Two Books & A Few Thoughts

 Well, with news occurring at the speed of light, keeping up is a challenge. So today I will write a short post about two important books I recently read. Kurt Andersen is a journalist who has written for Time, The New York Times, and Vanity Fair among others. He has written several novels but the two books I am writing about today are nonfiction: Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History, published in 2017, and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, published in 2020. The books are linked in that the first very much helps explain the second.

Fantasyland helps us understand what has been called American exceptionalism. In my opinion, American exceptionalism is really American loopiness because we are a nation that wants to believe myths and conspiracy theories rather than, well, facts. Andersen shows that we have always been this way. Our forebears needed no stinkin’ internet to be gullible, poorly informed, and susceptible to a wide variety of grifters. A lot has to do with religion but not all. The great American dream that “I will win the lottery of life and become rich” existed in the years before we became an independent nation. After the Revolutionary War it accelerated. I loved this quote: “Every set of beliefs and practices -- old or new, more or less reasonable or plainly nuts -- was officially equal to every other.” It was made in the context of religion but it seems to be an American mantra in all things. My ignorance is equal to your expertise. As an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist in the time of COVID-19, I spend a considerable amount of energy eye-rolling and wondering about my fellow Americans’ sanity. 

An appreciation for how this has shaped our political economy and why it is incredibly important in the era of Donald Trump comes out in Evil Geniuses. In many ways, Evil Geniuses is a follow-on to Jane Mayers’ book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, published in 2008 and updated in 2016. The easiest way to express it is, we have been had by the plutocrats. Andersen follows Mayers lead with the “philanthropy” of the likes of the Koch brothers, Richard Mellon Scaife, and a gaggle of others (does the name DeVos ring any bells?). By pouring millions over years into universities, law schools, think tanks, and media, the plutocrats paved the way for plunder of the Treasury in the guise of tax cuts, distrust of the government, deregulation designed to eliminate environmental protections while pumping billions into their pockets, and hollowing out a free press. Andersen’s book brings us directly into the administration of Donald Trump and the catastrophe that we are all enduring - a viral pandemic which he desperately wants to go away so that it does not destroy his reelection chances.

But Andersen finishes an otherwise doom and gloom book on a hopeful note. He uses a statement from Milton Friedman, ironically one of the architects of the greed and profit school who helped create the mess we are in. Friedman said that only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change because only then does the politically impossible become the politically inevitable. The crisis is truly at hand with political polarization, an incompetent president, a pandemic out of control, and economic chaos. We can vote to begin the change because first things first, Trump and his GOP cabal must go. But if a return to normalcy means going back to allowing plutocrats to rule, we have not changed at all. Fresh and radical approaches are needed. They also will not happen in a day but the inflection point is here. We can imagine a carbon tax (finally) whose dollars are returned to every American. How about a wealth tax on the billionaires which won’t impoverish them but can also be returned to Americans earning less than the median wage? How about a universal income, because as Andersen artificial intelligence and machines are the real drivers for loss of jobs? 

So much that can be done but we as citizens of America must demand them. There is nothing wrong with becoming more like Denmark and less like Russia. I thought these were good books because they provoke thought. It is time to take that thought and turn it into action. Change is not only possible but imperative.