How America Got Divorced from Reality: Christian Utopias, Anti-Elitism, Media Circus | Kurt Andersen

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Americans are inherently a little crazy. But now the crazy is being enabled by politicians in the White House and by the internet. How exactly did it get so bad?

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Americans have always been magical thinkers and passionate believers in the untrue. We were started by the Puritans in New England who wanted to create and did create a Christian utopia and theocracy as they waited for the eminent second coming of Christ and the end of days. And in the south by a bunch of people who were convinced, absolutely convinced that this place they’d never been was full of gold just to be plucked from the dirt in Virginia and they stayed there looking and hoping for gold for 20 years before they finally faced the facts and the evidence and decided that they weren’t going to get rich overnight there. So that was the beginning. And then we’ve had centuries of buyer-beware charlatanism to an extreme degree and medical quackery to an extreme degree and increasingly exotic extravagant implausible religions over and over again from Mormonism to Christian Science to Scientology in the last century.

And we’ve had this antiestablishment “I’m not going to trust the experts, I’m not going to trust the elite” from our character from the beginning. Now all those things came together and were super-charged in the 1960s when you were entitled to your own truth and your own reality. Then a generation later when the Internet came along, giving each of those realities, no matter how false or magical or nutty they are, their own kind of media infrastructure. We had entertainment, again for the last couple hundred years, but especially in the last 50 years permeating all the rest of life, including Presidential politics from John F. Kennedy through Ronald Ragan to Bill Clinton. So the thing was set up for Donald Trump to exploit all these various American threads and astonishingly become president, but then you look at this history and it’s like no we should have seen this coming.

The idea of America from the beginning was that you could come here, reinvent yourself, be anybody you want, live any way you wanted, believe any thing you wanted. For the first few hundred years, like everywhere else in the world, celebrity and fame were a result of some kind of accomplishment or achievement, sometimes not a great accomplishment or achievement, but you did something in the world to earn renown. America really was the key place that invented the modern celebrity culture, which was, beginning a century ago, more and more not necessarily about having won a war or led a people or written a great book or painted a great painting, but about being famous, fame for its own sake. We created that, we created Hollywood, we created the whole culture industry and that then became what I call the fantasy industrial complex where, certainly in the last few decades more than ever more than anybody thought possible before, fame itself, however you’ve got it, was a primary goal for people. And again, as so many of the things I talk about in Fantasyland, not uniquely to America but more here than anywhere. And then you get reality television, which was this unholy hybrid of the fictional and the real for the last now generation where that blur between what’s real and what’s not is pumped into our media stream willy-nilly. There are now more reality shows on television than there were shows on television 20 years ago. And that’s another way for nobodies to become famous overnight. YouTube, another way for nobodies to become a famous overnight for doing almost nothing or nothing.

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Erykah Badu: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

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Aug. 15, 2018 | Felix Contreras — Some folks around the NPR Music office said they felt an almost spiritual connection to Erykah Badu during her visit to the Tiny Desk. And that was before she and her band even played a single note. It came from the waft of earthly scents that followed in her wake, to the flowing dreads and clothes that hung on her like robes.

After her self-introduction, which included a rundown of her spiritual and creative aliases, Badu rolled into one of her earliest musical calling cards, “Rimshot.” It’s an ode to the sound the percussionist makes when a drumstick is struck against the metal edge of the snare drum. On this performance, as on her 1997 album Baduizm, it becomes a device to play with time — stretching it, stopping it, suspending it. Propelled by jazz chords on the piano and the steady pulse of the acoustic bass, the playful performance unfolded in the tradition of the best bebop.

But the panoramic song “Green Eyes” is the centerpiece of Badu’s Tiny Desk performance. It’s wide-ranging in scope and musical arrangement and brilliantly executed by the jazz and hip-hop musicians in her backing band. The story of heartbreak is striking enough, but her interpretation showcases her formidable vocal skills. By the time it was over, we were all just as emotionally and spiritually spent as she was from the experience.

Erykah Badu is an artist for the ages. To old-school jazz fans like myself, names like Nina Simone, Betty Carter and Shirley Horn come to mind as much as Billie Holiday because of Badu’s singular approach to a lyric. They all cut their own creative path and left behind a legacy that you can identify with just one note. Erykah Badu is on that same path, and one day her name will be mentioned along with the other Elders who share her spirit of musical adventure.

Set List
“Rimshot”
“Green Eyes”

Musicians
Erykah Badu (lead vocals), RC Williams (Keys), Braylon Lacy (bass), Cleon Edwards (Drums), Frank Moka (Percussion), Kenneth Whalum (Sax), Keyon Harrold (Trumpet), Dwayne Kerr (Flute)

Credits
Producers: Abby O’Neill, Morgan Noelle Smith; Creative Director: Bob Boilen; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Morgan Noelle Smith, Maia Stern, Kara Frame, Khun Minn Ohn, CJ Riculan; Production Assistants: Catherine Zhang, Téa Mottolese; Photo: Morgan Noelle Smith/NPR.

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Troye Sivan – Bloom

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“Bloom” available now:
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Lyrics:
Take a trip into my garden
I’ve got so much to show ya
The fountains and the waters
Are begging just to know ya

And it’s true, baby
I’ve been saving this for you, baby

I guess it’s something like a fun fair
Put gas into the motor
And boy I’ll meet you right there
We’ll ride the rollercoaster

Cause it’s true, babe
I been saving this for you, baby

(I need you to)
Tell me right before it goes down
(Promise me you’ll)
Hold my hand if I get scared now
(Might tell you to)
Take a second baby slow it down
You should know I, you should know I

(Yeah I boom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom) just for you
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Come on baby play me like a love song
Every time it comes on
I get this sweet desire
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Now it’s the perfect season
Yeah, let’s go for it this time
We’re dancing with the trees and
I’ve waited my whole life

It’s true, baby
I been saving this for you, baby

(I need you to)
Tell me right before it goes down
(Promise me you’ll)
Hold my hand if I get scared now
(Might tell you to)
Take a second baby slow it down
You should know I, you should know I

(Yeah I boom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom) just for you
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Come on baby play me like a love song
Every time it comes on
I get this sweet desire
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Just for you
I bloom just for you
I bloom just for you

Baby, baby, I’ve been saving this for you, baby
Baby, baby, I’ve been saving this for you, baby

(Yeah I boom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom) just for you
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Come on baby play me like a love song
Every time it comes on
I get this sweet desire
(Yeah I bloom) I bloom just for you
(I bloom), just for you

Just for you
I bloom just for you
I bloom just for you
Just for you
I bloom just for you
I bloom just for you

Director: Bardia Zeinali
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Director of Photography: Kelly Jeffrey
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Production: PRODn at Art + Commerce
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Edit + Post Production: Will Town for Modern Post
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Stylist: Kyle Luu
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Makeup Artist: James Kaliardos
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Hairstylist: Jawara
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Manicurist: Michina Koide
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Set Design: Theresa Rivera for MHS Artists
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Florals: Brittany Asch for Brrch
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Movement: Emma Chadwick
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Music video by Troye Sivan performing Bloom. © 2018 Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd.

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