A MAIN ARGUMENT of this book concerns how so many parts of American life have morphed into forms of entertainment. From 1980 to the end of the century, that tendency reached a tipping point in politics and the political discourse. First a Hollywood celebrity became a beloved president by epitomizing and encouraging the blur between fiction and reality. Then talk radio and TV news turned into forms of politicized show business. And finally the Internet came along, making false beliefs both more real-seeming and more contagious, creating a kind of fantasy cascade in which millions of bedoozled
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