Drew Dellinger, a poet and teacher known for the collection Love Letter to the Milky Way and for founding Planetize the Movement, joins Pinchbeck for a conversation about cosmology, ecology and the American right. Dellinger describes studying with Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, and a long-term book project treating Martin Luther King Jr. as an ecological and cosmological thinker. Much of the talk concerns his Substack criticism of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Charles Eisenstein, whom he faults for assuring readers before the 2024 election that Trump would not implement Project 2025, an error he treats as a misreading of Trump's entire agenda. They also take up techno-authoritarianism, surveillance, and the erosion of shared standards of evidence. Dellinger closes by reading his poem To the Quislings.
Guest: Drew Dellinger
In brief
- Dellinger traces his framework to Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, who argued that the roots of the ecological crisis lie in the culture's cosmology and worldview.
- Dellinger is writing a book presenting Martin Luther King Jr. as a cosmological and ecological thinker rather than only a civil rights leader.
- Dellinger argues that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Charles Eisenstein acted irresponsibly by telling readers before the election that Trump would not enact Project 2025.
- He contends that being wrong about Project 2025 means being wrong about Trump's entire agenda, since little of that agenda is separable from it.
- Dellinger says he argued publicly as early as 2016 that Trump could take the Republican primary, and that winning it would make the general election a coin flip.
- Both men express frustration at the rightward drift of figures who came out of the New Age and eco-spiritual world.
Full text
Yeah, I'm excited to talk to Drew Dinger today. I've been enjoying his Substacks. Um, both of us seem to share a certain level of uh frustration or uh uh infur infur and furious is that the right word around um particularly Charles Eisenstein. Uh since this um podcast will ultimately end up also on You Tube, uh I would remind people that it's really helpful if they subscribe, give it a thumbs up and all that stuff. Um the more the barrier, doesn't cost you anything. It helps it helps us get um kind of uh attention and all that stuff. Um and uh yeah, Drew Delinger, as as we wait for people to come in, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?
Sure. Well, I'm a speaker and a teacher and a writer and I live in the San Francisco Bay area. Originally from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and um but I've been in San Francisco Bay area for 25 years. And part of what drew me uh to this area was some of my teachers uh particularly Brian Swim uh who was talking about cosmology and talking about the worldview of our culture and kind of what are the deep roots of the ecological crisis. So I I I was very lucky when I was a young person you know around 20 years old to meet Thomas Barry who was a great environmental ecological writer and cosmological thinker and kind of an eco philosopher type.
So for the last um you know 35 years or so since meeting Thomas Barry I've kind of tried to integrate his cosmological perspective into my work combine it with my interest in social justice, racial justice. And so I I see myself as kind of writing and thinking at the intersections of ecology, social justice and cosmology or worldview and trying to bring those together with my other interests in the arts and poetry and things like that. So, kind of combining activism, politics, cosmology, ecology, poetry, the arts, um that sort of thing. So, that's a little bit about myself. I have a little poetry uh collection called Love Letters to the Milky Way.
And I'm working on a uh long-term book project on Martin Luther King right now where I look at Dr. King as an ecological thinker, as a cosmological thinker, and as a precient profit of interconnectedness. Very cool. Thank you. Um, yeah, but I was actually scrolling back through your uh substacks. Uh, and yeah, I guess you know, on the election day, you were still pretty convinced the Democrats were going to take it. Um, how have you been feeling? I wouldn't I wouldn't say that. I mean, I can see why you say that from reading my things. Some of that was um, you know, part of impol part of politics is you have to have, you know, have to embody confidence, you know, and that sort of if anybody had said, Drew, are you absolutely?
So, so I said, you know, I I said a couple of things. I I do like to be accountable for what I write on my Substack. So, uh I'm happy to be accountable for everything I said, but I I did write a couple of things where I said, you know, Donald Trump's in the end of his um presidential, you know, sorry, in the end of it, the last 48 days of his political life and you know, and we're going to take this thing, you know, but it was kind of that kind of it was that it wasn't. If somebody asked, are you positive that Democrats are going to win? I would say absolutely not.
This thing is razor thin. I mean, I was one of the early people in 2016 saying Trump can win. Yeah. Before he had ever won a primary, I said, "Trump can win this primary." And if he wins the primary, it's automatically a coin flip for the White House. Right. So, so yeah, I said I said a couple of kind of confidence building type of things like we're going to win this thing. But, you know, I was never like, it was never a flat prediction that wasn't the kind of, you know, rahrh confidence building that one tends to do in politics, right? Makes total sense. Of course.
Um, yeah. Well, maybe we'll, um, so like, um, you know, I 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 int, 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 last 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 ask covering. And 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. 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. 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, bookm'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. Well, I think there was um I mean so you know there's two there's kind of two levels.
One is you know Charles himself as a figure and and his kind of journey uh and and the sort of problematic you know kind of trajectory that he's taken uh almost like tragic trajectory in a way. But then there's also kind of like him as a kind of you know u model or exemplary kind of you know kind of like how so many people uh went into this kind of like delusional world and a lot of people still haven't really come out of it including from what I can see from his recent writing Trump uh sorry Eisenstein Charles. So I mean I remember even when he wrote the the the book on climate and so many people loved the book. I really did not like that book at all because I felt it was like there was a sort of uh impulse to just be contrarian to kind of like want to have the sort of like the the master discourse by not going along with you know what Bill Mc Kibben and Greta Thurberg and everybody else was saying about like CO2 levels like wanting to say no it's really about you know soil and connection or like you know ju you know sort of really like um wanting to find like a high ground above everybody else and and maybe that's part Maybe that maybe that's just thinking out loud one of his fatal flaws. Um I I don't know that that that he doesn't he doesn't want to be common.
He doesn't want to be like he somehow thinks that he's above everybody else and therefore he can reach this kind of like plane of uh you know kind of like above typical morality or or I mean um does that do you think there's some truth to that there or is it more venal in some sense? Yeah. No, I think you're spot on. I think there's a kind of reflexive contrarianism and and I felt the same way about the carbon book. I mean I it's you know some of the things he was saying was like look it's not all about carbon you know it's also nature you know and it's we need to save the whales.
He literally at one point I saw him give a talk where he said you know we need to save the whales too and he said well actually that was a a bumper sticker back in the 70s when I was a kid and I was like yeah it was because people have been talking about all of these things. People have been talking about the soil. People have been talking about the ecosystems. People have been talking about um the bio system and biodiversity and we haven't gotten you know environmentalists haven't gotten enough traction for 50 years on any of these things and we're finally getting a maybe a little bit of traction around climate and carbon and Charles wants to say whoa whoa whoa it's not just about carbon of course it's not just about carbon but any traction that we can get on any environmental ecological or climate related issue I think is a good thing so I don't think we need to be reflex flexibly, you know, kind of taking this contrarianism uh pose of, you know, oh, that's not about carbon. Well, yeah, no, it actually is.
It's partially about carbon, you know, and it is about biodiversity. Yeah. My my analogy would be like um you know, if you if a doctor, you know, has a visit with somebody who, you know, has very very high blood pressure, is on the verge of a heart attack. You know certainly there will be like lifestyle factors and you know you want them to be have a happier life and you know not be so stressed about their kids or their job or whatever stop smoking obviously but you know the first immediate thing is to get the blood pressure down or the heart rate down. So you'll use drugs or whatever whatever you need to do as an intervention.
So I mean the you know the 425 parts per million or where we're at now you know that that we know that that is um you know atrocious for for the near-term future of the planet. So, you know, yeah, I mean, you you could talk about the other stuff and it's all true, but kind of the way he framed this argument was almost kind of like he wanted to show that he was like above the thinking of somebody like Mc Kibben or something that he he'd found this like higher plane from which to look down upon, you know, these sort of more like materialist, you know, environmentalists in a way, you know. I'm thinking yeah, I I think that's probably right. I mean, I try not to get too much into I do think that there's an attraction in that kind of contrarianism that we see a lot that I've got to have the different take that I've got to have I can't have I want to get back to carbon for one second. Um, but I'll just give another example that I see in this kind of contrarian sphere is like the idea that one could just support the Democratic candidate is not a a sexy enough is not a uh is not a on cutting edge enough position.
Now, believe me, I have plenty of critiques of the militarism, the corporatism, you know, the the the the the control of wealth and power between both our parties and this sort of thing. But there's also one multi-racial party in this country and, you know, and there's one party that cares about multi-racial democracy, but I think, oh, you know, the idea that RFK, you know, RFK was not going to win the White House, that I predicted from day one, and I'm right about that. So I just think there's a way in which a lot of this kind of you know cutting edge contrarian bro sphere it's just it's RFK was the kind of thing that seemed edgy you know and like supporting you know the the black women that are the base of the Democratic party you know I'm committed to standing in solidarity with the brown and black women that are the base of the Democratic party and until there's a third party you know that's can mount a serious challenge I was a registered green 25 years ago so you don't need to tell me about third parties and about the duopoly I understand all that, but there's not a viable right now. We need people power to take down fascism. And the vehicle for this people power electorally right now is the Democratic Party.
So, I do think there's a way in which that's not edgy or contrarian enough for a lot of people. But let me just say one last thing about Charles and climate and carbon. You see, I think that kind of contrarian uh that reflexive contrarianism can become demobilizing. And let me give you an example. I knew a group that was working on a climate initiative and they had signed on. They were going to do something having to do with project draw down and uh you know and Paul Hawkins work and they had this they've been working for months and months and months on this whole initiative and then Charles came to their gathering.
I happened to be there and he gave this keynote speech on Saturday night and then and they said he said look it's not all about carbon and he gave a you know a long example of a synchronicity that had happened to him and you know kind of the mystery and the miraculousness of the universe and the and the next morning on Sunday morning they were having all these discussions like maybe we shouldn't do the initiative we were going to do maybe we shouldn't do this project draw down project that we had been talking about for the last 5 months because Charles said it's not all about carbon And I'm just sitting here like, y'all are going to let Charles's random musings on a Saturday night throw you off this, you know, this um climate change initiative that you've been planning on for months and month. You see how how his message was literally demobilizing in that moment, right? I think they went on it went ahead and did the the uh the project, the climate initiative they were going to do, but they was all they were all confused, you know, for a little while because Charles had said it's not all about carbon. So that was kind of some of my concerns when I say when I say there's a demobilizing uh aspect to this kind of contrarianism and in the uh the last essay that I read the new one you used a term that I quite liked which was epistemological nihilism. Uh do you want to unpack that a little bit and tell me what what you mean by that?
Yeah, you know, epistemology of course is right this the study and of how we know, right? Epistem, you know, epistemology involves how we know anything. Um, and so and nihilism, you know, of course I would have to look up the exact word, but it's this kind of apocalyptic, you know, nothing matters, you know, kind of idea, right? So I think there's a consistent strain in Charles's writing that that is part again very selective. That's part of my critiques of Charles is that he will say there's no way we can really know anything when it suits his purposes, you know, when he doesn't want to commit to a certain thing.
There's other times where he commits to saying, you know, no, we we can know this and and this sort of thing. I pointed out one of those things in the essay where he talks about Trump. He literally calls Trump a cipher. you know, I'm going like this guy. There's very, you know, it's not always the case when you're considering casting a vote for president that you're you one of the candidates is somebody who has been president for four years. and Charles's writing after the first Trump term, who can really know about Trump and, you know, and I think the fact that he had had some backroom access, you know, enabled him to kind of puff up this idea that he's seen behind the facade and and all of the media narratives and he's seen the real Trump.
You know, it's like I don't think Charles even followed in onetenth of the policy of the policies that Trump implemented during his first term, but he's going to get on his Substack and tell people that Trump's not nearly as bad as people think he is. So, I just think it's and and in the essay I said it's it's typical of of Einstein's uh writing as a whole that he gets to a point when it suits his needs. Yeah. What's that? when it suits his needs. He gets to a point where you can't tell leftwing from right-wing, you can't tell conspiracy from myth, you know, you can't tell expertise from intuition, you know, and these sorts of things.
And now, believe me, you know, I I I understand, you know, um different ways of knowing. And I and I and I'm not like a fully materialist reductionist, you know, scientist or anything like this, but it gets to a point when you're dealing in the political realm with real people's lives on the line that this kind of oh, how can we really know anything uh becomes just kind of a pose or an excuse. Yeah. Yeah. Ultimately, we can't know anything. And yet, we have to practice some discernment and and move forward and try to make, you know, positive social change in the real world in the ways that we can.
Yeah. I mean I guess another you know question that I have I mean you know maybe was you know in some you know if you believe in young ideas like the shadow like somehow Charles's shadow his own trickster shadow came out uh and and kind of like um you know went against this sort of like moral authority that he'd been claiming for himself um you know and kind of like almost like sabotaged or or surrendered that uh in order to make the sort of complicit deals with like power and so on. Uh, I mean, not that different from what just happened with Bill Mayer, right? Like, um, you know, he he went and kissed the ring of Trump and he was like, "Oh, he's actually like much smarter than I thought and he's so cunning and interesting behind the scenes and, you know, it's it's um it it it does feel very um yeah, like very Manakian right now, right? Like like there's this uh the seduction of the dark side that uh so many people are are are drawn towards.
um people you never would have anticipated uh you know even obviously like the Joe Rogan and and all these people you know well that's one of the issues why this is way beyond Charles to me because I think we have this u you know media matters for America recently did a study I mean it's probably a year or two old now where they looked at the relative and there was a chart that was going around where they have bubbles big red bubbles for Joe Rogan's podcast and you know little blue bubbles for the few progressive or leftish or democratic type voices. You know, there's such an intense narrative dominance, you know, in the podcast sphere, you know, where you have people like Brett Weinstein and uh, you know, and Joe Rogan and this kind of intellectual dark web. And you also have, you know, that, you know, I don't even I don't know what to do with some of these new people that are on the scene that I don't really know what they're taking. Some people talk about sense making, you know, or talk about or like rebel wisdom. Let's just use Rebel Wisdom as an example.
I don't know their whole deal. I don't know where they came from. I don't know their ideology fully. I don't know their philosophy, but you know, some people I knew were being interviewed on Rebel Wisdom. And I went and I looked at the Rebel Wisdom uh I looked at their podcasts, you know, the the catalog of all of the people that they've interviewed on their podcast. And I swear to God, I scrolled through maybe pages and pages. So, we're talking about 250 different guests that they had had on their podcast. there were like three African-Americans that had been interviewed uh by Rebel Wisdom in the 250 people or so.
And again, these are approximate numbers, so don't hold me to the exact numbers, but it was something like this. Hundreds of people they had interviewed, three of them were African-American, and the three African-Americans they had interviewed were all kind of contrarian, anti-anti-racist. So, you had John Mcuarter, who's kind of a contrarian, anti-anti-racist. You had this woman named Chloe, I think is her name, who's kind of a African-American contrarian, anti-anti-racist. So to me, that just said so much. You know, the idea is this is rebel wisdom and we want the most cutting edge, you know, heterodox thinkers and they can't find an African-American scholar that they're interested in interviewing.
they can't find a African-American intellectual or uh you know or a afroofuturist theorist that that that they think might have a little bit of rebel wisdom. The it's a choice when you live in a country that had for 500 years has had the most intense racialized oppression and racist tyranny and racist violence in the history of the planet. And in that context, after 500 years of racist terrorism and oppression, you start a podcast called Rebel Wisdom, and you can't think of a single African-American thinker that you feel like interviewing that you think might have some rebel wisdom other than a few that are reflexive contrarians and anti-anti-racists. So, that just said a lot to me about where people are coming from and where their blind spots are. And if we, you know, if we're going to have groups like Rebel Wisdom and some of these new sense makers and Brett Weinstein and Joe Rogan and RFK Jr.
and Charles Eisenstein, you know, kind of putting out these ideas of like, oh, I can be eeros eospiritual and I can be part of this movement and still fall in line with Trump. No, no, you can't. Actually, that's why I wrote the last piece that I just posted, the Substack in the last day or two is about gatekeeping in movements. You know, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. And we can't have a movement where people say, "Hey, we can be for ecology and social justice and we can side with Trump and fascism." No, we're not going to have a coherent movement if if we think anything goes right.
Yeah. Um well, what else? We've kind of, you know, we've covered Charles a little bit. That was one of the main areas I wanted to like sort of dive in with to with you. Um uh what else has been on your your I mean you can also ask me a question or two if you want about things I've been interested in but um um yeah I mean um um what are you are you observing are you are you paying a lot of attention now to the Maha and the RFK movement um yes on the periphery on the because again I think that is I think that's the leverage point I think that's that's the tunnel where people from our progressive ive you know social justice uh eco spiritual movements are being funneled toward the right and you know so there's a lot you know obviously with the pandemic you know there huge schisms and you know and reshuffleling and realignment having to do with that which I find very complicated but yeah it's so I just I follow a little bit I mean I just saw that Nicole Shanahan you know is is saying is is is Bobby being um you know blackmailed you know she just posted that two days ago so there you know so I do follow I I don't follow it closely but I am very interested in the ways in which maha I mean I got I got annoyed actually you know where people are going like why are you saying we're aligning with Trump some people in you know Facebook comments are saying why are you saying we're aligning with Trump the thing you're you're you're identifying with is called maha you can't stand in a you can't stand in a rosecolored hat in a sea of people with uh red hats and say oh but my hat's rosecolored No, you're standing in a sea of people with red hats.
You can't be part of a movement called MA and say, "What? You're confusing me with MAGA? Why on earth would you ever confuse MAH with MAG?" No, I mean, these people are choosing to stand arm with the most fascist and least competent regime that we've had in in American history. And and they're going like, why are you saying we're right leaning? Why do you think? I mean, I guess another, you know, skewing point for Eisenstein, to go back to Charles, was the uh the vaccines, uh, which really seems to have been sort of a breaking point for the American psyche. Um, and sort of, um, yeah, you know, led to sort of things, you know, sort of like a polarization kind of like um, yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts about about about about that whole situation.
I think it's tremendously consequential, but I think it's a I let let me say it like this. When I when I did a post the other day where I said and the title of it was more right-wing weak sauce from Charles Eisenstein posing as balance and wisdom, you know, when I I I and I was, you know, I thought very seriously before I said Charles is putting out right-wing views, but the but in my mind that was accurate and so I posted it. But when I called right Charles rightwing and and Charles has since you know been posting and tweeting and saying like I don't understand how people who are antiax are considered right-wing my calling him right-wing really had almost nothing to do with antivax you know so this is I just think that that is such a complex and complicated ball of wax in the sense that I believe I believe that vaccine injury probably is a real thing. I believe that there probably are people who have been injured from vac by vaccines and yet you know I I you know I'm gonna go for the most part with the majority of the public health experts you know on the the safety of these vaccine you know so it's just a so to me that's like I'm not trying to wade into the middle of the vax or antivax debate. I'm critiquing Charles's work from a different place where I say he's putting out right-wing views because he's normalizing and whitewashing Trump.
He's talking about the woke craze, you know, using this white-wing framing. He's putting out of talking points on abortion rights without really understanding the significance of abortion rights, you know, this sort of thing. So, I so I am not relying on some vax or antivax position when I call Charles uh you know, when I when I say that Charles has been putting out right-wing views, you know. So to me, the vaccine is incredibly important and politically, you know, it's massive, but it's just complicated and I'm not sure exactly what to do with it or what to do about it. But I do think that we need to stay in the the reality based community as much as we can.
Now, believe me, there's certain so-called conspiracy theories that I think, you know, that I'm partial towards, you know, and this sort of thing, and I'm happy to, you know, and I I read David Ike in the 90s, you know, it's like you there's nothing about this conspiration stuff that's new to me. There's nothing about these conspir conspiracy theories that are new to me. What was new and I was amazed that it worked was so I had heard people like David Ike saying for 15 20 years that you know reptilians control the world and and there's these you know cults of you know sexual abuse and blah blah blah but around 2015 somebody said we can pin all that on Democrats. Yeah. And we can say it's the Democrats that are running this uh you know these elite uh you know rings of abuse on a global level and Trump and the Republicans are going to stop this.
You know that was never anything that I had heard in any of the conspiracy theory. It was always the these are elite networks that involve the elites of both parties. But the idea that this could be switched flipped in a political sense and that and that these David Ike and the reptilians could be used to make hay for right-wing extremist fascists in through this QAnon movement. That was bizarre to me and and was startlingly effective. Yeah, it's interesting that the the sort of um like the far-right reactionary Trump, you know, movement has sort of co-opted what used to be kind of like radical counter counterculture kind of provocation style, you know, so even like, you know, Trump posted the picture of himself as the pope.
Uh and I, you know, I wrote about it and I was like, "Wow, like not that I'm a believing Catholic. I don't even really you know I'm you know religion is not really my thing in that sense but I even felt like aggress like you know it's like yeah it's like any institution that anybody has any care about or anything anybody thinks is sacred they'll just like dismantle or destroy but then uh or mock or whatever but I mean you know on the other hand a lot of the you know kind of more like radical counterculture people like the artist Andrew Serrano who did uh Piss Christ or um you know Jeff Coons when he did like a kid statue of St. John the Baptist or you know Sex Pistols other punk bands that were very blasphemous and so on. I was like all for all of that stuff. Uh so it's kind of intriguing.
I guess it's just a question of power. It's like when when when you know when it's a it's a it's a it's a naked bid for power by a group that's already in power. It's different than it's a kind of opposition you know from the margins or something. I don't know what what do you think of that? Well, it's much different. It's much different. And that's one of the problems with people like Brett Weinstein and this kind of analysis that the that the left wrote radicals have all the power in this sort of thing. A big difference. You know, I'm not going to defend everything that some social justice activist has shouted at somebody else.
We all know that there's, you know, people who take things too far and and we all know that there's rhetorical excesses and this sort of thing. But if you can't differentiate between the power of some undergrads at Evergreen State College and the Texas State Legislature or the president of the United States, I mean, they're passing laws that say women uh who cannot travel out cannot cross state lines in order to receive an abortion. you know, this is state power at the most intrusive levels and you're concerned about what some undergrads at Evergreen State College think. So, there's just a complete uh loss of proportionality. You know, that's the false equivalence.
That's just both sidesism. Hey, both sidesism has a place when there are proportional things to talk about on both sides. But when you have this massive disproportionality and then people are talking both sides isn't and then people are are doing this reflexive false equivalence that becomes very problematic and demobilizing. Yeah, you know I completely agree. I mean, I guess there was I was watching um what's his name? Van Jones on the Midas Touch the other day. Uh and he's a Democratic political figure and CNN host and so on. And he was talking about how in in, you know, in retrospect, yeah, kind of the left-wing progressive, you know, woke cancel culture, you know, had definitely gone too far.
uh and that it was just like um you know very stridident and um you know very quick to kind of like wipe out these people you know particularly men who'd had long careers who made some kind of like you know transgressions in their past or whatever. Um, and I think that ended up leading to a situation where, you know, you're talking about the the media matters chart around the red versus the blue media spheres of influence. you know, a lot of the, you know, kind of liberal and progressive men who might have been charismatic influencers and had like large You Tube followings and all that, you know, were kind of like thrown to the wolves, whether it was like Al Franken or Louis CK or uh even somebody, you know, Jos Weeden or something like um uh so that also made the space even bigger for the right-wing and um yeah, so I think there's a problem and rhetorically there was a sense of like this um woke progressivism kind of had taken control of the academyy's institutions uh in a way that wasn't very pleasant uh and you know there was there was an overcorrection there. Yeah, we could say that that was of course for various good reasons. Um but unfortunately that seems to have provided this like massive opening for the other side which does possess like state power and now military force and all that stuff to uh kind of completely go apehit on us, you know.
Yeah, I think there's truth to that. I I'm a little more jaded in the sense that, you know, I'm a student of the civil rights movement and I've, you know, been following uh, you know, what would they used to in the 90s call multicultural issues and what they used to in the 80s and '9s call what we call political correctness, you know. So, I've just been through so many rounds of this where, you know, you can literally go back in the 50s and the 60s and you can see people making the same arguments that people are making about about campus radicals, you know, and this sort of thing. So I I I I'm a little more jaded, I think, to the argument. They're like, "Oh, if we just hadn't been so excessive, then they wouldn't have had to do this whole push back." You know, it's just like I've seen these debates get jenned up and and and hyped so many times from political correctness in the 80s to wokeism and and you know, it was political correctness and affirmative action and quotas.
Are you going to have quotas? Are we going to have quote? You know, these were the terms we were talking about in the 80s and 90s, and now we're talking about critical race theory and DEI and wokeism and these sorts of things. And yeah, I'm not saying there aren't some problems. I'm not saying there aren't some hella problematic and annoying and cringe-worthy, you know, DEI workshops that some human resources department has forced people to sit through. But the idea that this is the massive problem I think is is is spun up uh by right-leaning and corporate media uh to become disproportional. Yeah. I don't know if you're aware that uh you know Peter Teal before he got into tech, he was just a right-wing ideologue.
He ran the Stanford Review and so on. and David Saxs, who's now the um AI and crypto kind of guru for Trump and Teal actually wrote a book together when they were young in their 20s called the diversity myth multiculturism and political intolerance on campus. Uh so yeah, I mean they were already kind of like, you know, bu building this argument around um intolerance and and and uh you know, their their freedoms being impinged upon, I guess, by um people from different backgrounds, you know, or or diversity or whatever. What are your thoughts, Daniel, because I you've got so much wisdom to share uh about Peter Teal, about this this tech influence. I mean, we've never seen anything like uh like the role that Elon Musk has played.
It's comp wildly unconstitutional. It's wildly illegal. You know, Congress sets the budget. He doesn't have the authority. I mean, I I like what Rachel Maddo has said. And I know in my one of my recent pieces, I I said that RFK Jr. has been critiqued powerfully by Rachel Maddo and Lawrence O'Donnell and um John Oliver. And I knew there were some people who were going to read that immediately and say, "Oh my god, Drew's citing Rachel Maddo. Wow, he really thinks that Rachel Matt, you know, this sort of thing." I don't care. I don't care. But I think Rachel Matto is absolutely correct in a rhetorical point that she's been making.
Whereas night after night that she was on the air, she referred to Elon Musk as Trump's largest campaign donor. That's who he is. He has no official role. He has not been confirmed to any uh you know cabinet position. the if a if a Democrat if a Democratic president had let their largest campaign donor say George Soros or Mark Cuban or you know anybody else come in and just dismantle large parts of the federal government unconstitutionally and you know and steal all our data. I mean who knows what they're doing. It's wildly illegal and unconstitutional. There's never been a a role like the role that Elon Musk has played.
So I'm curious what your thoughts are about about the and it becomes very scary you know when if if Silicon Valley keeps going in this right leaning uh trajectory you know so what are your thoughts on Teal and Musk and the this tech brollearchy? Uh yeah I well I mean I guess Teal was the first one to go publicly uh towards Trump and the right in 2016 and then um the other ones kind of joined later Andreesa and Musk and so on. Um yeah, I mean I I talk about this and think about this and read about it all the time. Um you know, is it possible that there's like a deeper intelligence structural kind of shift that's been sort of like, you know, maybe engineered, not to get too conspiratorial, but I mean um you know, I mean, yeah, this could become very totalitarian and very Stalinist very quickly because all of that data could be used to persecute people. anybody who's not in alignment with Trumpism or dancism or whatever it's going to be and um you know could be used to you know separate people out at the borders you know if you if you've ever said anything that they don't like or whatever um I think it's um very doomy and very gloomy right now and um you know there doesn't yet seem to be the level of resistance or or even an understanding of how to build the sort of mechanism of of sustained resistance that we really need right now.
So, I mean, I'm I'm, you know, looking at trying to get a residency visa in Portugal. I'm I'm not convinced this country is going to be livable in a few years. And yeah, I mean, you know, these there's a lot of and we've looked at a lot of the ideology the ideological background. I mean, there was um a book called The Sovereign Individual that these two kind of like libertarian economists wrote 97 that Teal wrote a introduction to and Andre says it's its favorite favorite book. They believe that actually the nation state is obsolete and the future is like privatized commercialized sovereignty where you'll have these kind of like you know city states with corporate overlords.
Uh Musk actually just has a long history with this. His grandfather uh in Canada was one of the main people behind this technocracy inc which was seen as a protofascist party. And um it's actually quite incredible if you go and look at that. Their vision was no more democracy. There was going to be three main regions in the world. Each one would have an engineer scientist dictator running it with no with no input from the people. And it would be the North American technate which would be from Greenland and Canada down to Mexico, Pan Panama and so on. It would be the Eurasian technate which would be you know Russia down to you know Spain.
Then you'd have the Asian one which would be the Chinese sphere of influence. So it it it seems as if Musk is actually bidding to be the you know the king of the North American technate and um I guess the idea would be I mean you know I I think they're quite serious about taking over Greenland and Canada partially because even though they pretend that climate change and resource shortages are not a thing they obviously know those are a thing and everything is predicated on kind of artificial super intelligence. They want to have immortal life. They want to, you know, have these like superpowers and so on. So that's clear in how this thing is being run is they don't care about the general population at all.
Uh they're completely happy if people die young or do whatever. um uh their their their their motivation is to kind of gain the power of this artificial super intelligence and probably you know those northern regions then become the hideouts for the super wealthy as climate change worsens and you know we're already seeing what's happened like LA and you know North Carolina where you're from. So um yeah I think I think they have more of a strategic endgame and plan in mind than people realize. It's also very annoying for me, you know, like even with the tariffs, which you know, I mean, you know, the liberal commentators are mostly like Trump is stupid. What a You know, he doesn't know what he's doing.
But but actually, if if the plan is to actually have the US default on its debt, uh, and to ruin the middle class, then it perfectly makes sense. Uh, because these incoherent tariffs mean that nobody can plan for a future. you can't even think about building a company or an industry or something if you don't know what if they're going to raise it 50% tomorrow or something. So, um, so and I know already a lot of people whose like small businesses have collapsed or they're looking at the future differently. So, it's a it's an effort to, you know, further centralize power and control and I think they really just don't think that most people matter anymore.
that with AI you're going to be able to things that cost that required like thousands or tens of thousands of people are going to require like 10 people you know which must kind of demoed with Twitter itself so you know the the only kind of um kind of resistance to that would be a kind of people's movement demanding uh new social contract universal basic income um that really pressured you know society on a on a very deep level um and I think we'll see that. But we also if you look at Trump's budget for next year, you know, they they've scraped, you know, social services, FEMA is gone, all that stuff, like 75% of the budget is military, police, and security. So they're essentially planning for, you know, massive civil unrest and to have the firepower and the capacity just to put people down, you know. So I think it's very much like a very brutal endgame, uh, unfortunately that we're looking at right now. And you know, unfortunately, I mean, you know, another whole vector around Musk is, you know, ketamine addiction and, you know, demon possession, spirit possession if you're into like internal family systems or all that stuff.
But, uh, wherever these people have gone, it's, um, you know, and however they've built up their ideology, you know, with people like Curtis Yarvin or the sovereign individual or the network state concept or, you know, effective effective accelerationism or effective altruism. These are all very convenient philosophies that allow them to feel that they're right in centralizing power and control, you know. So, so like the effect of altruism ideas that um for somebody like Musk, yeah, like maybe he kills all the kids in Africa and 100 million people die in the US or whatever, but if we are able to colonize like Mars and other planets, then he's responsible for trillions of people in the future having incredibly amazing lives. So, you know, he still becomes the greatest person in world history or cosmic history or whatever. Can I just say that that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard particularly that and and I'm not an expert in thank you for that whole breakdown that you did.
very cogent and and very significant and salient. But that this idea of effective altruism, you know, and again, I'm not an expert and I'm not going to become an expert because I've glanced enough to know that it's absolute nonsense. But the idea that digital beings in the future are going to be sentient and feel things, you know, maybe, maybe not. I'm highly skeptical. But the idea that we have ethical commitments to the trillions of potential digital beings, that more beings is good, undisputably. And if we could have millions of digital beings, that we can be made sensient, that we have an ethical obligation to speculative digital beings in the future.
Yeah. Or human beings also if if we're the ones who are going to colonize the planets. I mean, yes. No, no, no. I I get that you were I get that you were talking about very emotional, you know, humans and Mars and all that. Yes. No, I get that. I get that. I was taking it to the most extreme forms of of effective altruism debate that I've heard where literally people are saying we have ethical commitment. You know, it would be nice to save people who are hungry right now, but we need to focus on saving more trillions of digital beings in the future. It just is just absolutely absurd.
I want to mention one thing before we run out of time, which is the Supreme Court. You know, I don't I don't know of a constructive way to raise this, but I just think, you know, if anybody who's watching this live thinks like, hey, you know, the the it's the system's holding for now, there's enough push back, there's enough resistance. Um, no, there's not. Um, but particularly if we think about what's going to happen when MAGA uh justice. What's going to happen when Thomas retires and we get another MAGA justice and we have, you know, this, you know, completely unhinged MAGA Supreme Court? That's going to be MAGA and Trumpism potentially for decades and decades into the future.
So, I think progressives, um, Democrats, leftists, radicals, independents have to be much more strategic in in thinking about the Supreme Court. You know, if I used to say to people like you're saying you want a Bernie in and and you won't vote for the Democratic nominee because you were all in on Bernie. Well, what if Bernie gets in in 2024 or 2028? He's not going to be able to do a thing because he's going to be completely hamstrung by a a radical Republican extremist Supreme Court. So, we have to think on multiple levels. And so, I'm just, you know, I don't want to be a doom and gloom guy, but you know, we don't know if we're going to have another presidential election.
I'm determined that we are, but you know, we don't know what's they've already given him this, you know, cart kind of cart blanch uh you know, uh decide as we go form of pres presidential immunity, but it's hard to even imagine how much worse uh things could get, you know, if the Supreme Court because the Supreme Court is it's supposed to be three co-equal branches of government, but because of certain Supreme Court decisions in the past, they have basically arrogated to themselves ultimate decision-making power, right? So the Supreme Court kind of has a veto over just about anything else. So a president AOC is going to still be dealing with Trumpism. You know, the president in 20 2032 uh or 2036 is still going to be dealing with Trumpism, if you get what I'm saying. So we have to be very smart and strategic.
We have to think about the Supreme Court and we have to think about a united front. This is my plea right now. planetized the movement, planetized democracy, and we need a united front for democracy, against fascism, for ecology and social justice. But we have to put down this authoritarianist front, uh, the threat right now, and we need a united front of progressives, independents, radicals, leftists, liberals, etc. No. Yes. It's definitely a dicey situation, Drew. Um, we can uh, you know, it's a little bit of a dark note to leave it on, but uh, the notes are a little dark these days. May maybe maybe we leave it there.
We pick it up another time. Absolutely. Well, let me just end with a little poem that I wrote and if you don't mind, that I wrote and and posted on uh, election day. Um, and but uh, also another bright note is uh, the uh, the leadership and the commitment that you've shown. And I've really appreciated your voice and your posting and your dedication uh to this to this these topics and to hosting these conversations and moving uh moving our dialogues and our discourse and our movements forward. So thank you Daniel for everything that you're doing. No, thanks for that. I've been enjoying your post also. You bet.
So this is I'll just end with this poem. Uh it's called to the quizlings and the word quizing means like a collaborator. It's basically it comes from like a Norwegian politician that collaborated with the Nazis and his name was Quizzling, right? So, um this is called And so here's part of again one thing that I didn't anticipate. I I knew the Trump 2.0 would be bad, but I did not anticipate all of the tech leaders, you know, Tim Cook and Zuckerberg bending the knee. I did not anticipate ABC News and CBS News, you know, bending the knee. I did not anticipate these major law firms bending the knee.
So that was incredibly distressing to me. And it was out of that kind of feeling of distress that I wrote this poem uh called To the Quizlings. To the Quizlings, to the Quizlings, to the cowards, to those thirsting after power. Heaven and history will record what you do. To the obsequious, to the toadies, to the lackeyis, to the yesmen, to the go along to getalong return on your investment in the fall of Rome you call your home. Heaven and history are witnessing. To the Bezos and Zucks, to the Murdochs and Musks controlling our thoughts with trolls and bots, to the fascists who would ruin all the world to rule the ashes.
To the vote suppressors, disenfranchisers, and Jim Crow juniors, heaven and history are recording what you do. To those filled with rage who can't tell this will not age well. To the tuned out apathetic both sidesers in the middle who won't do a thing cuz you can only do a little. To the 80 million folks with better things to do than vote. But especially to all of you in powerful positions. The editors and chief, the billionaires, the politicians. Heaven and history are recording what you do. The whole world is watching and the little ones too. History and heaven are recording your example and the downtrodden trampled upon masses never stay trampled.
So to the powers of the hour, don't be shocked to see a 100 million folks standing up for democracy. We can win. We can win. We've got to begin though. The climate's cooked. The windows closing. Now is the time. We need dreaming, not dozing. to everyone around the world who won't cease to work for workers. Solidarity, the planet, justice, peace. Heaven and history are supporting what you do. To those who in the spirit of love are steadfast and brave, history and heaven will remember your name. All right, Truth. Thank you. Have a great day. We'll talk soon. All right. I bless you, Daniel. Blessings to everyone.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.