More thoughts re: Eisenstein and the New Trump-RFK Jr. Alliance — We have eyes, bro (Part 3)
"Trump has changed a lot since he was last in office," claims Charles, ridiculously.
Every now and then, I think about Charles Eisenstein writing in his recent essay, “Shades of Many Colors,” that his exclusive, heady access to the halls of power and the backrooms of presidential politics enables him to report to us that none of Trump’s policies “are particularly radical,” and that Trump is “not even particularly right-wing.”
Eisenstein mentions his ‘proximity to power’ several times, which would be cringe and unseemly even if we were talking about the actual halls of power, and a serious presidential campaign, rather than a vanity campaign funded by Right-Wing billionaires as a clear attempt at sowing chaos and electing Trump.
This campaign was never going to come close, and doing falconry with RFK Jr. should not be confused with proximity to power in any meaningful sense. Currently, RFK Jr. is getting dog-walked by the worst major-party candidate in U.S. history, who is in the last 48 days of his political life.
Eisenstein states:
“Few people today have been more caricaturized than Donald Trump. I hate to disappoint any of my readers who demonize or lionize the man, but, having at this point something of a backstage pass, I can tell you that neither pole stands anywhere near the truth.”
It is Charles’s “long-standing belief,” he writes, “that Donald Trump has been made into much worse and (much better) than he really is.”
As is typical when dealing with Charles’s writing, there is a logical hole here large enough to encircle half of Alabama with Sharpie ink.
And that logical hole is this:
TRUMP HAS ALREADY BEEN PRESIDENT.
FOR FOUR YEARS.
WE SAW IT.
I would say we all saw it, but I think one of the major problems with Charles’s political analysis is that one never gets the sense that he follows politics. I’m not saying one needs to follow all the mainstream media, but I have a feeling there is a lot that Trump did in office that would completely surprise Eisenstein, despite his ease with speaking in general pronouncements on these weighty topics.
But, on the other hand, I’ve consistently been surprised by the rightward extent of Charles’s right-leaning contrarianism. (In the “Many Colors” piece he urges everyone to “read alternative views on the January 6th riot.”) So maybe Charles does understand how Trump *actually weaponized the Department of Justice,* in violation of long-standing and vital norms, policies, and practices, and he is cool with that; maybe he doesn’t know; probably he wouldn’t agree with the characterization.
Hard tellin’, not knowin’
But this is exactly what makes engaging with Charles’s work so exhausting. He plays cat-and-mouse with his own thoughts and opinions, and the basis of his opinions. And he does so in a way that is inconsistent, arbitrary, hypocritical, and often illogical. His most fawning followers never seem to notice the contradictions, but Charles actually shares his opinions, makes endorsements, creates camps even, in subtle ways, when he feels like it. When he doesn’t feel like it, his silence is always for the most high-minded reasons, like putting a halt to the madness of circular recrimination.
Charles won’t tell us whether he is still getting paid by the Bobby-supporting-Trump campaign. It would be dehumanization to share that information, apparently.
Charles told the world that he was endorsing RFK Jr. for president. That wasn’t dehumanization. That wasn’t ‘us-and-them.’
But now Eisenstein cannot say whether he endorses Trump for president of the United States or not. That would be dehumanization. That would be ‘us-and-them.’
Which seems more likely:
That between the time he endorsed RFK Jr.—and now, when he can’t possibly endorse or not-endorse Trump—Eisenstein came to a realization that all endorsements are ‘othering’ and ‘scapegoating.’
OR
That taking huge sums of money from a Right-Wing-billionaire-funded Kennedy Jr. campaign—a campaign that has now merged with the racist, bigoted, violence-embracing Trump campaign—makes it impossible for Charles to state the simple truth that Trump doesn’t belong within a zip code of the White House.
After a while, I just don’t care enough. I don’t think Charles’s work is interesting, original, or important enough for me to spend much more time critiquing it.
By telling us that he knows from ‘convos he can’t share’ that Trump is chill, Charles asks that we trust his own vibes more than OUR OWN EYES.
Eisenstein asks that we give more weight to his own penchant for platitudes than DONALD TRUMP’S RECORD AS PRESIDENT.
I’ll probably go through some of the groaners in the “Shades of Many Colors” essay, to finish out the SERIES.
See PARTS 1 & 2 here: