This is an awfully long book review because I think it’s important to understand how terribly nuts over half of Americans have become. And the book is long: 440 pages, practically an encyclopedia. My analysis, excerpts, and list of superstitious beliefs leading us back into the darkness and fears before the Enlightenment / science explained what was going on is about 36 pages. But I’ve left so much out, read the book!
You might also consider searching on my post at energyskeptic “What percent of Americans are rational?“ for what pollsters have discovered about American beliefs.
This is the best book I've ever read on how America because the most superstitious, unrealistic, irrational nation on earth. Author Andersen brilliantly, and entertainingly, and shockingly, goes back to the beginning of the founding of our nation and how this all began.
What's the harm? It's literally costing us our lives. The U.S. is 26th out of the 36 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), yet we are the richest nation that has ever existed, or will exist. There’s no better sign of a country’s health and wealth than height. Americans used to tower over all other nations, now we are 40th due to poor health care and diets. We are 108 out of 140 nations in happiness. This irrationality is affecting all of us - the destruction of women's rights to birth control and abortion, the election of Trump, denial of climate change and evolution, Republican gerrymandering of districts to gain an unfair advantage, dark money allowed after Citizens United, and on and on.
Thomas Jefferson once said that as long as a belief didn’t pick his pocket or break his leg, he was fine with it. But these nutty beliefs are picking our pockets (deregulation, cutting the budget of the FDA and other watchdog agencies) and breaking our legs (getting rid of Obama care, not getting children vaccinated, alternative medicine).
Two hundred innocent people went to jail and lost their careers, businesses, and families after being accused of being satanic cult baby killers in the 1980s and 1990s (and meanwhile Catholic priests were getting away with raping children). This was as bad, if not worse than the Salem Witch Hunt, which lasted just months. But these satanic baby killing cult trials went on for a decade. For example, these cases: Kern County child abuse cases, McMartin preschool trial, Ricky Kasso, West Memphis 3, Little Rascals Day Care Center, Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial, Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial, and Pace memorandum. A third of Americans saw Geraldo Rivera’s TV show where he estimated that there are over 1 million Satanists in America linked in a highly organized secret network dedicated to satanic ritual child abuse and satanic murders. Americans agonized for 3 centuries over the Salem witch trial, but I haven’t read anything or heard anyone talk about this since then. And there are still regular satanic ritual abuse conferences!
I place the blame on the crazy religious beliefs made worse by corporations, see
One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
, the widely held idea that all beliefs are as valid as science, magical thinking like what's promoted in "The Secret" that believing you will be wealthy can make you so (the prosperity gospel of Trump and many others), and so on.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. The wacko beliefs in America go all the way back to our founding 500 years ago. Let's hope we're not doomed by a genetic legacy...
In the good old days the centrist Republicans and media stepped in to nip the nuttiness in the bud. But now that all media needs to make a profit, no longer believe that serving the public good was paramount, all hell has broken loose as Fantasyland spins out of control toward madness. Apparently even NPR/PBS needs money given the huge number of corporate sponsors they have because Republicans don’t want to fund rational media.
Even academia has abandoned reason as one of the pillars they stand for. Heaven forbid they trample on any student’s right to believe in anything by criticizing it.
And so the gyre keeps widening and spinning into what seems to me to be psychotic beliefs.
The Tea Party and NRA have totally cowed the more middle-of-the-road, reasonable old school Republicans into total submission. Nor are there enough rational staff to advise them, because Newt Gingrich began the Republican practice of cutting the budget for congressional staff n the 1980s. So now politicians have to get advice from lobbyists instead. Chapter 40 is “When the GOP went off the rails” about how religion is a factor, the GOP is very explicitly Christian where more and more Republican leaders have off-the-wall supernatural beliefs, no doubt making it harder for them to make sensible policies in office. Agenda 21 was a 1992 Earth Summit paper detailing the ideas of sustainable development and what to do to improve the environment. FOX and the Republicans accuse I of being a one-world totalitarian and Communist manifesto. The last two GOP platforms have had anti-Agenda 21 planks, and a dozen state legislatures have passed resolutions cursing it.
Republicans are especially good at cherry-picking: let business do whatever it wants, but don’t spoil poor people with government handouts; let individual shave gun arsenals but not abortions or recreational drugs, and don’t mention Ayn Rand’s atheism (the favorite author of House speaker Paul ryan).
The overarching harm Republicans have done is to convince voters that the media can’t be trusted, to ignore facts about their policies – inflexible and absolutely hysterical like the gun lobby. “Reasonable Republicanism was replaced by absolutism: NO new taxes, NO regulation, ABOLISH the EPA, IRS, and Federal Reserve, forbid funding of studies on guns or global warming.”
There’s simply no evidence that Democrats are doing as much harm or believe in so many untrue conspiracies or religious beliefs. Those who accuse Democrats of being socialists conveniently forget that Denmark is a real country, and like other “socialist” Scandinavian nations are the happiest, healthiest, and wealthiest per capita nations on earth.
When all of this spins out of control after peak oil, I expect New Age, Pentecostal, evangelical, fundamentalist, and Charismatic (PEFC) beliefs to dominate even more, with scientists hiding their books so they aren’t burned for being Possessed By Satan or killed themselves. The witch trials and subjugation of women will come back with a vengeance.
This may even be a sign of collapse. If you look at the Greeks, the age of reason only lasted for two of the seven centuries they existed. After that the Greeks returned to astrology, magical cures, and alchemy, perhaps because they found freedom too scary, and were frightened by the idea that their lives and fates weren’t predestined or managed by gods – of being on their own. America’s Age of Enlightenment also appears to have only lasted for 200 years, from roughly 1800 to 2000.
If that sounds crazy, then read this book and tell me why you think so (not covered in my energyskeptic review which will be out in August 2018).
1. Evangelical Christian’s involvement in national politics.
2. Drug use: speed, weed, psychedelics, tranquilizers, etc
3. Scientology and what their main beliefs are (will save you tens of thousands of dollars to learn from this book rather than take courses…)
4. The McCarthy persecution of imaginary communists, with Hollywood cooperation, ruining the careers and lives of many innocent people.
5. Preacher Billy Graham: “communism was master-minded by Satan”.
6. Since the 1920s, a hundred evangelical Bible institutes, plus colleges had opened.
7. Fundamentalist and Pentecostal churches multiplied.
8. Eisenhower baptized at age 63 while President, appeared at 1st National Prayer Breakfast organized by fundamentalist Christians, added “under God” into the 87-year-old Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” on the currency, made prayer a regular part of cabinet meetings
9. Norman Vincent Peale: one of the first who marketed magical thinking about wealth and success, such as repeating bullet-point affirmations over and over
10. Oral Roberts bought time on hundreds of TV stations to faith-heal people
11. Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network
12. Jim Bakker & Tammy Faye
13. Satan and the antichrist were taking over the world (the late great planet earth), which led to endless new satanic agents after that: China! Iran! Vaccines! Obama! Pope Francis! ISIS!
14. Craziness existed on both the left and right. Anything goes meant leftist beliefs were just fine if you wanted to believe them, i.e. New Age shamans, astrology, ESP, homeopathy, healing crystals for particular invisible bodily chakra’s, non-christian faith healing via Reiki, channeling the spirits of the dead, channeling totally fictional people who never existed like Seth and Ramtha, getting touch with past lives.
15. Dr Oz and half or more of everything he ever said on Oprah or his own TV show. He promotes miracle elixirs, homeopathy, imaginary energies, psychics who communicate with the dead, green coffee beans as a magical weight-loss cure, vaccines cause autism and other illnesses.
16. Andrew Weil: Reiki, herbal, aromatherapy, magical energies.
17. Alternative medicine. Replace the word “alternative” with “untested”. Why can’t supplement companies and others selling snake oil who are earning billions of dollars afford to test what they’re selling, to not only make sure it’s effective, but SAFE?
18. The Secret: the law of attraction. If you crave anything hard enough, it will become yours! This book sold 20 million copies! Guess what, the only reason a person doesn’t have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with your thoughts. Leave the details to the Universe about how it will happen. But this magic can be wrecked by understanding the real world, such as watching the news or reading newspapers.
19. Since reality was whatever you liked, this even more increased right wing extreme Christianity, full-blown conspiracism, libertarianism, unembarrassed greed, capitalist removal of regulations and taxes than beliefs on the left .
20. Both left and right abandoned claims of reason and rationality.
21. But the right used the anything goes idea to believe in far more dangerous and crazy things: gun rights, black helicopter conspiracism, climate change denial, biblical literacy, white supremacy, speaking in tongues, driving demons out of the possessed, Creationism and the denial of evolution, FEMA concentration camps, heaven, angels, hell, and Satan are REAL. Homeschooling and bible churches to teach creationism and keep children from being exposed to science.
22. The setting of dates for The End of the World: the 2012 Mayan calendar, and too many cult and PEFC dates to list
23. In the 1960s the idea that you could believe whatever you wish blossomed. Find your own truth. Mistrust authority. This empowered the right way more than the left.
24. Esalen: a mother church for people who don’t like churches or religious but still want to believe in the supernatural. Especially other understandings of reality, such as Native American, Asian, or shamanistic traditions. Invisible energies, past lives, astral projection, Gestalt therapy,
25. Mental illness as a superior way of perceiving reality and the dismantling of U.S. mental health facilities, science is a sinister scheme.
26. Guru Maharaj Ji: followers were told that believers would be able to lift the Astrodome from the earth, and that Majaraj Ji would soon be revealed to be the One who was waited for by every religion for all times.
27. The role of LSD and other drugs in helping to turn America into Fantasyland
28. Flying saucer cults and abduction by aliens
29. Starting in 1961, academics such as Michel Foucault, Thomas Kuhn, Charles Tart, and too many mentioned in the book to list, promoted the idea that all beliefs and approximations of truth, science as much as fables or religion, are merely stories devised by people to suit their own needs or interests. Reality is itself a social construction of useful or wishful myths that members of society have been persuaded to believe. Superstitions, magical thinking, and delusions are as legitimate as the supposed truths contrived by Western reason and science.
30. In short, academia said that you can believe whatever you want, because it’s pretty much all equally true and false.
31. Anthropologists decided that oracles, diviners, incantations, and magical objects should be not just respected by considered equivalent to reason and science.
32. Carlos Castaneda “Teachings of Don Juan”
33. Parapsychology at UCLA, Princeton
34. The war in Viet Nam longer than need be due to McNamara and Herman Kahn believing their shiny computerized approach was telling them the truth and solving complex military problems by feeding in the right variables. Lack of realizing that emotion drove the war far more than reason, as well as exaggerated fear of communism and concern for America’s superpower reputation
35. SDS and other underground militant cells setting off hundreds of bombs and robbing banks
36. John Birch Society. They believed 50-70% of the federal government was under the control of the Communist party, as well as academia, foundations, news media, the AMA, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Communism was a part of a greater global master conspiracy going back to the 18th century Illuminati. Even Eisenhower was obeying Communist orders, and had been for his whole life! But because the rise of the Birchers happened in the early 60s, before the forces of reason really started losing control, the mainstream media was able to quash it. Especially by the establishment right, leaders of the conservative movement such as William F. Buckley and Russell Kirk.
37. Not that it did any good. The book “None dare call it treason” authors accused a conspiracy of wealthy, educated, cultured insiders like the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, academia, mass media, and Illuminati were intent on creating a “world supra-government”.
38. JFK conspiracies
39. Christian home schooling to keep them within Bible-based bubbles of family and church
40. Convicted their and embezzler Erich von Daniken’s book “Chariot of the Gods” which said that extraterrestrials had built the pyramids, Stonehenge, and more – this book sold tens of millions of copies.
41. Fantasyland was further magnified by TV, movies, the internet, computer games, and other media. Disney land, civil war re-enactments, Middle Ages Society for Creative Anachronism. Theme shopping malls, Old West steakhouses, Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores, and architecture. It permeates our society.
42. Lotteries, gambling, pornography, cosmetic surgery, pro-wrestling, Celebrities, Reality TV,
43. Casino fantasy themes – ancient Egypt (the Luxor), medieval England (Excalibur), 17th century Caribbean (Treasure Island), Renaissance Italy (Venetian) and so on.
44. Adults wearing costumes at Halloween, reading comic books, fantasy sports and camps,
45. True right-wing believers had a fundamentalist religious faith in markets, a knee-jerk opposition to the government making markets work more fairly and better, and taxes of any kind. Now selfishness could be cloaked as righteousness, as Gordon Gekko proclaimed in the fiction book “Greed is good”. Real people claimed their moneymaking lust and skill made the virtuous.
46. Ronald Reagan who made it known he expected apocalyptic biblical prophecies to be fulfilled soon due to his Christian end-of-days beliefs since the late 1960s. His many end-time proclamations would have been a shocking national embarrassment a decade earlier.
47. The end of the Fairness Doctrine, which allowed Rush Limbaughs national right-wing radio show to flourish in 1988, followed by Fox News.
48. In 1992 when author Andersen was reporting in Time magazine about talk radio, Roger Ailes was at NBC (later Fox). Ailes phoned Andersen out of the blue to yell at him about an article that didn’t exist. He said “How would you like it if I sent a CNBC camera crew to follow your kids home from school?” My daughters were four and six. Anderson replied “Wow, I’m sure Jack Welch, the CEO of GE which owned NBC, would be interested to hear that his new news executive is planning to stalk a journalist’s children.
49. Limbaugh and Fox meant that media stopped serving an important Democratic function – the presentation of a shared set of facts.
50. Branch Davidian Seventh-day Adventists. David Koresh took 75 of his disciples with him.
51. Charles Manson, Jim Jones, Timothy McVeigh, the Unabomber
52. 9-11 was a government conspiracy
53. Vincent Foster’s suicide
54. Art Bell’s Coast to Coast AM which hosts conspiracy theorists and promoters of political, paranormal, pseudoscientific, and apocalyptic beliefs of all kinds
55. Alex Jones who rants against gun regulation, government subsidized healthcare, taxes, climate change is a hoax, Sandy Hook never happened and was staged with fake actors, cancer viruses in vaccines, and is followed by President Trump!!!!
56. Conspiracies in The New World Order and Behold a Pale Horse about everyone from the Illuminate to the Federal Reserve in league to create a satanic one-world government as predicted in Revelation
57. recovered memories of daughters that led them to accuse their fathers of raping them and participating in satanic rituals of human sacrifice and cannibalism, the invention of the fake diagnosis of multiple personality disorder,
58. Two hundred people went to jail, are still in jail, lost their careers, businesses, and families after being accused of being satanic cult baby killers in the 1980s and 1990s. This was as bad if not worse than the Salem Witch Hunt which lasted just months, versus the satanic baby killing cult trials that went on for a decade and convicted innocent people. For example, these cases: Kern County child abuse cases, McMartin preschool trial, Ricky Kasso, West Memphis 3, Little Rascals Day Care Center, Oak Hill satanic ritual abuse trial, Fells Acres Day Care Center preschool trial, and Pace memorandum.
59. Shape shifting reptilian humanoids (see Time magazine’s article “The Reptilian Elite”
60. A movement called the Third Wave or dominionism to replace secular laws and constitutions with Biblical laws and a fully theocratic nation
61. Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. and was a Muslim
62. The Tea Party, Drudge Report, Infowars, Breitbart
63. Spy magazine wrote dozens of articles about Trump from 1986 to 1993, exposing his lies, brutishness, egomania, and absurdity. In return he sent threatening letters and called them in public “a piece of garbage”. Trump is driven by resentment of the Establishment. He doesn’t like experts because they interfere with his right as an American to believe or pretend that fictions are facts, to FEEL the truth. He sees conspiracies everywhere. He exploits the myths of white racial victimhood. He’s a spoiled, impulsive, moody, 70-year-old BRAT. And many more pages about Trump that are great but too long to paraphrase.
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Reviews with images
Great survey of American religious history--but terrible footnote typography
I loved this massive survey of the American fantasy, especially the evolution of religiousity. The only problem I had with the book (well, two actually) is the bizarre footnote typography. The footnotes themselves are readable but the asterisks marking them in the text are practically unreadable. Thus, the reader gets to the bottom of the page, notices a footnote, and then has to literally hunt up and down the page to see what it’s referring to. The second aspect is that the author could have provided more documentation in the form of a Works Cited or Bibliography. The footnotes typically give the publication info but there are quite a few instances of statements that could clearly stand to be sourced.
Top reviews from other countries
Musicman
A most incisive insight into what makes America tick.
Reviewed in Canada on December 10, 2023
Delio Quinones
Trump isn't the beginning, he's just a continuation.
Reviewed in Spain on August 28, 2018Martin Davidson
All the more powerful for having a 500 year run up to his dissection of the American love affair with
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 14, 2017Amazon-Kunde
An idiosyncratic but highly readable and persuasive take on the history of the American dream
Reviewed in Germany on February 13, 2018