YOU WONDER HOW WE LASTED THIS LONG.
There is a strain of social criticism that treats the good as a given, or perhaps as accident, and lays off all the ills to the "system." Perhaps the most notorious such example is Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, although it is not the only example. Consider Kurt Andersen's recent Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History. We'll start Book Review No. 8 by asking whether triple-expansion titles are necessary.
Substantively, Mr Andersen might be writing to reinforce conventional notions of rationalism, or perhaps he's troubled by a Donald Trump presidency. The fantasy, however, might have been a long time in coming, with the notion of a New World becoming an opportunity for grifters of all stripes, thus "The Conjuring of America." Then comes the fabulous Nineteenth Century, in which that vast frontier becomes "The United States of Amazing." There are plenty of hyped schemes then, with nary a mention of the railroad mania after the Civil War. Even the "Long Arc Bending Toward Reason," which is to say, from the conquest of territories in the tropics to the zenith of the American High, it was "freaky and fantastical." (Perhaps unsustainable, as well, but that's a different strain of social criticism.) Then came the 1960s, and, although Mr Andersen's sympathies for the aesthetic of the gentry liberal come through, e.g. "Walter Mitty" pickup trucks and sport-utes, his "Big Bang" (the expanding universe of Fantasyland, if you will, in the Sixties and Seventies) includes hippies, intellectuals, Christians, paranoid politics, and entertainment. Plenty of vectors for the contagion, and plenty of ways that "Fantasyland Scales" up to the present. Close to half the text deals with the recent history, or with "The Problem (they're multiple, actually) with Fantasyland." Again, there's plenty of blame to go around. From page 429, "Our tendencies to fear the new and to to reject reason have appeared on the left as well as on the right." He's also worried about people losing a notion of objective truth (and yet, that's what radical skepticism will get you.) More recently, he's followed up on the book by suggesting that an Oprah presidency would not work as a corrective to a Trump presidency. "Any assessment of her possible presidential bid should consider the irrational, pseudoscientific free for all she helped create." The details of the pseudoscientific free for all? In Fantasyland.
Yes, dear reader, take the concluding sections of Fantasyland to heart. And yet, do not be devoid of good cheer. Perhaps the fantasies are evolutionary dead ends. There is enough in the way of a continuing experiment in self-government, improvements in manufacturing technologies, medical science, and in having fun and in getting along with others, in those past five centuries, to think that "haywire" might be too strong an indictment of the American Condition.
(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)
Substantively, Mr Andersen might be writing to reinforce conventional notions of rationalism, or perhaps he's troubled by a Donald Trump presidency. The fantasy, however, might have been a long time in coming, with the notion of a New World becoming an opportunity for grifters of all stripes, thus "The Conjuring of America." Then comes the fabulous Nineteenth Century, in which that vast frontier becomes "The United States of Amazing." There are plenty of hyped schemes then, with nary a mention of the railroad mania after the Civil War. Even the "Long Arc Bending Toward Reason," which is to say, from the conquest of territories in the tropics to the zenith of the American High, it was "freaky and fantastical." (Perhaps unsustainable, as well, but that's a different strain of social criticism.) Then came the 1960s, and, although Mr Andersen's sympathies for the aesthetic of the gentry liberal come through, e.g. "Walter Mitty" pickup trucks and sport-utes, his "Big Bang" (the expanding universe of Fantasyland, if you will, in the Sixties and Seventies) includes hippies, intellectuals, Christians, paranoid politics, and entertainment. Plenty of vectors for the contagion, and plenty of ways that "Fantasyland Scales" up to the present. Close to half the text deals with the recent history, or with "The Problem (they're multiple, actually) with Fantasyland." Again, there's plenty of blame to go around. From page 429, "Our tendencies to fear the new and to to reject reason have appeared on the left as well as on the right." He's also worried about people losing a notion of objective truth (and yet, that's what radical skepticism will get you.) More recently, he's followed up on the book by suggesting that an Oprah presidency would not work as a corrective to a Trump presidency. "Any assessment of her possible presidential bid should consider the irrational, pseudoscientific free for all she helped create." The details of the pseudoscientific free for all? In Fantasyland.
Yes, dear reader, take the concluding sections of Fantasyland to heart. And yet, do not be devoid of good cheer. Perhaps the fantasies are evolutionary dead ends. There is enough in the way of a continuing experiment in self-government, improvements in manufacturing technologies, medical science, and in having fun and in getting along with others, in those past five centuries, to think that "haywire" might be too strong an indictment of the American Condition.
(Cross-posted to Cold Spring Shops.)