MORONIC INFERNO

Such was how Martin Amis saw the US in a collection of his essays he released in 2009. I have been trying this past year to put the finishing touches to a book about the State and about the efforts made over the past 50 years to “reform” it – both in Europe and the States where Trump, in his latest reincarnation, seems to have gone quite mad in his wanton destruction of state departments – assisted by teenage prodigies under the tutelage of Elon Musk who seems to be operating as a dictator. Indeed some analysts are claiming that what we are seeing in the US is little more than a COUP

Kurt Andersen is one of America’s most insightful analysts of its craziness – first plotting in Fantasy Land – how America went haywire (2017) and following up some three years later with Evil Geniuses – the unmaking of America; a recent history, situating both books thus

Whereas “Fantasyland” concerned Americans’ centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangerous flowering since the 1960s, “Evil Geniuses” chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business.

I’m surprised that the more people don’t talk about the groupthink which is permeating the US system – so well explained in Gillian Tett’s 2015 The Silo Effect and Matthew Syd’s Rebel Ideas – the power of diverse thinking (2019)

Further Reading

The Moronic Inferno and other visits to America Martin Amis

Discussion with Kurt Andersen https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpDUr/