“We have fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction. We have a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur. And in all probability it… — Kurt Andersen Truth Copy Share Image
“Neither side has been aware of it, but large factions of the elite left and the populist right have been wearing different… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“it was the sudden, shocking exposure of actual conspiracies starting in the 1970s that made Americans overcorrect, to assume that anything bad… — Kurt Andersen Conspiracy theories Copy Share Image
Anything remotely resembling news media is going to continue to migrate online until very little or none of it is produced on… — Kurt Andersen Anything Copy Share Image
“With the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, a new American laissez-faire had been officially declared. If lots more incorrect and preposterous assertions… — Kurt Andersen Freedom Copy Share Image
“So now they would go all the way. Ferociously believing every miracle and myth in an ancient text wasn’t enough. They were… — Kurt Andersen Book of revelation Copy Share Image
“The Puritans are conventionally considered more "moderate" than the Pilgrims. This is like calling al-Qaeda more moderate than ISIS. The Massachusetts Bay… — Kurt Andersen Religion Copy Share Image
“Wallowing in nostalgia for a lost Golden Age ruined by meddling liberal outsiders from Washington and New York, previously a white Southern… — Kurt Andersen Black people Copy Share Image
“Acknowledging actual, specific conspiracies makes sense. But reflexive conspiracism can become a bad habit and a misguided way of making sense of… — Kurt Andersen Bad habit Copy Share Image
“The consequence of such mingling is that an individual who enters the communications system pursuing one interest soon becomes aware of stigmatized… — Kurt Andersen Communication Copy Share Image
“JONES IS BOTH symptom and cause of how knee-jerk, florid conspiracism has become rampant and normalized in America, a fixture of the… — Kurt Andersen Air force Copy Share Image
“it will require a struggle to try to make America reality-based again.” — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“The problem is that Republicans have purposefully torn down the validating institutions,” says the political journalist Josh Barro, a Republican until 2016.… — Kurt Andersen Democracy Copy Share Image
“We can argue all we want about how different guns were in the 1790s, when it took a minute to fire three… — Kurt Andersen Death Copy Share Image
“The great compromise between the American religious impulse and the American Enlightenment in the 1700s permitted any and every conceivable sect to… — Kurt Andersen Religion Copy Share Image
“Europeans had highly developed regional and national cultures and societies before they bolted on Protestantism. America, on the other hand, was half-created… — Kurt Andersen American exceptionalism Copy Share Image
“Let me quote once more from Tolkien’s lecture, which he delivered a few months before the fantasy-besotted Nazis started World War II.… — Kurt Andersen War Copy Share Image
“As I’ve said, there are left-wing believers in nonexistent conspiracies and other fantasies, but they’re not nearly as numerous or influential. During… — Kurt Andersen Bernie sanders Copy Share Image
“Sharia law uses the sacred texts of Islam as the basis for moral behavior, the way Jews are supposed to use the… — Kurt Andersen Christianity Copy Share Image
“the Branch Davidians’ theology is not so different from that of a large fraction of Americans. We call Koresh a “cult leader,”… — Kurt Andersen Jim jones Copy Share Image
“It’s telling that Americans know and celebrate Plymouth but Jamestown hardly at all. The myth we’ve constructed says that the first nonnative… — Kurt Andersen Freedom Copy Share Image
“THE BIG PIECE of secular conventional wisdom about Protestantism has been that it gave a self-righteous oomph to moneymaking and capitalism—hard work… — Kurt Andersen Conventional wisdom Copy Share Image
I think we tend to be kind of ahistorical, and think that life as we are living it in the moment is… — Kurt Andersen Be kind Copy Share Image
“Mix the Protestant impulse to find the meaning and purpose in everything with the Enlightenment’s empiricism, and you get our American mania… — Kurt Andersen Copy Share Image
“A MAIN ARGUMENT of this book concerns how so many parts of American life have morphed into forms of entertainment. From 1980… — Kurt Andersen American life Copy Share Image
