Here is the essay, and it's a long one, which Andersen wrote for The Atlantic, and which is adopted from his recent book, "Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500 Year History". It's the part of his book that focuses on developments and influences from the 60's and early 70's. It's clear to me, in reading the negative light in which Andersen casts many of those developments, that he is a scientific materialist, and I am clearly not. The generation of the 60's was the generation in which I came of age, and I do not view many of the trends from that era as Andersen does. But, it's valuable, I believe, to try and understand how we got to the point where the truth is now whatever we feel the truth is, whatever we want it to be, and how Donald Trump may be a culmination of sorts for that trend. Here is the link, followed by an excerpt to convey the flavor of it:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-america-lost-its-mind/534231/
Today, each of us is freer than ever to custom-make reality, to believe whatever and pretend to be whoever we wish. Which makes all the lines between actual and fictional blur and disappear more easily. Truth in general becomes flexible, personal, subjective. And we like this new ultra-freedom, insist on it, even as we fear and loathe the ways so many of our wrongheaded fellow Americans use it.
Treating real life as fantasy and vice versa, and taking preposterous ideas seriously, is not unique to Americans. But we are the global crucible and epicenter. We invented the fantasy-industrial complex; almost nowhere outside poor or otherwise miserable countries are flamboyant supernatural beliefs so central to the identities of so many people. This is American exceptionalism in the 21st century. The country has always been a one-of-a-kind place. But our singularity is different now. We’re still rich and free, still more influential and powerful than any other nation, practically a synonym for developed country. But our drift toward credulity, toward doing our own thing, toward denying facts and having an altogether uncertain grip on reality, has overwhelmed our other exceptional national traits and turned us into a less developed country.
People see our shocking Trump moment—this post-truth, “alternative facts” moment—as some inexplicable and crazy new American phenomenon. But what’s happening is just the ultimate extrapolation and expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional for its entire history.
