For over a decade, I have been both curious and appalled at the country’s love affair with Donald Trump. Trump is a fascinating study in narcissism, self adulation, misogyny and hucksterism. It was not until I read a book titled “Fantasyland — How America Went Haywire” by Kurt Anderson that I began to understand his appeal.

Anderson’s book brokers the concept that “we have passed through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.” He cites statistical evidence about the number of people who deny global warming, believe that Genesis is a factual account of the world’s creation, believe in telepathy and ghosts. A quarter of the American public believe that vaccines cause autism and that Donald Trump won the general election and that Barak Obama was the anti-Christ. One in five Americans believe that the media and government add secret mind-controlling technology and that U.S. officials were complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Why and how? Again, Anderson provides a possible explanation: “Because we’re Americans … being an American means we can believe any damn thing we want, that our beliefs are equal or superior to anyone else’s — experts be damned.”

So, it should be no surprise that Donald Trump was elected on the basis of lies and obvious fantasies along with such ridiculous slogans as “Lock Her Up” and “Mexican immigrants are streaming across our borders” now replaced with “Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Springfield.” Does it ever stop? I mean, just how gullible are we? Apparently VERY gullible.

Before the advent of the internet, crackpots were mostly isolated and had a hard time keeping themselves convinced of their alternate realities, let along convincing others. Now conspiracy theories run rampant through the internet, including attacks on basic reality from Russia and China as well as from the far-out fringes of society. Again, in Anderson’s words, “we are freer than ever to custom-make reality, to believe whatever or pretend to be whomever we wish. … Truth in general becomes flexible, a matter of personal preference.”

“Fantasyland” is an interesting read, not just because it deals with the present but also because it deals with the history of America back to the time of its discovery by Europeans who thought it was a fine idea to introduce slavery of indigenous populations as a way of securing wealth. It then goes on to discuss such fantasies as Puritan persecution of witches, popularity of PT Barnum’s scams, promotion of slavery in the South by both politicians and religious leaders during the Civil War, fear of unions and communism during the McCarthy years, polarization of news coverage when Reagan decided that “equal time” for candidates was no longer necessary and creation of “Reality TV” shows (what the heck is that anyway?).

And yet America thrives on this stuff. If Trump has proven anything, it is that fear is the one political trope that can unite his constituency. It takes nothing more. He has turned the Republican Party into a place that sows hatred of immigrants, dysfunction of government, disrespect for the rule of law, Supreme Court nominations controlled by the Federalist Society, elections based almost solely on raising campaign contributions and a Supreme Court mired in so-called “Originalism” theory as if they can read the minds of the Founding Fathers while thinking it is just fine for people to carry military-style weapons.”

Hannah Arrendt, in her book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” written in 1951, wrote the following prescient words:

“A mixture of gullibility and cynicism have been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses … would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow … one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism … and admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

Let us pray that America is a lot better and smarter than that. Vote for hope, vote for the future. Vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. It is the only rational choice. I, for one, am sick of the stupidity, nonsense, never-ending lies and fake patriotism.

(James Connolly lives in Lake Clear.)

(Sources: Anderson cites data by the Pew Research Center, University of Chicago, Gallup, Scripps, Harris, Public Policy Polling, Cooperative Congressional Election Study, and the Project on Climate Change Communication among others.)