Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Edward Haysom. Xx's avatar

In his book Fantasyland, Kurt Anderson explains Trump this way: "America was created by true believers and passionate dreamers, by hucksters and their suckers-which over the course of four centuries has made us susceptible to fantasy, as epitomized by everything from Salem hunting witches to Joseph Smith creating Mormonism, from P. T. Barnum to Henry David Thoreau to speaking in tongues, from Hollywood to Scientology to conspiracy theories, from Walt Disney to Billy Graham to Ronald Reagan to Oprah Winfrey to Donald Trump. In other words: mix epic individualism with extreme religion; mix show business with everything else; let all that steep and simmer for a few centuries; run it through the anything-goes 1960s and the Internet age; the result is the America we inhabit today, where reality and fantasy are weirdly and dangerously blurred and commingled." As many Americans see themselves as the chosen people they feel they need a leader who embodies their "specialness" - a fearless individualist who will promote the US over every other country. Mix in the ingredients that Anderson describes and you have Trump. It will be interesting to see later this year if the centre holds. We could be in for a wild ride.

Expand full comment
Jim Kelly's avatar

Good, well-reasoned piece, although characterizing Hillary Clinton's policy planks in 2016 as simply a slogan ("I'm with her") is perhaps a tad reductive. And even though she lost the election, she won the popular vote, so her campaign (and presumably her policies) actually appealed to more voters than Trump's. But thanks to the strange and antiquated US electoral system, Trump won.

Expand full comment
9 more comments...

No posts