Review
Title: How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy
Author: Thomas E. Patterson
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, OK
Genre: Non-fiction
Year Published: 2019
208 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-8061-6432-8
Price: $24.95
Reviewed by Dale E. Luffman for the Association of Mormon Letters
This is a timely text. It addresses the present – – a time in which Americans are losing touch with their reality. The author, Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, offers the reader a perceptive chronicle of “the rise of a world of ‘alternative facts’ and the slow motion cultural and political calamity unfolding around us” [from the dust cover of the book].
Patterson outlines the current sorry state of our democracy in his treatment of the subject identified in six focused chapters, originally offered as a series of six lectures at the Carl Albert Center at the University of Oklahoma. The chapters include descriptive titles essentially designed to guide the reader through a sensitive consideration of the book’s focus on the assault on reason that is crippling democracy in the Unites States. The titles are aptly descriptive of the content: “The Know Nothings”, “The Tribes”, “The Disruptors”, “The Performers”, “The Marketers”, and “The Level-Headed”.
The initial chapter, “The Know Nothings”, focuses on the misinformation that has come to cloud the minds of so many Americans, contending that misinformation abounds and is unprecedented. Unfortunately, according to Patterson, the misinformed have come to believe that they are well informed. The result: an environment in which people have come to look for something or someone to blame. Blame has come to outweigh the need to discover or to know the truth. Increasingly people have come to interpret information in ways that support pre-existing beliefs, what is called “confirmation bias”. Polarization follows and is exasperated by the scale of information and misinformation communicated through the news media and the internet.
What Professor Patterson calls “The Tribes” become the second focus of his argument. With dominant voices in both religion and political correctness, alternative voices have been quieted. And interest in listening to one another has continued to recede. Informed perspectives are being replaced by the small mindedness that comes from listening to only one side of an issue. Party tribalism has and often prevails. And trust becomes one of the victims as tribalism intensifies under partisanship. Three of the deepest divides identified in the text are geographical, racial, and religious divides. These divides, Patterson urges, have found voice in political parties. They contribute to explosive issues, division, and disorder: “When compromise and accommodation are thrown to the wind, bad things happen: instability and resentment rise, civility and unifying values erode, democracy begins to weaken” [p. 48].
Disruptors, the focus of Chapter Three, introduces the reader to the drawing power of “fake news” and its tarnishing and undermining effect on democracy. “Political trust is at its lowest level in polling history” [p.50] and disruptors have gained the upper hand, making it their business to fill the public’s heads with information that seems to accelerate distrust and conspiracy theories. The other is blamed.
Chapter Four introduces the reader to the “Performers”, where politics seems to be increasingly more akin to theater or the entertainment industry than that which seeks to serve the public good. Tracing the evolution of this phenomenon Patterson asserts that political language has become a manipulative game. Exaggeration, mischaracterization, and distortion of truth seem to be deliberately pursued by a variety of sources, with the public being gamed: “heat, speed, trivialization and deceit virtually guarantee that citizens will be misinformed and more than a bit confused” [p. 81].
“The marketing of news and politics in America”, contends Patterson in Chapter Five, “is a better deal for marketers than it is for its public” [p. 84]. The news product, tailored to tastes in multiple forums, has come to dominance through the marketing of news outlets who have made it their business to sell “outrage” [p. 91], according to the author. Hot button issues have now become the political marketer’s dream. They are easily sold; unfortunately, they are quite difficult to solve. Combined with deception and the public is overwhelmed, assaulted, and crippled.
With politics currently plagued with disorder, Patterson invites the reader of Chapter Six to consider means by which to restore order to current political realities, entrusting America’s fortunes to level-headed citizens and politicians. The chapter identifies and maps some considerations for both the media and for the public, reclaiming an America that has seemingly lost its mind. Restoring a sense of commitment to mutual tolerance and cultural restraint echoes throughout the book, addressing the forces that disrupt, perform, create, and market divisiveness.
Borrowing from Hannah Arendt, Patterson suggests that the rise of demagogues is fostered by communities and peoples “for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists” [page xii]. Given a politics that has fallen off the rails, the author calls upon the American public to move from currently held tribal conflicts to more reasoned discussions. Citizens must also demand that the media, and those that represent the public in governance, become dedicated to the common cause, avoiding that which divides and magnifies disorder. The book is a recipe for the reasoned, thinking person who desires a more ordered, considerate, and just society.
A superb and timely text, “How America Lost Its Mind: The Assault on Reason That’s Crippling Our Democracy” would seem to commend itself to Latter-day Saint sentiments. For those who would seek order, truth, and integrity in personal as well as public spheres, this little book certainly has a place. Personal reading and consideration is a must. With mutual conversation regarding the issues raised by Professor Patterson, a community of faith may also be enabled in its witness to what serves the common good for which it is called.