Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire

I know some appreciate and/or are curious about what I've read recently (as I continue my efforts to read one book a month). Here are my thoughts on a book I read in April.

Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (A 500-Year History) by Kurt Andersen [Non-Fiction, Cultural Studies, History, Sociology]

When a person lifts weights, they are utilizing resistance in order to gain strength. This, among other reasons, is one reason I read Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire (A 500-Year History). I believe it's important to challenge your own views and see if they hold up to scrutiny. The resistance will, hopefully, make you stronger, even if it breaks down some walls along the way. 

Recently, I posted a graphic for our church's Easter services with the text, "If Jesus literally rose from the dead, it's the most important thing that has ever happened. Easter is a special chance to celebrate this momentous event." We promoted the post to regions surrounding our locations and many people outside of our doors had a chance to see it. The comment section, more or less, exploded with people angry we were daring to ask "if." Honestly, I was dumbfounded, but also not completely surprised, people would be so unwilling to consider there are people with views outside of their own. So much so that even attempting to borrow the phraseology Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 15 caused such a great deal of comment-section consternation. I thought of this often as I read this book.

Author Kurt Andersen spends nearly 500 pages tracing how America has gotten to its present state — a land of "alternative facts" and a place where "factual truth is just one opinion." His thesis: Delusion is baked into our country's DNA and not simply momentary glitches in the American matrix. 

There is much to glean from this book, but the largest issue I had was Andersen's repeated assertion that Christianity is a prime culprit for our land of make-believe (while mostly ignoring any benefits). Andersen, an agnostic ("I'm agnostic about God, always ready but never expecting to be persuaded," he writes) pins much of the blame for our descent into delusion on religious belief. To be fair, he does delineate between the various flavors of Christianity and saves much of his criticism for the various strands of Pentecostalism (and again, to be fair, I'm sympathetic to some of his views in this regard). However, he also points to economic fantasies as the engine of what drives America. From the dreams of gold of the earliest settlers, to our shameful history of slavery, to today's lotteries targeting the fantasies of the lower-class, Andersen says dreams of riches — no matter how logical — are as much to blame for our loose grips on fact as anything. 

One other criticism I will share, while he takes on delusions of the right and left (the rise of Donald Trump, the allure of Oprah, and  the "your/my truth" paradigm), he misses the chance to really dive into the delusions of some sacred cows I see in our culture. He dissects some — but fails to mention many others (I won't list them here, but I believe they are important). There is also, as a New York Times review mentions, a repetitiveness to the book, with not much in the way of solution — not that every book *has* to offer solutions to problems. However, there is also a fair amount of (what I would call) "red-string-on-a-cork-board-theorizing" happening in the book. These thoughts don't exactly rise to the conspiracy theories he decries (and I agree with him on that regard), but there *is* a lot of conjecture on Andersen's part.

"You’re entitled to your own opinions and your own fantasies, but not your own facts — especially if your fantastical facts hurt people," he writes, paraphrasing (and expanding upon) a comment by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The fantasyland of our culture can yield some fairly harmless results, but also tragic real-world consequences.

There is, honestly, way too much in this book to discuss with any amount of nuance here (and nuance is *dead* on the realm of social media, anyway). I am a follower of Jesus, so, with that in mind, I would only recommend this book if you're ready to be challenged (which I think all Christians should be ready for at some point). If you can get around that hurdle, there is also much thought to be gleaned from this book. Two thousand years ago, Pilate asked "what is truth?" And, it seems, we're asking it as much now as ever.