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How America Got Divorced from Reality: Christian Utopias, Anti-Elitism, Media Circus | Kurt Andersen - YouTube
Channel: Big Think
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Americans have always been magical thinkers
and passionate believers in the untrue.
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We were started by the Puritans in New England
who wanted to create and did create a Christian
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utopia and theocracy as they waited for the
eminent second coming of Christ and the end
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of days.
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And in the south by a bunch of people who
were convinced, absolutely convinced that
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this place they鈥檇 never been was full of
gold just to be plucked from the dirt in Virginia
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and they stayed there looking and hoping for
gold for 20 years before they finally faced
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the facts and the evidence and decided that
they weren鈥檛 going to get rich overnight
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there.
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So that was the beginning.
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And then we鈥檝e had centuries of buyer-beware
charlatanism to an extreme degree and medical
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quackery to an extreme degree and increasingly
exotic extravagant implausible religions over
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and over again from Mormonism to Christian
Science to Scientology in the last century.
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And we鈥檝e had this antiestablishment "I鈥檓
not going to trust the experts, I鈥檓 not
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going to trust the elite" from our character
from the beginning.
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Now all those things came together and were
super-charged in the 1960s when you were entitled
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to your own truth and your own reality.
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Then a generation later when the Internet
came along, giving each of those realities,
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no matter how false or magical or nutty they
are, their own kind of media infrastructure.
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We had entertainment, again for the last couple
hundred years, but especially in the last
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50 years permeating all the rest of life,
including Presidential politics from John
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F. Kennedy through Ronald Ragan to Bill Clinton.
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So the thing was set up for Donald Trump to
exploit all these various American threads
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and astonishingly become president, but then
you look at this history and it鈥檚 like no
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we should have seen this coming.
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The idea of America from the beginning was
that you could come here, reinvent yourself,
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be anybody you want, live any way you wanted,
believe any thing you wanted.
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For the first few hundred years, like everywhere
else in the world, celebrity and fame were
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a result of some kind of accomplishment or
achievement, sometimes not a great accomplishment
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or achievement, but you did something in the
world to earn renown.
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America really was the key place that invented
the modern celebrity culture, which was, beginning
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a century ago, more and more not necessarily
about having won a war or led a people or
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written a great book or painted a great painting,
but about being famous, fame for its own sake.
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We created that, we created Hollywood, we
created the whole culture industry and that
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then became what I call the fantasy industrial
complex where, certainly in the last few decades
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more than ever more than anybody thought possible
before, fame itself, however you鈥檝e got
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it, was a primary goal for people.
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And again, as so many of the things I talk
about in Fantasyland, not uniquely to America
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but more here than anywhere.
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And then you get reality television, which
was this unholy hybrid of the fictional and
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the real for the last now generation where
that blur between what鈥檚 real and what鈥檚
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not is pumped into our media stream willy-nilly.
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There are now more reality shows on television
than there were shows on television 20 years
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ago.
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And that鈥檚 another way for nobodies to become
famous overnight.
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YouTube, another way for nobodies to become
a famous overnight for doing almost nothing
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or nothing.
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So... again back to Donald Trump, he had the
advantage, unlike any normal politician, any
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person or normal businessperson for that matter
who might presume to run for president he
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was a celebrity, he was a show business celebrity.
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He was a member of the WWE Hall of Fame after
all and then also had this primetime show
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The Apprentice and The Celebrity Apprentice
of which he was the star playing himself for
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15 years.
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So he was pre-marketed in a way that in the
past would have been disqualifying for a president.
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Yes we elected a former actor Governor of
California and President of the United States,
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but not all at once and only 20 years essentially
in Ronald Ragan鈥檚 case after he gave up
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his Hollywood career.
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This is a different thing, this is I will
go directly from this playing myself on a
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reality television program to being president
and it worked proving the sheer power of any
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kind of celebrity.
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And again, yeah he was celebrated for having
made a lot of money, but he made a lot of
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money in all kinds of dubious ways rather
than normal forms of business achievement,
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but he鈥檚 famous.
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He鈥檚 a star.
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He was a star and that鈥檚 why he won the
nomination and that鈥檚 why he became president.
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Like all humans, Americans suffer from what鈥檚
called confirmation bias, which is I believe
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this; I will look for facts for pseudo-facts
or fictions that confirm my pre-existing beliefs.
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Americans, long before psychologists invented
that phrase confirmation bias, had that tenancy,
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again, at the very beginning.
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"I鈥檝e never been to the New World.
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Nobody I know has been to the New World.
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I never really read any first and accounts
of the New World, but I鈥檓 going to give
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up my life and go there because it鈥檚 going
to be awesome and perfect and I鈥檓 going
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to get rich overnight and/or create a Christian
Utopia."
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So we began that way and that has kept up
"I just want to believe what I want to believe
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and don鈥檛 let your lying eyes tell you anything
different."
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And again, that was always there in the American
DNA but kept in check by the needs of survival,
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by reality checks of various kinds.
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In this softer age where most people aren鈥檛
going to probably die tomorrow as a result
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of believing fantasies and untruths we became
freer to believe them.
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So believing whatever nutty thing you want
to believe or pretending you are whatever
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you are or having even kooky conspiracy theories
or speaking in tongues, whatever it is fine
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if it鈥檚 private.
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The problem is when that, as it has in the
last couple of decades especially, leeched
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into the public sphere and the policies sphere
and like "there鈥檚 no global warming.
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We don鈥檛 have to worry about the seas rising."
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Or "nah scientists say that vaccines are safe
but I think they cause autism so I鈥檓 not
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going to vaccinate my children" and so on
and so on that鈥檚 when the rubber hits the
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road, will hit the road, and people will start
saying wait a minute.
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Not until then, not until there鈥檚 a consequence
and not until there is a price to pay and
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not until the Donald Trump-ian fantasies,
for instance, the more short-term ones of
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oh I鈥檓 going to make every dream come true
that you鈥檝e ever had for your country, actually
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one of his promises during the campaign.
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Or I鈥檓 going to create a healthcare system
that is better and cheaper and will cover
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everyone.
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Well, that鈥檚 probably not going to happen
and so once these fantasies are taken into
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the public sphere and the political sphere
and really in the short-term turn out to be
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fantasies and falsehoods that will persuade
some people, but not everybody.
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According to a recent survey 98 percent of
the voters who voted for Donald Trump in the
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primaries, which is to say his real base,
98 percent of them in late 2017 still absolutely
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supported him.
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So I don鈥檛 think that鈥檚 going to fall
a lot.
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Those are true believers.
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Back in the 1800s - back in before the 20th
century, especially in the 1800s, American
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journalism was a very, very factionalized
partisan thing.
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Political parties had their own newspapers
and their own magazines and everyone gave
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its version of political spin and interpretation.
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20th century, for a variety of reasons not
just because we got smarter or more rational,
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maybe somewhat that, there began being more
of a shared set of facts in our media.
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People disagree violently left, right, center,
whatever, but the facts were agreed upon.
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What has been enabled in the last 30 years,
first through deregulated talk radio where
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you didn't have to be fair and balanced anymore
then national cable television, FOX News comes
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to mind, and then, of course, the Internet
as well where these more and more not just
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politically different points of view but these
alternate factual realities could be portrayed
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and depicted.
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We鈥檝e been in that state now for 20 years
or more so, again, we were softened up as
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a people to believe what we want to believe
but then we have this new infrastructure that
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I think is new that I think is a new condition.
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So there鈥檚 a history of oh I believe this
or I believe this or slavery is good, no slavery
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is bad, those are disagreements.
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But in 1860 Southerners didn鈥檛 say "oh no
there are no slaves.
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No there鈥檚 no slavery."
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That鈥檚 the condition we have now.
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That is the Kellyanne Conway/Donald Trump
situation and Republican Party situation before
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Donald Trump ever came along where we say
no there鈥檚 no climate change or oh this
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factual truth is not true.
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That鈥檚 the new thing and this new media
infrastructure is a new condition.
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Now, it may not be the end of things as a
result, but we don鈥檛 know yet.
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We鈥檙e only 20 years into it and maybe we鈥檒l
learn new protocols of what to believe and
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what not, we鈥檒l grow up and be able to accommodate
ourselves to this new media situation, but
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I鈥檓 worried that we won鈥檛 and I鈥檓 worried
that a significant fraction of us, for now
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mostly on the right but there鈥檚 no reason
it should be limited to the right, will be
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in their bubble and their silo and with their
own reality and not be able to be retrieved
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into the reality-based world.
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