsy Siegel, Las Vegas, gambling, the lottery, Hugh Hefner, Playboy, breast implants, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Oz, Ayn Rand, John Birchers, conspiracy theorists (Behold A Pale Horse had been an influential book for me in 8th grade and it’s fun to hear him discuss it here), Billy Graham, Ronald Reagan, Thoreau, Wild Bill Hickok, the Scopes trial, utopian societies, sentimental architectural, Walt Disney, Disneyland, the red scare, L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology, Woodstock, hippies, new age, psychedelics, LSD, Carlos Castaneda, Esalen, Oral Roberts, Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, doomsday preppers, gun nuts, David Koresh, historical reenactments, Dungeons and Dragons, Comic-Con, Renaissance fairs, LARPers, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, virtual reality, the WWF and WWE, Creationism, X-Files, Alex Jones, global warming denial, GMO panic, anti-vaccination, Burning Man, and so much more. Sharing thoughts and observations on these topics would make for too long a review, so suffice it to say that it’s a delight to see these ideas cascade and unfold into one another. With each exhibit, Andersen demonstrates how we actively replace the actual with the imagined and the idealized, to the point where it is hard to tell the difference.

While this book is a call to reason and evidence, it is not unilaterally against fantasy, which can and should play a role in a healthy society. Andersen quotes J.R.R. Tolkien, who said in a lecture after publishing The Hobbit: “Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make.” Hear, hear. I, too, am a rationalist who values the power of fantasy to inspire, to expand our horizons, and to make us hope for a better tomorrow. However, it’s important that we never lose sight of reality in the process. As a society, we’ve tipped too far in Fantasyland’s direction. Hopefully voices like Andersen’s and other defenders of science and reason will prevail. There is reason to despair… but one can hope. ...more

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