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When did the reality-based community start losing to reality show celebrity? Why are "alternative facts" and fake news suddenly ubiquitous features of the landscape? The spread of American magical thinking isn't, in fact, sudden, argues Kurt Andersen in the September 2017 Atlantic. It was rooted in the very origins of the nation, and started to blossom in the '60s.
Andersen explores how these forces made their way to the White House in conversation with our Radio Atlantic cohosts, Jeffrey Goldberg, Alex Wagner, and Matt Thompson.
Links:
- Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Sources for clips at [20:00]: Donald Trump at CPAC, February 2015; Donald Trump on Fox & Friends, May 3, 2016; Sean Spicer’s White House press briefing, January 21, 2017; Kellyanne Conway on Meet the Press, January 22, 2017
- “Donald Trump Gets What He Wants” (Graydon Carter, GQ)
- “Trump’s War on ‘Losers’: The Early Years” (Bruce Feirstein, Vanity Fair)
- “One in 25 Americans wishes Donald Trump were running for president.” (Spy, Jan-Feb 1988)
- Nuts! documentary film website
- “Man of the People” (Reply All)
- “Al Franken on learning to be a politician” (The Ezra Klein Show)
- “Jimmy Iovine on Selling Music for 40 Years” (Studio 360)
- Billy Bathgate by E.L. Doctorow
- No Man Knows My History by Fawn Brodie
- Trickling Springs Creamery
- “Tawag Kids,” Vice Ganda (via @joshjenks)
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Matt Thompson is a contributing editor at The Atlantic.