Back in 2005, the comedian Stephen Colbert coined a new word, truthiness, meaning the truth of something that people feel in their gut instead of their mind. At the time, he was in the character of his alter ego, a conservative politician, who was parodying some of the comments of the Bush administration. However, the word has caught on, and now it has been used in a wide variety of situations in which people seem to have their own versions of the truth, much to the consternation of politicians and journalists. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late senator from New York, famously said, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

In a brilliant article in the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine entitled “How American Lost its Mind” (September, 2017, pp. 76-91), Kurt Andersen details the growth of what he calls Fantasyland, the phenomenon of people all across America believing in statements and events that have very little basis in reality. Not surprisingly, he points to many half-truths spoken by Donald Trump (he cites one study which claims that Trump’s statements were found to be lies 50% of the time), or the “alternative facts” of his spokesperson Kellyanne Conway. However, it is not only those on the right who are guilty of living in Fantasyland. He notes people on the far left also believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories, that extraterrestrials have visited the earth, and that vaccines cause autism, despite a lack of evidence that any of these claims are true. In fact, Andersen provides a lengthy history of this phenomenon that includes Americans from all walks of life, tracing it all the way back to the Esalen Institute and counterculture movements of the 1960s, the Watergate conspiracy theories of the 1970s, the Reagan era, Clinton foibles, and the latest Trump political machinations.

As a linguist, I am fascinated by this phenomenon for two reasons. For one, linguists are normally concerned with the rhetoric or metaphors of political speeches designed to persuade an audience to agree with or vote for that speaker. However, in the case of Andersen’s Fantasyland, it is interesting to think of what the listeners are understanding rather than what the speaker is saying. Normally, we do not have the privilege of knowing what is truly going on in the minds of voters. The details that Andersen provides in his article shed light on the mind-sets of many Americans. Secondly, I am also fascinated by the metaphors used to describe this phenomenon. It is well known that we use a wide variety of metaphors to describe people who are allegedly crazy such as being batty, loopy, a few cards short of a deck, etc. However, I was amazed to see how many different metaphors Andersen used to describe other aspects of this truthiness phenomenon including conceptual metaphors from animals, nature, humans, family, farming, cooking, science, balance, vision, clothing, objects, movement, buildings, and literary references.

Today I include several examples from each type of metaphor. However, since I found such an incredible variety of metaphors, I will have to split this blog post into two parts. I will provide the second part of the post in about a week. As usual, the quotations are taken directly from the article. Some quotes are repeated in different categories if they have two or more types of metaphors. Italics are mine.

Animals and Arachnids

It is very common to create metaphors based on our common experience with animals, insects and arachnids. Andersen uses some colorful metaphors to describe various aspects of the phenomenon of people holding unusual beliefs. In one case, he describes some of these people as being batty, a metaphor perhaps based on the erratic flying motion of bats or the correlated metaphor of having bats in your belfry. He also describes certain groups working together as being a spider web of people or other groups of people as rabble, a Middle English word meaning a pack of wild animals. Anderson quotes Donald Trump reviving an old myth that Bill and Hillary Clinton had something to do with the apparent suicide of their colleague Vince Foster, calling it fishy. Finally, he describes the situation of Americans experiencing this Fantasyland phenomenon as being canaries in a coal mine since canaries were used in coalmines to detect poisonous gases. If they suddenly died, it was a warning to the mineworkers to get out of the mine as fast as possible.

batty

Example: “The Reagan presidency was famously a triumph of truthiness and entertainment, and in the 1990s, as problematically batty beliefs kept going mainstream, presidential politics continued merging with the fantasy-industrial complex.”

web

Example: “Within a few decades, the belief that a web of villainous elites was covertly seeking to impose a malevolent global regime made its way from the lunatic right to the mainstream.”

rabble rouser

Example: “But over the past few decades, a lot of the rabble they roused came to believe all the untruths.”

fishy

Example: “He revived the 1993 fantasy about the Clintons’ friend Vince Foster—his death, Trump said, was ‘very fishy,’…”

canary in a coal mine

Example: “I wonder whether it’s only America’s destiny, exceptional as ever, to unravel in this way. Or maybe we’re just early adopters, the canaries in the global mine, and Canada and Denmark and Japan and China and all the rest will eventually follow us down our tunnel.”

 

Nature

Other aspects of nature are also commonly used to create conceptual metaphors. Andersen’s article contains quite a few of these as well. A common metaphor from nature is to call a new social trend as a grassroots movement, as if the people are growing like grass in one’s yard. Roots of trees are also used metaphorically to indicate the origins of certain phenomena. In this case, Andersen talks about the taproots of certain kinds of prejudice in America. Another common nature metaphor is to talk about a trend as if it is a person sliding down a hill or a slippery slope. There are also quite a few examples of river metaphors: popular media is referred to as mainstream, as if it is flowing in the middle of a river; social trends may flow out from a source; there might be tidal surges of new social constructs knocking down the flood walls, while there may be efforts to slow the flood or repair the levees to stop the damage, and there may be a cascade of false beliefs creating a pool in which people surf and swim. Finally, there is a nice contrastive pair of metaphors, comparing the darkness of winter to the light of spring and hope for a better future.

grassroots movement

Example: “We must call out the dangerously untrue and unreal. A grassroots movement against one kind of cultural squishiness has taken off and lately reshaped our national politics—the opposition to political correctness. I envision a comparable struggle that insists on distinguishing between the factually true and the blatantly false.”

taproot

Example: “Trump launched his political career by embracing a brand-new conspiracy theory twisted around two American taproots—fear and loathing of foreigners and of nonwhites.”

slippery slopes

Example: “There are many slippery slopes, leading in various directions to other exciting nonsense. During the past several decades, those naturally slippery slopes have been turned into a colossal and permanent complex of interconnected, crisscrossing bobsled tracks, which Donald Trump slid down right into the White House.”

mainstream

Example: “The word mainstream has recently become a pejorative, shorthand for bias, lies, oppression by the elites.”

flow out

Example: “Conservatives are correct that the anything-goes relativism of college campuses wasn’t sequestered there, but when it flowed out across America it helped enable extreme Christianities and lunacies on the right—gun-rights hysteria, black-helicopter conspiracism, climate-change denial, and more.”

tidal surge, flood walls

In this case, Andersen is describing the work of Charles Reich, a 1970 book on counterculture called The Greening of America.

Example: “His wishful error was believing that once the tidal surge of new sensibility brought down the flood walls, the waters would flow in only one direction, carving out a peaceful, cooperative, groovy new continental utopia, hearts and minds changed like his, all of America Berkeleyized and Vermontified.”

slow the flood, repair the levees

Example: “But I think we can slow the flood, repair the levees, and maybe stop things from getting any worse.”

cascade, surf, swim

Example: “False beliefs were rendered both more real-seeming and more contagious, creating a kind of fantasy cascade in which millions of bedoozled Americans surfed and swam.”

winter, light

Example: “Even as we’ve entered this long winter of foolishness and darkness, when too many Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality, it has been an epoch of astonishing hope and light as well.”

 

Farming

I found it fascinating that Andersen often describes the growth of different belief systems as if they were crops growing on a farm. He claims that the beliefs were like seeds that flowered or sprouted into new social movements. He describes a case for the Esalen Institute, a pioneering New Age center in California in the 1960s, as a hotbed of ideas, as if they were plants growing in a greenhouse. In a common fruit metaphor, he describes some conservatives as cherry-picking libertarian policies to suit their needs, as if these policies were ripe cherries. Finally, Andersen claims that some of Donald Trump’s ideas are hogwash, named for the leftover food scraps given to hogs on the farm.

seeds

Example: “Those earnest beliefs planted more seeds for the extravagant American conspiracy thinking that by the turn of the century would be rampant and seriously toxic.”

flower

Example: “As the Vietnam War escalated and careened, antirationalism flowered.”

sprout

Example: “Conspiracy theories were more of a modern right-wing habit before people on the left signed on. However, the belief that the federal government had secret plans to open detention camps for dissidents sprouted in the ’70s on the paranoid left before it became a fixture on the right.”

hotbed

Example: “Esalen’s founders were big Laing fans, and the institute became a hotbed for the idea that insanity was just an alternative way of perceiving reality.”

cherry-pick

Example: “Republicans are very selective, cherry-picking libertarians: Let business do whatever it wants and don’t spoil poor people with government handouts; let individuals have gun arsenals but not abortions or recreational drugs or marriage with whomever they wish; and don’t mention Ayn Rand’s atheism.”

hogwash

Example: “During the campaign, Trump repeated the falsehood that vaccines cause autism. And instead of undergoing a normal medical exam from a normal doctor and making the results public, like nominees had before, Trump went on The Dr. Oz Show and handed the host test results from his wacky doctor. Did his voters know that his hogwash was hogwash?”

 

Cooking

Perhaps correlating with the farm metaphors are a few examples of cooking metaphors. In a common way to describe an unreasonable idea or person, Andersen describes them as being half-baked, as if it is a loaf of bread not quite ready to come out of the oven.   He also provides a wonderful metaphor based on a cup of tea – steeping the tea bag in water, letting the smells and vapors permeate the room.

half-baked

Example: “That is, they inspired half-baked and perverse followers in the academy, whose arguments filtered out into the world at large: All approximations of truth, science as much as any fable or religion, are mere stories devised to serve people’s needs or interests.”

steep, vapors

Example: “The right has had three generations to steep in this, its taboo vapors wafting more and more into the main chambers of conservatism, becoming familiar, seeming less outlandish.”

 

Human Body

Not surprisingly, we commonly create metaphors based on our own human experiences. In one unusual metaphor, we talk of a crazy person as a crackpot, referring back to an old slang term for the head as a pot. Another common way to describe crazy behavior as someone who is losing grip on reality as if it is an object that can be grasped with the hands. Andersen also compares Trump’s need for attention to a person who is ravenous and insatiable for food. I also noticed two metaphors of illness and cancer. Andersen quotes Rick Perry claiming that Donald Trump was a “cancer on conservatism” while he also notes that the American acceptance of Fantasyland has metastasized as if it is a cancer that will spread to other countries.

crackpot

Example: “Belief in gigantic conspiracies has moved from the crackpot periphery to the mainstream.”

grip on reality

Example: “Even as we’ve entered this long winter of foolishness and darkness, when too many Americans are losing their grip on reason and reality, it has been an epoch of astonishing hope and light as well.”

ravenous and insatiable

Example: “But Trump’s need for any and all public attention always seemed to me more ravenous and insatiable than any other public figure’s, akin to an addict’s for drugs.”

cancer on conservatism

Example: “Before Trump won their nomination and the presidency, when he was still ‘a cancer on conservatism’ that must be “discarded” (former Governor Rick Perry) and an ‘utterly amoral’ ‘narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen’ (Senator Ted Cruz), Republicans hated Trump’s ideological incoherence—they didn’t yet understand that his campaign logic was a new kind, blending exciting tales with a showmanship that transcends ideology.”

metastasized

Example: “The American experiment has metastasized out of control. Being American now means we can believe anything we want.”

 

Family

I also found examples of metaphors based on family relations. Andersen describes Esalen as a mother church in the United States as if it had given birth to a new type of religion. He also provides another brilliant contrastive pair of metaphors, describes incredulity and skepticism as fraternal twins.

mother church

Example: “Esalen is a mother church of a new American religion for people who think they don’t like churches or religions but who still want to believe in the supernatural.”

fraternal twin

Example: “Trump’s genius was to exploit the skeptical disillusion with politics—there’s too much equivocating; democracy’s a charade—but also to pander to Americans’ magical thinking about national greatness. Extreme credulity is a fraternal twin of extreme skepticism.”

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That’s all for Part 1.  Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon!