Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire

welcome everyone to this session so we will jump right into this but I did say a couple of words about Kurt I don't go back as far as Walter goes back with Kurt but I go back pretty far and he was my first magazine editor everything I've learned about magazine editing I've learned from him so the Atlantic is in trouble the and and incurred as you know I mean a lot of you have seen Kurt here in years past found co-founder of spy magazine editor of New York magazine where I met him and worked for him best-selling novelist radio host all-around social and political commentator but we're doing fine right that's enough the has been sauce or husband father American patriot yes I will get to that actually the American patriot question the and and and he's written a fantastic new book that will be out shortly called fantasy land you saw the name on the program and I'm going to let you take us through a little bit of what you've discovered I I read it practically in one gulp the galleys of it because it's a it's a fascinating alternative history or secret history of of the American experiment seen through the prism of of our apparent willingness to believe fantastical things the upside of that and the downside of that but why don't we start just if you take a couple of minutes and you know boil your entire life's work down into a couple of couple of finely honed paragraphs and tell us the the central thesis of what you're trying to accomplish with this book thank you Jeffrey thank you Walter Thank You Aspen ideas festival in Walter Isaacson in particular whom I have known since I was a freshman in college for being my pal and mentor and helper in many many ways over the years in this his valedictory year at the Austin ideas so you did a great summary by the way and since this book hasn't come out yet I have not been on the road distilling it to 60 seconds so forgive me if I ramble however ja it's fine good yeah I began with a couple of several smaller ideas I've been fascinated for years why for instance the United States people in the United States are so much more religious and flamboyantly religious than the people of any other country in the developed world that always interested me and and and I read the scholarship on that and it was only partially satisfying that was one of the ideas that I began with another idea frankly that I began with her another inspiration now thirteen years ago was on the first episode of The Colbert Report Stephen Colbert in character as a populist right winger comes out and and and does this extraordinary essay about fruitiness and and and and that truthiness has replaced facts and who needs a book when I know it in my gut and and it was in a stud which is literally his first episode I thought well he is really on to something and the end and I've written about creationism I've written about the sort of how the presidency and politics had turned into show business so I had I decided I would try to bring this all together and I thought oh this will be a history of the last twenty thirty years now I realize no its history since the 60s because for me the 60s are a time when was a kind of Big Bang moment when everybody could believe whatever they wanted if they were an American and and that was their right as an American that everybody was entitled to their own facts as well as their own opinions in the words of Daniel Moynihan but then I realized no as I begin researching and thinking it goes back all the way it goes back to the Pilgrims and to the gold hunters in Virginia who were respectively a religious cult the most extreme zealots of a zealous new sect of a new religion that is Protestant and the gold hunters who hunted for gold where there was none in Virginia for 20 years before they decided to face facts and grow tobacco so and I saw I call it a 500 year history there's the cover because I have to go back to Martin Luther who by the way 500 years ago like today essentially October actually nailed his theses on the door in Germany because it's a kind of extreme version of Protestantism an extreme version of money love and extreme version of entrepreneurialism an extreme version of show business an extreme version of a lot of things that do make a mare have made America exceptional in the in the meaning of good exceptional means good as well as peculiar this is more a history of this as Geoffrey said this peculiar knack that Americans have always had for being for believing the unbelievable for being true believers of religious ideas and supernatural ideas for being suckers for those who want to sucker them after all the new world was this blank thing that was the subject of the first great advertising campaign by the English people who wanted to who wanted humans to populate these I'll talk about that for a second because it's one of the fascinating things is that is that your thesis wanted your thesis is that is that the Europeans who came here were people who are already predisposed to believe ungrounded promises in the future talk about that it was advertising sense of it it was it again and I'm not the first to note this historians like Daniel Boorstin great Daniel Boorstin has noted this that that the the English people in particular who were persuaded to give up their lives give up everything everyone they knew to come to this blank place that had been pitched to them as utopia and in some cases as as even itself that was that was a belief in the 16th and 17th century they self-selected we the original American self selected the original white American self selected for credit credulity and and and kept doing so and you've shared with me some stories about later immigrants who that it is often yes it's the it's the believers in in greatness and I can make myself and I can reimagine myself and I can get rich and I can be free all those good things but it's also it has self selected for suckers so America is a country of the grifted and the grifter they have to they can't have a country with one without the other in a kind of way and I'm not introducing the obvious name for this conversation for as long as possible that we're going to we're going to get there because you start no because you started this book before this book before the current president was nominated yes thank you for not saying is me no it's sort of frills but whatever the old amor let's just call them Baltimore yeah see I'm not doing that you can do that the but but stay on the religious piece for a minute I read this book as a very anti religion book do you would you do you agree with that that this is a book that basically says that that religion has caused Americans to do all kinds of stupid things over the years I think that extreme Protestantism and you will note that I scruple carefully between extreme Protestantism and what I grew up with mainline proselytism between extreme Protestantism and Catholicism and Judaism extreme Protestantism along with extreme enlightenment believe and extreme a lot of things but but yet that that form of religious extremism and the credulity that it requires and produces is part of the problem yeah so so another part of your argument is that is that we have even though we are unusually susceptible to fantastical belief and of course one of the arguments you make in this book is that is that we America is a fountain of new religions I mean and be found so Joseph Smith might be the ultimate American in the refracted through the prism of your thesis but but you you argue in this book that the haywire piece of it is is relatively recent that we've lived in balance between being grounded and then having sets of fantastical beliefs about the endless possibilities of the future so to walk us through that at that moment when we went from balance to imbalance and then yes please take us to the moment when the country elected a a president who has a record I'm trying to stick trickly to the facts here obviously a record of extreme salesmanship I'm looking for a way here in your ding way to charge ya know I'm trying to be fair and balanced obviously I don't know but but but but a classic American Harold Hill tie knows our ke Barnum a Barnum a Barnum Yahoo you using it but take us through that obviously the balance to the imbalance I mean what truly made America great was the the tradition of of show me a skepticism making practicality all those things in combination with larger-than-life dreams and reinvention and they always existed in a kind of dynamic equilibrium for hundreds of years Oh always yeah I would say always I was going to make some exceptions for right at the beginning but always and certainly through the 18th century and speaking the 18th century at the end of the 18th century of course we created a constitution which tried to codify that equilibrium in ways like the Senate vs. the house and the electoral college versus popular I think the founders were aware of our our innate or organic American ability to lose our composure to lose our balance or was it specifically was their analysis specific the American or were they just the understanding of flawed human nature well i scenting a form they were inventing republic and democracy and so they understood how democracy which of course means mob rule in the greek could get out of control so i don't know that they that's a different book of whether Jefferson but maybe not Jefferson may be whether Hamilton and the rest of them we're aware of Americans their fellow Americans specific susceptibility the credibility but at the time Edmund Burke for instance who was a member of parliament and a great conservative in England warned his fellow members of parliament these Americans one thing you gotta realize about them they cake this religion their religion which used to be our religion too seriously and that's why they're revolting that's why they're rebelling so it was in the air that this was something one of the peculiar things about Americans was like they'll believe anything but you said but then we also have that counter streak right get back to that narrative counter straight up show me that Missouri show mean as the Yankee practice a Yankee skipper so that stayed in you know when you know there was always this anti intellectualism and anti elite and anti expertise that was always an American thing but when push came to shove the experts who really knew things worth knowing we're allowed to run the show and and and and and we beard back and forth and allowed populist up surges in in many ways and we allow and all these new religions as no other country did we allowed patent medicines that were phony to be come the pharmaceutical industry in the 19th century we allowed all these things but then we had it the 20th century comes and we have the Progressive Era and we have an FDA and clean food and drug laws and and better journalism better journalism and oh no you have to get vaccinated and that was a Supreme Court case 110 years ago so so there you know there was it worked in balance until in my telling the 1960s it went completely and it went for plea because of Bohemian relativism what was the what was the what was the trigger I've not asked you to name its right person or figure or movement but but what was the what was the trigger well I would say the untold story that I tell in this book because we think of the 60s Whitney certain people on the cultural and political left think of the 60s as nothing but good and it's the right and thinks the 60s are bad well in my telling because it is I think an important untold story that what happened in the 60s of Oh have your own truth believe whatever you want there's no such thing as insanity mentor psychosis that's all it's just a different way of no turnit --iv pattern if it's alternative facts well intentioned alternative facts and feeling is just as important as empirical observation all those things which were in a general sense of the cultural less how did it happen seriously how'd it happen in a literal everyday well 1962 was a sort of annus mirabilis of counterculture new-age hip enos in so many ways including for instance the Esalen Institute was founded but so many things so so the sixties OFM let epsilen plays the key role it got in your book it's the headwaters it's the headwaters of so much of what became you know a new age what I call because it encompasses a thousand denominations new age and this this kind of do your own thing relativism which which which is always regarded and has been regarded by the official cultural conservatives as terrible because it gave rise to the left my argument really is that it more importantly and in our present day into the last twenty years or so has given rise to the extremes and the fantasies and the alternative facts and the conspiracy theories of the right are you are you saying and I'm not being purposely crude here in my description but are you saying that that Kellyanne Conway is the inevitable byproduct of the excellent Institute the F 1 is 2 + Foucault if you might yeah I mean yeah that Kellyanne Conway in that family tree are all these people and institutions whose antecedents you would force where and and think it's part of the terrible elite liberal hegemon that is the West is not going to like to hear that the left that the left and the Ubu kind of everything is true if you feel it to be true they're not going to be well-received the left created space that was then occupied by the right right error to say I think that's probably fair to say okay good be exciting book that is good the do this do this do this progression I do this continuum we were talking the other day about this and I said I it's almost like it's a ridiculous essay assignment but but trace draw a line from Cotton Mather right because in your telling the pilgrims a lot of us of a certain age and older grew up with as the heroes of the American drama you're telling is that they're nuts do it do cotton mather to Donald Trump and and and that dance as I did and I would like you to juggle fire while you're doing it and we'll put some music a little bit but there's a line I mean your book is basically an argument that there's there's a there's a connection between this yeah that and it stops a lot of places along the way I mean in that engine since you put it that way I would say Cotton Mather is more the karl rove the republican establishment in fact the early Puritan in the in the in the mathers messages they call me that is most modern and trumpian if you will and excellently and all the rest with Anne Hutchinson who that do that round yeah in Hutchinson who you know a year after she got moved to Boston started preaching herself and gathering people at her house and and and and and saying oh these guys with university education forget it I feel I know who's holy I know who God has touched I know she was opposed to that the Harvard theologian she was that she was the first charismatic Christian and the first and this is really a phrase that's used in Christianity today pastor premiere for entrepreneur plus pastor and so she and this was a threatening Z to say it is not it's almost as hard to Reince Priebus to say [Laughter] so she she started her own sort of alternative church which for the Mathers and Winthrop Sand Bradford's of the time wouldn't do and so they tried her in this most hilarious and hideous and maybe first instance of no doubt not the first instance of mansplaining ever hurt read the transcript of her trial it's incredible and in fact the fact that she was a woman and she was expressing her religious freedom it's one of the reasons she's been recounted ever since as a great heroine well she's a nut she was even nuttier than them and so they had to submit come on I mean yes we believe some we believe that this comic means that Jesus is returning tomorrow but like come on you can't tell us if we're holier less holy than you so they banished her and no she to me was that that her American nism it was the important thing or an important thing out of that time so anyway you get to but but then you get religious you get tolerance of everything and I talk about the Enlightenment as you know and we think of the Enlightenment as being all about privilege areason and rationality that that primacy of science and it was that but it was also the the permit permitting of every crackpot nutty thing possibly that's that's freedom of thought yeah you can believe anything and and and and rationality and science do not necessarily prevail in that marketplace of ideas so and and we also our country as Tocqueville among others said early on like I've never seen a place where people are so riveted on the making of money so business is a big part of this story as well and and the blue smoke and mirrors that is part of entrepreneurialism that allows for as I say patent medicines to run rampant peer as they had nowhere else and they had not in England and Europe really to the same degree we we made show business a central fact of American life and in fact medicine shows and were that were infomercials live in you know the 1850s and on so anybody can do anything and that's great it was always big tolerance for peep unbelievable thing correct opt barn before he invented circus circuses made his business out of just having immunise great Museum in Manhattan it was a combination of real amazing artifacts and entirely spurious ones like mermaids and and this the slave woman who supposedly had been who had suckled George Washington and all these things that that people knew kind of sorta weren't true but it was all fun and and and the reel was completely mixed up with the spurious as the American tabloid press was being invented also mixing up this various with the reel and we go on and on we bet Hollywood we create Disneyland we have we hit create more Joseph Smith whom you mentioned and I say that in the Book of Mormon he was he became the first and greatest author of fan fiction in history to really to create not just not just extend a story of the Bible but to say this is the missing third part of the Bible extraordinary a you know Christian Science Pentecostalism was invented essentially in Topeka and Los Angeles in nineteen Oh in the early 1900s that's a recent American invention so but take us to the most and I'm not I don't want to sound judgmental here but take us to the most unchristian president we've ever had well exactly is that because that it's a non-obvious connection it isn't an obvious connection because of course as has Sinclair Lewis and others have always said oh you know the fashions from the period wrapped in the flag holding the Bible well this one didn't really appear holding the Bible he is the most unchristian in every sense president we've ever had even though nominally Protestant and by the way he called he's always call himself a Protestant which most Protestants I know don't do you're a Baptist you're Episcopalian engineering not Protestant it's like yeah what are you I'm a homo sapiens no it's weird and and belies his lack of genuine religiosity one thing that does so this unreligious got and and I think all the other they love him I guess is your implicit question and and and I don't know but do that do that turn but but the step right before that is is what parts of American culture he borrowed that were created by Anne Hutchinson by Cotton Mather Roger lay through Joseph Smith all the Penta Penta calls all of these religious the charismatic religious movement what parts of it did he borrow to create trumpism which is not a Christian movement erect a book followed by a lot of devout Christians and indeed before he came along Republican Party had become our you know America's first explicitly Pan Christian Party we'd really never had that until the last twenty years of republicanism but and so to your point but so I would say he one of the thing in addition to playing on all kinds of essentially every thread that I explored in this book before he was ever running for president of business hucksterism and and blue smoke and mirrors and snake oil and and getting away with kids and lives of all kinds and reinventing yourself several times and reality television and news as entertainment all these things that were have been happening and then accelerating to last a few years he you know depending on either his lizard brain or his genius intellect decided at a certain point wow I really can run for president now and it's ready for ground is really ready for this in terms of the specific religious thing I would say in addition to I would say that absolute absolute faith of the time that American Protestants most American Protestants many most American Protestants now practice absolute faith in factually improbable and impossible things is I think it's going to sound unkind to many many millions of people's faiths but nevertheless there it is I think if that is is is central to your way of thinking about life a kind of disregard for factual reality that this guy represents is going to not seem so disqualified there are there I mean we differ on these questions of religion there there are plenty of Christians you know yeah even though you live in a certain kind of bubble I don't I live in real America Northwest Washington DC you live in Brooklyn it's completely different the there are plenty of people you know who believe to use the Christian short know that the tomb was empty that Jesus rose from the rain okay but but they also they also can identify a Donald Trump lie from a Donald Trump truth I mean so so but you're what you're doing there Jeffery which I think a lot of would be Oh can't we all just get along oh that's me quasi secular even despite your deep religious faith I that that yes there are plenty of versions of Christianity and a Protestantism that are full of true belief in miracles and and supernatural events that happened 2,000 years ago that fine fine if that's your faith in belief but that is different than believing that within the next few years certainly that Jesus is returning and at the end of the world as we know it that's different than believing you are when you speak in tongues you're speaking of directly from God that's different from all these extraordinary what I'm arguing is that you could have this teleological understanding where the world is moving to a certain thing where Jesus is going to come back I mean Judaism is a messianic religion too and the Messiah is going to come but you can believe that and also and disbelieve the argument that no one is going to lose their Medicaid you cut eight hundred eighty billion dollars from Medicaid so so what can do those two things can you can't Kierkegaard to do that can and we have to regard here today to ask us let's bring them on bring them on here well well I'm Danish so you know well you could tell your regards I actually want you to say that again I'm not this is not a book saying it's all about Pat Robertson no or Cotton Mather or religion that's one part of the things so our peculiar form of Protestant religion as that has become much more kit was the Ark was bending toward reason for for hundreds of years until the last 50 or so so I think that combined with the the grifters and the grifted combined with our just immersion in entertainment and the turning of everything into entertainment combined with the real true American individualism of I can I know what's true and it's and I can believe whatever all of these things combined which worked okay in this great American contraption for many years finally didn't and religion was part of them well the internet was a bigger part of it and religion no III be the next book to decide yeah but but but I would say are peculiar than in the victory of the entertainment industrial compact together as big right but let me let me let me flip the internet is international right they let me flip this a little bit and talk about the koala the qualities you're describing in the American character that existed at the very foundation of this idea these qualities have positive attributes for sure as well I mean we in the 20th century the United States managed to defeat fascism and contain and ultimately defeat communism right we did that in part because we believed in something bigger than ourselves and we also believe that this could be done in a kind of way these are these does that come from the same soil as the belief in in fantastical things well it comes from the same soil because as I say when push came to shove for instance when the Axis powers were waging war on us we said okay no more America first kowtow into Hitler we'll have to fight this war so but but it came from the same land not the same necessarily you know combination of nutrients and genes and and and this a certain set of of strings kind of over grew we didn't we didn't end our garden perhaps as we should have in lots of tears and yes I all of this is fantastic admit I love America it all of the craziness in the and the rock and roll and I can believe anything I want I can do anything around I can go off on a road trip I can take it freezing this also manifests itself I'm going to invent the company like Facebook or Google or you know or or Steve Jobs being the great example you know probably the you know the great example of how you know LSD can lead to do a to a world-changing lucrative profession so know that all those are wonderful parts of America and and yet maybe you can't get the Steve Jobs without the Donald Trump that could be true all and and what I'm really doing is describing where we've got not like oh god I wish we were Canada sometimes these days I wish we were Canada but but I'm just saying here we are in all of our good bad memories right how do we restore what I think what you never but think of it as the Enlightenment value of empirical truth observable truth I mean this is a it's a obviously it's not even subtext of this current accessible it's the text of a bunch of people gathered in a mountain on mountains and asked and talking about why do so many people in America seem to believe in fantastical things in the political realm I guess the larger question even the one I'm asking is are we in a war that we never expected to be in over the Enlightenment I mean what what that's it interests alia putting it and I and I and I think we kind of are or a version of the Enlightenment again I read some great books by Enlightenment asourian's a few years ago that really had me thinking differently about the Enlightenment because the Enlightenment also in addition to producing you and maybe even me produced in its extreme hypertrophied versions telling uncommon so III think what who isn't I mean I'll state this who is an adversary of enlightenment values in this is I mean she's creating by the way to borrow from Steve Jobs the reality distortion field yeah we're we're I'm going to say it so often that I'm going to make it right true and it becomes true for a large number and and again I I had never read as you probably have Hannah Arendt's origins of totalitarianism until last year which is worth a read because it gives you goosebumps every fifth page in terms of its it was written sixty-seven years ago but I'm not saying we living under totalitarian state yet but man oh man the exact that the alternative facts and how that operates as she describes it having happened in fascist Spain and fascist Germany and the Soviet Union is amazing so yeah so yes the in light that the good version of the Enlightenment that's what we are I guess now in a struggle in the in the most grand sense to preserve how can we do that fine just in our lives you know if we believe something on the base is not effects like for instance that GMOs are going to kill us if we eat them which the same people who accuse the Republicans of being anti science for for denying climate change are fully fully willing to deny science on the question of GMOs just for instance so watch it in our own lives watch it you know you know maybe don't tell the stranger who's talking about how you know George Soros is going to steal his Camaro or something but he's a nut but tell your brother-in-law who says that three million illegals voted in the last election for Hillary Clinton tell him he's wrong and show him the facts so I mean what can he do I don't know there can be turned back I don't know that I don't know that we're going to go back to the way it was back when reality based community wasn't a phrase or a joke but all we can do is what we can do in our own in our own spheres and and you would argue that this anti in like these anti-enlightenment values I mean you allude to the GMO issue the how susceptible is the secular left to this kind of fantastical thinking I mean obviously you root it in the 60s in some way but how if you're looking looking across the American political landscape who's suffering more well a moment suffering more from from the derangement of derangement this derangement syndrome all the right is it's a highly asymmetrical yes you got the GMO thing even more at vaccine at the anti-vaccine movement which interestingly although began more as a left thing and robert f kennedy jr. was its and is it's great poster boy it has become more of a right thing so but so everybody everybody is susceptible to it i mean i you know everybody is susceptible to believing to confirmation bias and believe in conspiracy theories that almost certainly aren't true because it conforms with their beliefs everybody's too motivated reasoning they make up reasons to prove things right admirable if you have cotton mather like oh i think the Indians are about to are the are the agents of Satan and they're about to try to kill us look that route it's shaped just like an Indian club let's go kill them I mean literally so motivated reasoning yes from from the beginning to now so so yes everybody is susceptible to it for a variety of reasons for instance the fact that the John Birch Society started in 1958 was was pumping out the alternative fax conspiracism of an incredible and hysterical kind after McCarthy basically as Joseph McCarthy's air for generations to the to the Republican right first to the fringe and then to the little farther in and and now to its mainstream so for that being one reason among others that I think while everybody is susceptible to it and and we even your eye perhaps but but that it is it has it has borne itself out as a danger and as an emergency and as may be the end on the right we need more intolerance in our society you know I mean I don't say that in those words but yeah we do need less squishiness of a certain kind that I think we have indulged since the 60s of oh you know that you can no longer or that it's harder for people to stigmatize crazy falsehoods than it used to be but in the interest of inclusiveness and and and and you know academia did have a big role in this in and and particularly the kind of the in the anthropology departments in the 60s start when they start and say you cannot say you cannot believe that what this tribes person believes about how the world was created is untrue that's just a different way of us you hear people on the left today saying that we can't in the academic letter saying we can't judge people who practice female genital mutilation right because that's their culture like right but we can shout down a speaker at Bennington College right Middlebury right so so one final question before we go to your questions do you think and this is a rather large question do you think that democracy a democracy based on reasonable discourse and fact can we survive social media can we survive the flattening of the information ecosystem and I don't know the answer to that I think I mean in a whole other conversation about all our robots going to take over will there be jobs for people now we've had industrial revolutions before it's always worked out in the past maybe maybe not I think this is a similar kind of question I don't know sometimes I think that the the Internet and the rest of the telecommunications infrastructure that has been built out in the last 50 years especially the last 25 is it is a new condition from which we cannot easily recover in terms of what the exactly the thing you're saying a discourse based on facts rather than facts and opinions rather than just opinions I mean 25 years ago your magazine editor I'm working for you you're functioning in the pre-internet era as a filtration systems right I keeper you're a gatekeeper people are knocking the gatekeepers and we were obviously flawed in our gatekeeping I mean we were all white guys and we were we were complacent and all the all the things with everything that can be said that about gate the old-fashioned establishment gatekeepers yeah true would you have Facebook and Google Play keeping roles today or is that I don't let me have another panda well you know I mean I think we need I won't presume now to prescribe the rebuilt gates that we need but we need some of them I mean our host Walter Isaacson brought a very interesting piece in your magazine the Atlantic about how at a deep technical level we can do some things in terms of how the internet works and anonymity is or isn't permitted so there are things can do and I again I'm not I don't know enough to know all of the little ways that that we can address this and there I don't think there's any silver bullet and and you know and and and I don't know and and secession or dissolution in the two countries is very difficult in because it's no longer of course South versus North but cities versus everybody else is the interesting many interesting aspects of your book but one of the interesting things that I learned is that is that you can't just blame social media and this flattening you have to blame also in the American context the credulity that you put the history of credulity which is this book you have to blame our predisposition to believe things that aren't proven and that's a much that's going to be much harder to reverse given the long cultural antecedents then algorithm fixes correct in Google correct that that that we have been getting here for a long time and and and Donald it didn't just start in 2015 model you you've been writing about Donald Trump for thirty years did you ever imagine it would be present in United's course I knew it that no of course I did no no no I'm not asking did you predict Donald Trump would become president by beating Hillary Clinton right I'm asking you I'm asking you as you're doing the book before Trump impossible did you see an opportunity for reality TV to become reality well you know I the whole book was how it has all the ways in which it has some of them benign are like our neutral love of Main Street USA at Disneyland at Disney World super them less benign so I didn't jump to and Donald Trump you know as I really started this book in 2014 no Donald Trump you wouldn't have didn't appear in the book for the first year I was writing it but then he came along and he bodied every single thing except a pious devout Christianity that I was writing about so no but but I went ah ha when he came along and and woke up one day and after we'd won a couple of primaries and said to my wife like he gets the nomination this could be good for this book and so be careful what you wish for hucksterism there you go get that sale it's always about the sale I think there are mics people with mics and if you raise your hand will Belcher I can't see that well in this audience but if you find there's somebody in the back right there I do see a hand can you do that person first and then if you find somebody around here yeah that'd be great um as a question you seem to be saying that there's a line from Esalen to say Kellyanne Conway and the religious belief in trickle-down economics where it seems like it might be more grateful to say that those two things both spring from the same well independently and Jess Eames has been trying to get at this line and I didn't quite get it how would you go from the hippie 60s to the very culturally different set of people today on the right and their lack of interest in fact I just can't see okay Monica it's a good question and that's why there's a book but yeah you know what isn't quite like pre-ordering is allowed no it's a very good question and for instance what I would say the simplest answer to that question is that what began as as hippy things and and this in this small countercultural set of values and beliefs from 1962 to 1969 or whatever diffused filtered out into the whole country so whether they know it or not you know and it my Republican conservative Republican parents became like yeah sure whatever you love that's what he believes that sure and my mother started talking to her plants because a book that came out in 1973 he told her to talk to her plan so and she and she was an absolute rationalist and a non-believer in religion so it it was not it what what happens in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas what happened in the sixties didn't stay in the 60s I guess is what I'm saying and and and it became a way of thinking that that affected everything and again it's just one stream as I explained in the book at this so the 60s we have the Woodstock idea of the 60s in all of our heads that's the canonical 60s what also happen in sixties of course was simultaneously and and and in its own mind as a backlash to the hippie 60s or what was the the the the the new extremism and new unreasonableness of protestant christianity it pretty it wasn't and it wasn't just a backlash you look at the timelines and it was happening simultaneously so yet to your point I think they were from the same stream but they were both highly important in their own ways at getting where we are they thought they were the opposite but they were the hippies and pat robertson let's say yes born of the same american tradition and and and and here in tolerance for having your own truth and tolerance for for your own truth and feeling and intuition being privileged / well you know scientific observation empirical reality you think our politicians should be an ideal world less less respectful toward religion i wouldn't say that exactly i would say that you know the the constitutional prohibition on having religious tests for public office is only theoretically true that you know the fact that there is one declared non-believer in the Congress in the 535 members of the united states congress tells you something about religious freedom and so less respect no less pandering less more understanding of the division between religion and the states that thomas jefferson and the founders thought was so important for sure i don't know where the mic is over here yeah I think just the I think you saw I mean I mean fumbles was actually just fascinating because I do think America I think American democracy has been most fantastic force for good in history the human race and I think one of the reasons for it because we do have this fantastical belief in the future in this optimism that it was really works yeah I love to have a question if you don't mind well I'm the nature of the dialogue has caused me a question why is it that Donald Trump is a snake oil salesman the best salesperson for a fantastical view of the future in my lifetime was Barack Obama he beat Hillary Clinton on a fantastical view of the future nine years ago i sat in this room and listened to people talk about if it were actually possible to increase entitlements and balance the budget to have health care for everybody but not have to pay for it to have an environment that we didn't have to make compromises in order to accomplish to increase entitlements while balancing the budget this was the platform that he ran on and it was his fantastical then does anything that Donald Trump assent I just think you liked that fantasies better no no well I want interesting we put but first of all other than you can keep your doctor tell me a lie a falsehood of the sort the Donald Trump omits every day I serve but Curt we're not hello I lied about letting on account before oh and again I mean the book is not about Donald Trump there's a half a chapter about don't rub it's not really about politics it's about a way of thinking and if we can meet on the common ground of too much fantastical thinking is bad I'll shake your hand and that's a common ground okay all right I don't disagree I think it was fire resident for 350 years I think it's become part of our our collapse in the last 50 ma'am yes please I'm going to change the subject what did the role of the pill put into the 60s in your context all right well we're going to go all kinds of different direction I have no problem with the pill I have no problem with silver I understand endorses pills I have no problem the civil-rights I'm working in Aspen the 60s had many however I do in my eye denizen comes out against pill standby I do have a little digress in seeing because one of the things I talk about the sixties it's a sutler thing that's not suitable to the caricature jocularity is over is the way in which we assigned to decompress from the previous Prince my way the way in which Americans are have an inclination to fictionalize themselves from the pilgrims on and and I do think actually the pill was enabler of freedom obviously for women and for people who wanted to have sex more than they could before all that but I did I do think actually to the reason allowed more sex with people whom you weren't you know who you can regard more as you would regard somebody in a movie or somebody in a novel like Harold sure I think it was it it's not a major part of my argument or even a minor part Margaret but but but I think the the the sexual revolution that the pill enabled was also about enabled a kind of fictionalization of sex with a heterosexual sex let us stipulate with without regard for what had earlier been along with disease its greatest downside which is children I love my children they made my life possible but if I'd had a child every time I had sex it would be a problem wouldn't it I'm not even I I'm not yeah no it's fine it's fine we're just going to move on is there you have a yeah and then if there's somebody in the back I can't really see that well in the back so that you can just pick someone and let's just keep them and questions thank you I was wondering thoughts on the future of the United States and the world but wait let's this family he'll forget her inches what are what are some key aspects for the yeah do you mean do you mean are we are we in a period of decline based on the theory that he's proposing I mean you know I I have never been a decline Asst I have always been a 51% optimist about the American project thinking about these things and spending three or four years writing this book has gotten to be closer to be too pessimistic than I have ever been in my life I would say that and again I mean leaving Donald Trump aside who was aside as I was thinking about this history of America you know we may have reached our imperial sell-by date as empires do I don't know we'll see I'm hopeful not I'm hopeful that you know we've got some hundreds more years in it but then I look back you know at at ancient Greece for instance in ancient Greece when we think of the great ancient Greece that we love and all Europe ADIZ and all the great names and magnificent beginning of Western culture it only was a couple hundred years there was there was superstition and astrology and alchemy before and after and it was just like wheat and this this period of in antiquity of extraordinary art and thought and science and you know are we at the end of our Classical period maybe and you know we search surely are are we you know given the rise of China at the end of our you know the I mean our our AB unipolar political cultural economic dominance so I don't know oh I'm less hopeful than I used to be but I am NOT I'm not ready to kill myself and then if there's questions back there you go go ahead man but I just want to make sure that I can't see in the back so maybe people have questions go ahead as a political scientist philosophy student I'm particularly interested in the concept of information to get cascades which depends on people sacrifices their intellectual autonomy to follow the assertions of others and oftentimes this kind of blows up into a giant game of telephone and that's how distorted truth and falsehood spread in large-scale situations and my question is you believe that American Christianity is responsible partially are not wholly responsible for the information cascades that fuel hyper-realistic American values and what role do you believe that intellectual autonomy should play and grounding people in fact well first of all I don't think in that particular thing you're talking about to the grey I understand what you're saying because I didn't go to graduate school [Laughter] is I don't think Christianity in even in its peculiar most peculiar and now in Protestant religion dominant American forms is the cause of that I would say you know again as I said to Jeff it has a role in my whole argument but I would say probably that the Internet has the single largest role in that in the Cascade of the kind of kudzu like growth of alternative fact non-fact fact-based belief more than religion I mean you know I would argue that certain kinds of religious beliefs often you up for believing and being possible and and and then that would that teed up the Internet can can provide all kinds of crazy beliefs untrue beliefs that then cascade out into in a social media little literal and figurative social media way along with unregulated talk radio along with now cable news as well so I would give the the new cascade ability I would attribute more to technology than I would to religion but again they they all it's a perfect storm was there someone back there okay thank you yeah hi a question it along the lines of what was just posed in terms of this resistance to intellectualism and equating intellectualism to elitism I wonder to what extent the rise in tuition fees have contributed to that and the inaccessibility of Education the rise in tuition fees ah well you mean that more Americans are going to private school or or to public education to higher education I may be but I would argue just as much that that the the squishiness of the academy since the 1960s maybe has contributed just as much when it became impermissible to strictly say this is true we don't know about this this is untrue so I know I don't I mean more people as many people as more people than ever more Americans than ever are going to ecology university so I don't think that that I mean it's a bad thing I'm not saying it's a good thing that public that higher education isn't cheaper and has allowed to get crazily expensive but I don't think that is a I don't think that's a big probably a big part of what I'm talking about it's out here it's a regular thank you we fit Mike if you can oh hi I had to take even and anything to you to learn to gentleman because I sat here just amazes you have everything everything you're saying but what I am wondering is if I understood you correctly you say that we are basically a very religious country in their cells in why are we acting so ungodly but the Jil christians like why are we treating each other with such great disrespect why aren't we then practicing but every religion teaches what no matter whether you're Jewish or Muslim Christian it doesn't matter yeah why are we acting the way we are today it's a great question and and hearing to say it gave me goosebumps as every time I hear somebody earnestly posed that question today especially Christians gives me goosebumps I don't know the answer that it it it astounds me it astounds me that but it's a different book and a different expert year the religious expert Geoffrey you answer well I'm the religious expert now you know it's interesting I don't I don't know the answer to it but I'll tell you that there's there's an interesting very interesting man said very interesting the other day I that it's worth repeating Jim mattis the secretary defense was asked and I've heard him say this before you know when he's asked what are the problems in America or in what one of the things that were you the most keep you up at night and of course you expect the Secretary of Defense and a secretary of defense a rare character in the Trump administration because I think he's fairly universally respected and people are generally glad that he's there you expect him to say North Korea Iran so on and so forth and he said I'm really worried because the thing that makes me most worried is that Americans don't seem to like each other anymore and and everything else is predicated on American unity right I mean that there is more that binds us together than then divides us I don't know what the answer I mean I tend to believe there is a part of the part of the answer is this is the phenomenon of social media which is a spins everybody up integrator and greater degrees of anger and allows for the tribal ization of American politics because now you can find your tribe and be reinforcements is a new thing which is an that hasn't happened before I mean people who had whatever political or other beliefs that they had before could get their newsletter once every month could have their magazine once every a couple of weeks but they weren't in this as you state to say the state of constant agitation and proselytization that electronic media those of you who are on Twitter know that the days that you're not on Twitter you're happier than when you are on Twitter I think that's true for me agitation and the anger that comes through a lot of social media and your ability to silo yourself away completely from people you might not like what might actually have something in common with that's that's that's it's a separate subject from what we're doing here and and to your point though as I was thinking about it of course Isis and the Salafist sand the Wahhabist considered themselves the most religious Muslims on earth and so it's not unique to American Christians who are acting in unchristian right time for one more question if somebody has do you see any hands at all oh sorry right there yeah in considering and reading the book you can see when your self examining the process do you consider this a rational examination or a giant rationalization nice and short but I don't understand what you mean yet you're you're piecing together this set of circumstances and you're looking at it as a rational connect-the-dot process to get to where we are or you feel disappointed about where we are so you're trying to rationalize it going backwards oh that's it's a good question and I don't know that seems a little bit of a distinction without a difference but IIIi have I have in all in various ways as I said I've been thinking in all the various ways that the United States of America seems unusual and an exceptional unlike other developed nations and and different than I was it different than it was when I was a child or the point or as much to the point and so no it was really a search for an explanation of that so I would say was I would say more of the former I mean again it's an Emmy is it purely irrational I don't know you'd be the judge if you decide to read it but it wasn't like oh my god things have gone to hell let me let me figure out why that happened no it was a fairly earnest attempt it began a fairly earnest attempt to say like why are we why are we so exceptional in all of the ways that don't necessarily mean great so and and and and this is what I came up with so no I I you know and and and and and and the fact as I said as we've said several times here that I didn't begin writing after Donald Trump that I finished the book before Donald Trump was nominated I think it's some evidence that it did not it was not it did not begin as a reverse engineering of Jesus how do we get to Trump it was like hmm why are we so weird and on that note thank you very much Kurt nazareans we thank you all of you

Channel: The Aspen Institute

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Id: sRqDzEOJImw

Length: 60min 53sec (3653 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2017