Poet and activist Drew Dellinger, founder of Planetize the Movement and author of Love Letter to the Milky Way, talks with Pinchbeck about a Substack essay arguing that RFK Jr. and Charles Eisenstein were wrong to assure readers Trump would not implement Project 2025. Dellinger says he expected Kennedy to play a spoiler role but never expected him to endorse Trump, and calls Eisenstein's relaying of Trump's denial to his Substack readership irresponsible given how many voters were still undecided. Pinchbeck, who published Eisenstein at Reality Sandwich and edited Sacred Economics, describes his own earlier reservations and uses Buckminster Fuller's trim tab image to explain Eisenstein's disproportionate influence in these circles. Dellinger dates his criticism to Eisenstein's pre-pandemic essay The Polarization Trap. This is an excerpt from a longer conversation.
Guest: Drew Dellinger
In brief
- Dellinger argues that being wrong about whether Trump would implement Project 2025 amounts to being wrong about Trump's entire agenda.
- Dellinger says he anticipated from the start that RFK Jr.'s candidacy could tip the election to Trump, but did not anticipate that he would endorse Trump outright.
- Dellinger contends that Eisenstein's amplification of Trump's Project 2025 denial to his Substack readership was irresponsible because the more voters learned about the plan the less they wanted to vote for Trump.
- Pinchbeck says he helped build Eisenstein's platform through Reality Sandwich and by publishing and editing Sacred Economics, but found its economic proposals nebulous and grew wary of Eisenstein's later work.
- Pinchbeck invokes Buckminster Fuller's trim tab to argue that Eisenstein's assumed moral authority let him open a path toward Trump for people in adjacent spiritual and countercultural communities.
- Dellinger argues that Eisenstein's both-sidesism, exemplified by equating birtherism with the Trump campaign's documented Russian contacts, reflects a missing analysis of power, race and social justice.
Full text
Yeah. Well, maybe we'll um so like um you know I I was I think I was interested in a recent piece you wrote about kind of the impact of RFK and Charles Eisenstein and how you know in a way together they may have helped really swing the election. Um I mean obviously RFK had a lot more you know influence and and and you know reach and so on but um yeah kind of curious about your thoughts around that and you know what motivated you to write that piece and how you're feeling about the situation like right now. was very concerned uh that RFK Jr. could play a spoiler role and tip the election toward Trump.
I was concerned about that from the very beginning as soon as he announced uh his intent, you know, his campaign. Um what I did not anticipate though was that he would throw his weight uh in with Trump. I never thought that RFK Jr. would go full Trump. And so, so when he, you know, said he's going to drop out of the race, I was like, "Good. This is good. This is good." I thought if Kennedy was in and on the ballot in a lot of states, it could tip trip, sorry, tip the election to Trump. Again, repeating myself, never conceived that RFK Jr. would fall in line with Trump, would endorse Trump, uh, and this sort of thing.
So, um, the reason why I wrote the the most recent piece, you know, which is I give these long titles because I feel like we live in these scroll this scrolling world where sometimes the only message somebody's going to see is the title. And so I give I tend to give these long titles. This one was called uh, yes, RFK Jr. and Charles Eisenstein were 1,000% wrong about Trump and 20 and Project 2025. And then I put in parenthesis, i. e. his entire agenda. I mean, I I think that's an important point. To be wrong about whether Trump's going to implement Project 2025 or not is to be wrong about Trump's entire agenda.
There's not much more to be wrong about regarding the incoming Trump campaign if you're wrong about whether or not he's going to uh implement Project 2025. So, but the thing is when one is writing before an election, one can be tempted to say all kinds of things and you don't know what's going to come to pass. you don't know exactly what Trump you don't know who's going to win the election. You don't know what Trump's going to do if he gets elected. So, I just thought it was incredibly irresponsible of RFK Jr. uh and then Charles to pick it up and to broadcast it out to his, you know, 80,000 readers on his Substack that, oh, Trump said, you guys, Trump said he's not going to do project 2025.
I mean, you've got millions of lastm minute independent voters at the last minute and they're all getting freaked out uh when they're hearing, you know, project 2025. The more people heard about it, the more they disliked it, the more they the more they didn't want to vote for Trump. So, it was obvious when Trump said, "Oh, no. Project 2025, no, we're not going to do that. I've never heard of it." That was the most transparent kind of roll back and ass covering. So yeah, just to finish the point real quick, I thought it was remarkably irresponsible uh for RFK Jr. and Charles Eisenstein to say, "Hey, look, Trump says he's not going to do Project 2025.
He says he doesn't even know the guy uh involved in it." And so you guys, you don't have to worry. Trump's not going to do Project 2020. No, I got it. Uh okay. So, um, let's let's talk a bit about Charles Eisenstein, because I mean, you've really been, so, you know, both of us knew Charles personally. I I I had a platform, Reality Sandwich. He did a lot of writing for that platform. I really gave him, you know, helped him have a bigger platform at that point. I also published and edited his book, Sacred Economics. And I was quite a huge fan, although I did early on begin to have a little bit of uh, you know, kind of worries here and there.
um uh the the the sort of the sort of like sacred economics to me what he actually proposed seems still very nebulous. Um and um yeah, he he he felt over time a little bit maybe more about himself than about really trying to like do something do something bigger. But you know, I never would have anticipated that he would have had this sort of um you know, psychological collapse in a sense to um end up really supporting uh this right-wing Trump movement. you know, although of course he uses kind of sophistry or rhetoric in a way to make it a little bit unclear. And I think, you know, I also didn't like his book coronation, which I think is when you started also to be like ring some alarm bells.
So, let's talk a little bit like what's your perspective on Charles. I mean, it's not that he's like, you know, the biggest, you know, fish in the fishbowl, but, you know, maybe a little bit like a trim tab in that, um, you know, Buckminister Fuller's idea that there's like the rudder which turns the ship and on the end of the rudder is like a tw trim tab and the trim tab turns the rudder which then turns the big ocean liner. So Charles, you know, having a certain level of reach and, you know, he'd sort of taken this position of like moral authority in a sense like like people looked up to him as somebody who really was speaking from a truth pers perspective, who wasn't, you know, kind of like um um you know, wasn't sort of corrupt to like financial stuff and so he somehow created this very sort of moral position for himself as somebody that people looked up to in you know our extended communities. And therefore when he kind of opened the gates for you know RFK and then for Trump you know it did seem and you know that a lot of people kind of were that he g he gave an opportunity or an opening for a lot of people you know to to kind of move in that direction. Um is that is that how you see it and what do you think happened with him?
How do you feel that his you know where where did he go kind of off in a way? Yeah I agree with your analysis for sure. Um I think it's interesting. I actually was critiquing Charles before the pandemic though, which I think is interesting because the first time I posted kind of a public critique uh was after he wrote an essay before the well before the pandemic called the polarization trap. And in that he was saying, you know, the trap is becoming polarized, one against the other, left versus right, this and that. and which I thought was a, you know, as with a lot of Charles's work, there are good sentiments and and and some decent intentions, you know, in there, but I thought the way he laid out his argument was false equivalence, you know, to the inth degree.
He was in that in the polarization trap essay, he was at one point he uh compared um people saying that Obama is uh you know born in Kenya, this kind of racist birtherism myth um that that really launched Donald Trump into politics uh in his most recent incarnation that that was equivalent to uh you know the so-called Russia gate uh hoax you know Russia gate you know well actually the Trump campaign had 157 contacts you know, with with with people connected to Russia and the Kremlin, whereas the idea that Obama is a uh foreign usurper born in Kenya is a completely madeup racist myth. So I said, you know, so I I said, you know, I I'm concerned about some false equivalence that I'm detecting in this. And so then, you know, as the pandemic comes out, uh comes along, uh all of these tendencies in Charles's work got amplified, right? It got got um got um exacerbated. So, this kind of false equivalence, this kind of both sidesism.
Uh again, there's a time and a place to say, look, we all, you know, are involved in this system and you're no different from me. But that can't become a substitute for a realistic political analysis. And this was my concern with Charles's work is that he didn't have a power analysis. He didn't have a racial justice analysis. He didn't really have a strong social justice analysis. So he would nod in and in in these directions. And I think uh you know what has come to and so it to me it felt like I didn't trust that he was grounded in a real analysis of social justice and power.
And guess what? If you can if you can create common cause with this Trump campaign, then I think, you know, my concerns, you know, were realized that he was not grounded in a way, you know, if you know, I I started my uh one of my in in one of my recent substacks, I I quoted the kind of phrase, the folk wisdom that says if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. I felt Charles wasn't clear on what he stood for, and he ended up falling for the Trump campaign.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.