Depositphotos Image ID: 140440702 Copyright: Marcinmaslowski

I recently read an editorial by Jerry Davich, a Tribune writer, focusing on a new book by Kurt Anderson, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire A 500-Year History. The book chronicles the history of the American psyche on belief. It sounds fascinating. Davich says it resonated with what he believes about “Americans’ beliefs”, but what Davich says doesn’t resonate with me.

Davich quotes Anderson’s observation that “this post-factual, ‘fake news ‘ moment we’re all living through … is not something new,  but rather the ultimate expression of our national character”. We are free to believe absolutely anything in this country, and so we do, “proudly so, ” says Davich!

I can see how the “wishful dreamers, magical thinkers and true believers” Anderson describes in his book could “be embedded in our DNA”. The United States of America was founded by dreamers and believers. And such wild thoughts of fancy as carried pioneers to our shores were likely fertile soil for the “hucksters and their suckers” who became a part of the American experience.

While these things do strike a chord and make some sense, the conclusions that Davich reaches about belief, itself, strike a discordant  note with me. They throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. While mixing metaphors may be bad literary taste, I think the shoe fits.

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