Fantasyland How America Went Haywire

My sister and I both read this book recently. I loved it but I'm pretty sure she took it as a personal attack just like most American’s under the age of 80 will. 

Fantasyland rails against the made-up nonsense world that many Americans are today living in. The world where capitalism is King, the world where what you feel is just important as what is and opinions are just as important as facts. According to this book and my personal observation most of the people living in the United States today cope with the stresses of modern life by retreating into their own personal fantasies and ignoring reality as much as possible. 

What is Fantasyland? Fantasyland is the world where everyone is equal and must be compensated equally. Fantasyland is the world where hard work is repaid with success and money. Fantasyland is the world that Americans inhabit when they believe that there are no consequences to buying cheap Chinese goods or Mexican cartel grown avocados and The Federal Reserve system is the best we can do. In short Fantasyland is everything that is wrong with America but is also central to America's ability to succeed. It is the ability to ignore reality, it is the right to construct your own world where what you believe is just as important that's what actually exists.

Fantasyland is the land of Amber Heard, the horrible evil woman who accused Johnny Depp of physically attacking her after she was the one who had attacked him. How is it that a famous woman could get away with a bald-faced lie to the court, the public and her husband about being physically abused and everyone believed her? That can only happen in Fantasyland where belief itself is the starting point. 

Certain types have a hard time in Fantasyland, especially autistics who more naturally see a less distorted version of reality. Greta has said it herself, autism makes it hard to lie to others but also to yourself. 

In my opinion the millennial generation and the United States was pique Fantasyland, the world where everyone deserves everything and no one is at fault for anything. Only the most privileged generation in the history of the world could occupy such a nonsense mentality. Financially, the average American is in something like the top 0.5% in the world, yet we were central to the “fight for the 99%” protests, a literal nonsensical stand to take. Fighting for the 99% would have meant pledging to send 50% of your income oversees, or sponsoring poor families in the third world. Not yelling about how the top 0.5% should really be in the 0.1% and the top 0.001% brought down an order of magnitude. This was a great read but if you are a citizen of Fantasyland stay away. You will not be happy with this book. 

I love nearly everything about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but the simple fact is is she's vying for Queen a Fantasyland. AOC lives in the world where everyone deserves health care where everyone deserves a job where everyone deserves to be happy. It is a fantasy occupied by idiots who have never had to step foot in the real world. People suffer, for a brief blip of time this last 70 years the West has had a respite from the brutishness of life but it never really went away, just for the wealthy.  

Citizens of Fantasyland believe that decisions are made at the top and that if you're not getting what you want it's because you're being abused or oppressed. The biggest challenge for occupants of Fantasyland is trying to figure out who their oppressors are. For women it's often men, for minorities it's whites, for the poor whites it's the government... 

Conservatism may be a mental disorder but on the other end, liberals living in Fantasyland are capable of doing just as much harm.