Dear Diary Moment 2/19/2021:
“We believe the government and its co-conspirators are hiding all sorts of monstrous truths from us— concerning assassinations, extraterrestrials, the genesis of AIDS, the 9/ 11 attacks, the dangers of vaccines, and so much more. We stockpile guns because we fantasize about our pioneer past, or in anticipation of imaginary shootouts with thugs and terrorists. We acquire military costumes and props in order to pretend we’re soldiers— or elves or zombies— fighting battles in which nobody dies, and enter fabulously realistic virtual worlds to do the same. And that was all before we became familiar with the terms post-factual and post-truth, before we elected a president with an astoundingly open mind about conspiracy theories, what’s true and what’s false, the nature of reality. We have passed through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole. America has mutated into Fantasyland.” -Andersen, Kurt. Fantasyland (pp. 5-6). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Just started on Kurt Anderson’s Fantasyland: How America went Haywire: a 500 Year History. And it’s been a bit of revelation meeting his work:
For one, he’s working in the zone that I want to: that which straddles theory and common social/political/economic criticism. This is why, while I’ve pretty much dived into high theory, I’ve always expressed a certain amount of hesitation in doing so. There has always been a question at the back of my mind:
“How much of this do I really need to understand?”
For another (and closely connected to the above), he writes in a style I aspire to: not hard to understand but clever (even humorous (in its offhand references. I mainly started with him with audio books in which he did the narration. And I’m amazed at the writing style I should have seen at work in the banter I listened to him engage in on the Studio 360 podcast.
But most important here is his exploration of something I’ve been seeing at work for some time: the surprising extent that fantasy is playing in the sensibility of the right. It’s like they have been watching way too many Rambo movies. And nowhere was this clearer than in their invasion of the Capital Building. They clearly thought of their selves as modern day patriots fighting off their version of the Brits. But fancy met with reality and they developed authentic imaginations. And note how many of them are renouncing their association with the group that instigated it, including QANON Shaman.
And the sad thing about that is how many of those people, who would have never had any encounter with the law were it not for getting caught up in that moment (that fantasy), are now facing extended jail sentences.