Charles Eisenstein Endorses Trump, but Thinks You're Not Clever Enough to Notice (Part 2)
In latest post Eisenstein ignores his terrible judgment re: RFK Jr., says Harris win would be 'catastrophic,' & claims backroom knowledge that Trump is a decent guy, would be pretty cool as president.
NOTE: This is PART 2 of a multi-part series.
See PART 1 here: “Charles Eisenstein Whitewashes Trump, Caricatures & Demonizes Democrats in Post Decrying Caricatures & Demonization.”
I said I would dig into a close reading of Charles Eisenstein’s latest post, “Shades of Many Colors,” in Part 2, but, alas, that will have to wait for Part 3.
First, I have to address the piece’s overarching problem. Namely, it says nothing, really.
The TL;DR is…
play nice? be love? don’t forget about compassion?
don’t have an opinion?
And if you do, don’t reveal it? That would be un-sphinx-like. And also, that would be dehumanization.
If Charles were to say whether or not he supports Bobby-supporting-Trump, that would be the same dynamic of tribalism, othering, and dehumanization that leads to pogroms and wars.
That’s why Charles can’t endorse or not-endorse Trump, don’t you see? That would be dehumanization. That would be enacting the us-vs-them mentality behind all our problems.
Why this same “logic” does NOT apply to Charles’s endorsement of Bobby Kennedy Jr. for president is never made clear, but there are mysteries in this universe, child, that are best simply acknowledged and left alone, I guess.
In its essence—read for its main currents, not its many eddys; scrutinized for its moving parts—the overarching message of Charles Eisenstein’s post, “Shades of Many Colors,” is:
… maybe Vote Trump? How bad could it be?
This is the case whether or not Charles says so, or is eager to claim that.
WHY THIS MATTERS: ELECTION 2024
In PART 1, I gave some background and context to my long-standing concerns about where Charles’s work was heading… and, well, now here we are. Many of his previous admirers are shaking their heads and asking “WTF?” as Eisenstein refuses to say anything beyond 3rd-grade platitudes about the new Trump-RFK Jr. alliance.
And let’s be real: energetically it is like a Trump-RFK Jr. ticket right now. If Trump could take back his pick of Vance, without admitting his own terrible judgment, and swap in Bobby, he would.
Again, I don’t take joy in this, and it’s not personal. I have tons of love for Charles and wish him well. But it’s incredibly important that Donald Trump and the extremists of the Republican Party up and down the ballot be trounced, politically speaking, with love, solidarity, creativity, and joy in our hearts as we trounce them at the polls on and before November 5.
If we do that, we can work on a long-term strategy to rein in the Supreme Court, and a short-term strategy of, as quickly as possible, making things materially better for everyone, including Trump voters and Republican voters.
Charles Eisenstein is now actively and publicly helping to defeat Democrat Kamala Harris and elect Republican Donald Trump. And because I understand the significance of the Supreme Court, I take that seriously.
If it falls to me to call out reckless nonsense as just that, so be it. (As a Libra, I prefer harmony and chill vibes; but—as a Libra—I’ll prioritize justice.)
No amount of comments from his followers along the lines of “Oh my god, Charles, THANK YOU; there is no us-and-them. You are the master of nuance. Your enlightened spirit moves me. You truly express ALL sides without ever revealing your opinion. I will meet you in that field ‘beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,’ dear man!” changes the fact that our political, economic, social, and cultural landscape will be severely impacted—for decades to come—by the disaster of a Republican winning the White House in 2016 and—predictably, inevitably—appointing THREE EXTREME RIGHT-WING JUSTICES to an already extreme right-wing Supreme Court. A Court that is now out of control, according to many constitutional law scholars.
(I’m using the Supreme Court as just one example of the stakes; we could substitute democracy, the rule of law, hatred and bigotry, abortion rights, the freaking climate-nature-extinction crisis, voting rights, basic truth and not-lying, and on.)
Does political campaign advisor and presidential-campaign speechwriter, Charles Eisenstein, have any thoughts on the Supreme Court, which, after all, constitutes AN ENTIRE THIRD of the federal government (and largely has veto power over everything else)? Hard to know; he doesn’t say.
As he encourages people to vote for RFK Jr., in an incredibly close election involving Donald Trump, has he looked into the real-world impacts on millions of historically disenfranchised Black, brown, and poor voters affected by the ruling in Shelby Co. v. Holder (2013), which essentially undid the Voting Rights Act that MLK and them did all that marching for?
Any concern for the real-world impacts on millions of women and pregnant people, including minors, of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)?
Any concern for the potentially devastating impacts on the Earth’s sacred biosphere, species, and ecosystems of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (2023)?
These epochal rulings, with disastrous real-world effects, are of course, the simple and clear result of too many people philosophizing while Right-Wing billionaires were figuring out how to install Republican politicians and lay siege to the Supreme Court. Nice precedents you have there.
So… before I can move on, in Part 3, to a granular look at his “Shades of Many Colors,” it has to be stated that the biggest problem is what it doesn’t do.
Eisenstein never reckons, in any real way, with the more-than-just-awkward elephant in the Substack chat.
Which is that he supported, body-and-soul, and tried to sell all of us on, the guy who now supports Trump body-and soul.
That’s a tough one to just walk away from.
And, while dusting oneself off, to imply with a sneer that, ‘maybe it’s you guys that just don’t get it. Maybe you are just not spiritual enuff to see that there are no tribalistic divisions of us-and-them; and like, maybe Vote Trump?’
Does Charles still support Bobby Kennedy Jr., and therefore Donald-Trump-for-Dictator?
Hard to know; he doesn’t say.
But… he actually does say—if a reader applies any critical thinking at all to his long-winded statement, which, when analyzed for its actual moving parts, boils down to: ‘Dems are disastrous; Trump is a lot more chill than you think. Trust me.’
The Guru Thing
In the early days of Bobby Kennedy Jr.’s quixotic presidential run, Charles Eisenstein and Aubrey Marcus both claimed to have mystically seen that RFK Jr. would definitely win the White House. They didn’t just think or believe this. They had seeeeeen it… in a way, that, well, might be a little hard for a “muggle” like you to understand.
I cringed out of my chair the second I heard this.
And, look; I grew up following politics.
Political campaigns are an emotional rollercoaster inside a tsunami. Political campaigns are a merry brigade of passionate rogues on a quest to slay Cthulhu with nothing but a database, Dunkin’ coffee, and the fragile dream of a better world.
If campaigns didn’t have their dreams and their delusions, they would still themselves in their cribs.
So I get that.
But, I think this is a moment worth pausing to consider, in no small part because, it must be said—there is a bit of a cult-y, guru-lite vibe that seems to swirl around Charles at times, which I’ve never quite understood.
One of the first times I kicked it with Charles, at the New Story Summit at Findhorn in Scotland in 2014, I first heard a murmur that Charles was doing something different in his speeches than everyone else—something akin to channeling almost. Occasionally you would hear someone kind of swoon about how ‘he speaks from suuuch a deep connection to SOURCE.’ And note the dramatic pauses, looking up, and eyelid flutters as maybe indications of something a little more than the extemporaneous speaking of others.
I didn’t feel that Charles necessarily cultivated or sought this particular response, but I found it odd, and a little humorous.
I mean, to each their own, but I would have to find a talk pretty damn compelling before I start looking for a divine explanation.
Here’s the bottom line though:
I don’t care if folks want to ascribe a kind of demigod glow to their favorite teachers, and I’m not disparaging spiritual teachers, or the idea of spiritual teachers.
I only care, in this case, when/if it becomes a truth claim.
During the blazing heat of the homestretch of a once-in-four-years election season; an election in which—though it’s trite to say—the stakes are actually really fucking high—(especially for those who aren’t male, white, cis, straight, economically privileged, American dudebros).
During that important of a campaign; one in which the audiences of Aubrey Marcus and Charles Eisenstein are, presumably, looking to them for any guidance and insight—and tens of thousands of people are listening to their podcasts, and reading their Substack posts—Marcus and Eisenstein made a conscious choice to fix their mouths and tell their followers that they had foreseen a Kennedy Jr. presidential victory.
Marcus (and his sword) were not like, “dude, I had a weird dream…”
No.
It was, ‘dude, I saw in a dream that Bobby is going to be president.’
Get the difference?
When Charles intimated that he had seen that RFK Jr. would win, was he making a truth claim based on an appeal to his own supposed spiritual or esoteric insight?
Could be. But please don’t expect the simple elegance of a straight answer. That would be un-sphinx-like.
Again, I understand that wishful thinking is the currency of campaigns, and you’re always a long shot until you’re not, but the bare facts remain.
These guys told their large, paying audiences that RFK Jr. would be elected president in 2024.
I knew the instant they said it that RFK Jr. would not be elected president in 2024.
Not because I saaaaaaw it in a spontaneous samadhi/kundalini mash-up, but because I’ve waaaaaatched politics on television since I was a toddler in front of the Watergate hearings. (That’s 1973, for the youngers.)
So there’s that. Marcus and Charles were flat wrong. And yet they claimed to know for a fact that they were right. (Did I mention they are white, and men?)
And, as far as I know, they’ve never mentioned it.
It’s embarrassing.
But the larger point is this:
Before getting into the specifics of Eisenstein’s varieties of soupy logic in the “Shades of Many Colors” piece, I first have to highlight this big-picture critique.
The primary overarching problem with the piece is that Charles never once marshals the self-reflection to wonder if backing RFK Jr. in #Election2024 was maybe a mistake.
And let me state it here plainly: it was.
How do I know? How can I be so sure?
BECAUSE BOBBY KENNEDY JR. IS SUPPORTING DONALD FUCKING TRUMP.
According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump told 30,573 lies during his four years in office, or an average of about TWENTY-ONE EVERY SINGLE DAY. Do Kennedy and Eisenstein not understand that as a qualitative difference from other politicians, and a test-run for fascism?
I’m not going to go through all the ways that Bobby is not a serious person and not a serious presidential candidate.
Here’s what Bill McKibben posted about RFK Sr. and RFK Jr., and what I’ve long known about Bobby Jr.:
I guess Charles is not a serious enough political thinker to know that RFK Jr. is not a serious presidential candidate. And that’s ok! Politics doesn’t have to be everyone’s bag.
But when you stand up in public, and present yourself as, if not an expert, then certainly a deep, knowledgeable, nuanced thinker that others should heed—
And you tell people what they should do with their limited and precious time, energy, and emotional investment for political campaigns, and limited money for campaign donations—
Then I hold you to a certain standard.
I don’t hold you to a ‘generally-knowledgeable-and-very-confident-white-guy’ standard.
I expect you to actually know what the fuck you are talking about.
If you are choosing to stand up in public and tell people how they should vote, and are advising a presidential candidate, one who could tip a monumental election toward a self-described dictatorship, then, yeah, I expect you to know a few things that Eisenstein has never evinced any interest in.
Like how it feels to be a 13-year-old abuse survivor living in one of the 20 states with a Trump Abortion Ban right now.
In his essay, Charles writes preposterously, unfeelingly, irresponsibly, that
As for [Trump’s] other policies, some are better than the Democrats’ and some are worse. None of them are particularly radical, regardless of how they are portrayed. He isn’t going to try to ban abortion, for example, or round up gay people. I worry that he will accelerate the ravaging of public lands by mining, timber, and oil & gas companies.
“He isn’t going to try to ban abortion.”
It is at this point that one wonders, why am I reading this dude’s thoughts on politics?
One wonders if Eisenstein even understands that there are Trump Abortion Bans currently affecting millions of women and pregnant people IN TWENTY (20) U.S. STATES, much less what it’s like to be a person who is young, poor, and/or rural with an unwanted pregnancy in one of those states.
Unwanted teen pregnancies have a major effect, economic and otherwise, on people’s daily lives, and the more beautiful world they are able imagine, embody, and help weave into being.
And you’ll notice that the source he’s citing, for the Chiller, Gentler TRUMP, with real people’s lives on the line, is trust me, bro.
Charles’s ‘what is it like to be you?’ truism is almost always, in practice in his writings, a grace extended more toward Right-Wingers, racists, bigots, Republicans, and conspiracy theorists. Rarely is the same amount of rhetorical space given to grace extending towards the targets of historical and continuing injustice, or the targets of Republican politicians, Right-Wing media, and conspiracy theorists.
Or toward Democrats. Maybe Charles thinks that would be ‘too obvious,’ but it is striking to see Charles write these articles—which are so clearly presenting a particular, often very solipsistic and privileged, political view—see him pretending to be way above that; and then read these comments from his followers about how his impeccable, unmatched nuance has fully considered everything from all perspectives.
Hardly.
* * *
I’m gonna have to wrap Part 2 there…
Stay Tuned for Part 3, unless I lose interest and/or move on, lol
Until then, with love and sincere respect, I urge Charles Eisenstein, Aubrey Marcus, RFK Jr., and ALL of US, to do everything we can to support, loudly and energetically, the multiracial, big-tent coalition working to defeat Right-Wing fascism and build—slowly, painstakingly if we must—a multiracial democracy and a more beautiful world: