In the wake of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement that he is suspending his campaign to endorse Donald Trump, I’ve received lots of pleas, demands, and requests to declare my opinion on this choice. I was privy to the decision-making process. Countless people reached out to Bobby and those around him with fervent, compelling, and contradicting advice. Many were under the impression that their insights had somehow escaped the candidate. So let me distill the two main arguments, and combine them with one or two other ingredients into a potion that may sooth the divisive passions that Bobby’s choice has ignited. But I warn you, some of the ingredients may induce dizziness and nausea. The temptation, in presenting these two opposing arguments, is to signal in advance which one I favored. I could thereby present the clubhouse password that assures at least one half of my readers that I am still an acceptable person, who has not gone to the dark side in violation of all norms of human decency. So, I will attempt to be inscrutable as I present each argument in the most generous way I can. Argument 1: Stay in the race! You have spent sixteen months building a massive, independent political movement. You have campaigned in part by denouncing the two-party straightjacket that is strangling our country, and you have offered an alternative. You have inspired hope in tens of millions of supporters, including a hundred thousand volunteers who have worked tirelessly on your behalf, and a similar number of donors. They dug deep, because they believed in you. You are the standard-bearer for an independent movement that can liberate the country. Even if you don’t win this election, you will have laid*** the foundation for future candidates. Change does not come overnight. But if you join Trump, the most divisive figure in American politics, all of this effort will have been wasted. You will have betrayed the people who believed in you. The people who stood out in 117-degree heat and bitter cold to collect signatures for you. And for what? For empty promises from a man who is famous for not keeping his word? For someone who will ditch you the moment it becomes expedient? For someone who evokes the worst impulses in the American psyche? Don’t be naive. Don’t give up now. In any hard journey, the key moment is when if seems all is lost. If you push through that moment, you will find on its other side that the goal was not so far way after all. Argument 2: Join Trump! You have been steadily sinking in the polls, and this campaign is feeling more and more like a vanity project. You can continue this impossible crusade, pretending to your supporters that you can actually win when you don’t believe it yourself. You can take their hard-earned donation dollars, and become a footnote in history, perhaps as the one who split the anti-establishment vote and handed the election to the Democrats — to the party that has reviled you, censored you, sabotaged your campaign, and waged legal warfare against you… to the party that IS the establishment. If you can’t win, you can still avert the catastrophe of another Democratic administration that will continue to pursue the neocon agenda of endless war; that will consolidate its powers of propaganda, surveillance, and censorship to a degree where elections will become meaningless; and that will continue to be the lackey of big tech, big pharma, the military contractors, and Wall Street. But you can have a huge influence in the Trump administration. You can help him root out corruption from the federal agencies. He wanted to drain the swamp, but he didn’t know how. You know how. You can reform the health agencies and save millions of children from death and misery. You can fulfill the mission to which you’ve dedicated your career. And you can encourage Trump’s best impulses and counteract his worst. Friends, supporters, donors, family, and advisors strenuously warned Bobby that he would be making a horrible mistake if he chose (1). Others issued similar warnings about (2). Sincere, passionate, well-reasoned warnings. In some cases, the same advisor would make one argument one day, and the opposite argument the next, on each occasion believing that argument fervently. The taint of associationWhen Kennedy finally announced his decision to endorse Donald Trump, those who wanted him to stay in the race felt dismayed and bewildered. They reached out to me by the dozens or hundreds seeking explanation, or to commiserate with me. “How are you doing?” “Are you OK?” Many of these outreaches were no doubt sincere. They really wanted to know if I was OK. Yet across the span of hundreds of messages I also detected — or imagined — a subtext. The implicit question was, “Have you gone over to the dark side?” The question of which side I am on — have I “gone over” to MAGA — evokes in me a primal dread. The question cannot be met with a discussion of the relative merits of Trump’s policies compared to those of Kamala Harris. It is asking, Are you one of us, or one of them? Are you an acceptable member of society – my society? Because, Charles, your proximity to the untouchable one now makes you untouchable, unless you purify yourself of his taint by performing the necessary ablutions. The implicit plea then is for me to clearly disavow, denounce, and repudiate Donald Trump along with Kennedy’s alliance with him. Then I will have established myself as an acceptable person again. To make a measured assessment of Trump’s flaws and virtues, or those of the people around him, or the possible ramifications, good and ill, of his administration, violates the requirements of the purification ritual. One must other him. One must cast him out of the circle of one’s “associations.” Which group are you are part of? This is an ancient and terrifying social force. When a witch-hunt is on, you’d better not have any friendly relations with a witch, or with anyone who does. You must protect yourself by loudly condemning witchcraft or, better yet, by joining the witch-hunt yourself. When the hunt was for communists, you had to make sure not to associate with anyone accused of being one, lest you be named a “fellow traveler.” The present situation is not quite like a witch hunt, because the Trump camp is not a small or powerless minority. In times of stress, societies turn ever toward a scapegoat or scapegoat class to blame for its troubles and to unify that society in a bloody purge. For the scapegoat class to be a suitable receptacle for society's fear and anger, it must be marginal and relatively powerless. Then the witch-hunt, the lynching, the pogrom can claim its victims without igniting a civil war. Civil war is exactly what we will face if the polarized thinking that sees human affairs in terms of my side and your side continues to intensify. In the United States, civil war could erupt in the event of a widespread perception of election cheating or, in case of a Trump victory, social turmoil leading up to an attempt at a “color revolution.” On the species level, we are already fighting a civil war. All war is civil war. Equally grim, the civil unrest that might follow a disputed election will be a pretext for an authoritarian crackdown. The establishment will consolidate its control over the public, the media, and the Internet. It will co-opt or take down free speech platforms like Telegram and Twitter. It will deploy terrifying AI-enhanced technologies of surveillance and censorship, silencing dissent in the name of “combating mis-, dis-, and malinformation.” It will freeze the bank accounts of dissidents. It will imprison political opponents. Meaningful elections will cease. And there will be nowhere to hide, because these totalitarian powers transcend national boundaries. The more divisive, the more contemptuous, the more hateful, the more inflammatory the political rhetoric, the more we set the stage for these outcomes. A bilious gas spouts from both the left- and the right-hand burners of the stove. Its stench fills the house. And this election is sure to generate plenty of sparks. That is why I refuse to play the game of distancing and denouncing. I first felt the heat of this drama around 2018, when I was a guest on Russell Brand’s podcast. Shortly thereafter, Russell hosted Jordan Peterson. So, I was on the same platform as Jordan Peterson. I soon received emails demanding that I “distance myself” from Russell Brand and denounce his association with Peterson. The popular kids had declared that Jordan Peterson had cooties. Therefore Russell Brand had cooties too, and so would I if I didn’t distance myself. What does it mean to “distance oneself”? It means to issue a ritual denunciation of the dehumanized subject of the mob’s ire. I am sure a lot of my readers would be feeling more comfortable right now, if I had begun this essay with a ritual denunciation of Donald Trump. And some of you are scrutinizing my every word to discern at least a hint of scorn, a subtle signal, to assure them that I’m on the side of decency and virtue, to quell the horrified suspicion that, having been a close advisor and speechwriter to RFK Jr., I might migrate my skills, my support, my endorsement to Donald Trump. Another portion of my readers would be delighted if that were the case. But if this is the focus of your scrutiny, my message will pass you by. Winning is not the main goalWhat is this thing we call an 'endorsement'? It says, “You should vote for this candidate,” and it settles which camp I identify with. But I do not believe that "you" (for there are innumerable unique you's) "should" vote for any particular candidate. If that seems like non-committal aloofness and fence-sitting you may want to ask me, "Will you work to get Trump elected as you worked to get Kennedy elected?" Well, why do you want to know that? Maybe because then you will know whether I am “us” or “them.” You will know whether to continue reading my work. And I will have capitulated to the tribal impulse that is driving society toward disaster. I would prefer people to accept or reject my writing on its own merits, and not based on which (if any) political tribe I belong to. But to answer the question, my highest priority as a campaign advisor and speechwriter was never to get the candidate elected. Yes, of course, I wanted him to win, but my main fidelity was (1) to that which his campaign might serve: truth, peace, transparency, freedom; and behind all those, a new story for civilization, and (2) to the best version of himself that I could witness, believe in, and encourage as an advisor and a friend. From within the mindset of politics, winning an election seems like the most important thing in the world. Everything rides on it. Oh, the changes you will make if you get elected! But I have never thought that if only presidents or billionaires or CEOs would see the light, they would transform the world. They are less powerful than we think. They seem powerful when they comply with dominant systems and ideologies; when they extend the reigning mythology of civilization. But when they defy it, the forces that had filled their sails turn against them. They may still accomplish beautiful goals, tacking against the wind. But they cannot change its direction. The prevailing winds do change. Cosmic and elemental forces, all co-resonating with human consciousness in evolution, gather and disperse the winds. Therefore my work has been mostly on the level of narrative, to alter the basic myths that run civilization in the background: the discrete and separate self, the human/nature divide, the separation of matter and spirit, the cult of quantity, the illusion of progress, the story of money, the denial of death, the primacy of force-based causality. Lest this mission sound grandiose, I hasten to add that my part in it is very small. A light lift. The heavy lifting has been done by those who, through thankless sacrifice and patience, have built a field of love, kindness, healing, and generosity. They are the ones who summon the wind. We story-tellers merely draw on energy of their sacraments. So, who is really in a “position of power”? Today somewhere in Sudan or Haiti or Gaza, a man gave up his last piece of bread to a grandmother he barely knew, so that she could feed a famished child. He never advertised his sacrifice. Maybe no one will ever know. Maybe neither he, the child, nor the grandmother will ever live to tell the tale. The dominant theory-of-change says that his sacrifice, therefore, had no effect on the world. But anyone who is fortunate enough to witness such an act understands upon witnessing it that something important has happened; that it was in service not just to that child, but to all children; that a principle of human nature has been fortified; that a declaration has been issued to God’s witness: “This is what a human being shall be. This is what a human being shall choose.” These are the hidden yogis who have held our world together. I will be sharing their stories from time to time in this column. When I do, it won’t be because I am retreating from the pressure and danger of the political engagement that actually changes things. It will be because these are medicine stories that help cohere a new-and-ancient mythology. When they are heard, and gratitude and honor flow into them, the guardian spirits of this world gain strength. Nonetheless, as fate and circumstance have brought me adjacent to the circles of the “powerful,” I will continue to devote to them a portion of my attention, so long as I am useful there. They are not as powerful as we think, but neither are they without power. They have their role. But their real power comes not from winning elections. It comes from how they win, or lose, and who they become in winning or losing. In keeping with a theory of change that puts process above outcome, I encouraged RFK Jr. not to put winning first. I counseled him with a paradox. "You can only win," I said, "if you put something else above winning." This paradox bears two levels of understanding. First, it is practical advice. People need to sense you are not like other politicians; ultimately you serve ideals beyond your own power. When you don't play it safe by saying what you think people want to hear, or what you think you need to say to win, but instead speak honest words, people will trust you. Of course, politicians lie and win all the time. Insincerity is the coin of the political realm. But if you are running as an alternative to normal politics, you must actually BE that alternative. Secondly, suppose you do campaign the usual way, by saying what you think people want to hear, by putting victory ahead of truth. If you win that way, then who actually wins? Which version of you has won? Who have you become as you have made victory your new god. “You” have won, perhaps, but you have not won. What you set out to serve, has not won. Who you set out to be, has not won. And that is unlikely to change once you are in “power.” So, my pledge to anyone whom I advise is that I will be your ally in staying true to your best and highest motivations. I promise to strive to hold that ideal within your organization. I will surely uphold this commitment imperfectly, nor do I expect you to be perfect. I won't abandon you if you are not. But I will not be silent when I see a misalignment. I will name it. I will name it persistently. And I will continue also to see the ways in which you are brave and true. I am not joining Donald Trump’s campaign, but if I have the opportunity to seed ideas into his mind, his message, his campaign, or his administration, I will do so. I would do the same for anyone in a position of institutional power. If such people are open to any element of the new-and-ancient story I serve, then I am available to meet them in their openness. Collapse into caricatureI won’t play the game of denouncing or endorsing. The psycho-social patterning of “which side are you on” springs from one of the chief narratives of the mythology of Separation. It understands the world by simplifying it into a drama of good versus evil, and also simplifies the human beings who play roles in that drama into subhuman or superhuman caricatures. 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 almost impossible to see the real man through the fog of today’s information war. He is not a strategic genius out-maneuvering the deep state in a match of 4D chess. Nor is he a Mussolini figure, a bigoted fascist marshaling resurgent far-right forces to elevate him into dictatorial power. He is not even particularly right-wing. Kennedy described to me a conversation he had with Trump about Project 2025, promulgated by the Heritage Foundation as a program for a conservative makeover of the United States. It has been widely associated with the Trump campaign, but when Kennedy asked him about it he said, “That thing? I didn’t even know about it until people started to complain. It was written by some right-wing asshole. There’s something crazy on every page. We’re not going to do any of that stuff.” I can share this anecdote because RFK Jr. has shared it publicly. There are many other anecdotes I cannot share without breaching personal confidences, but they confirm my long-standing belief that Donald Trump has been made into much worse and (much better) than he really is.
Donald Trump is an uncannily accommodating vessel for projection, good and ill. It occurs as something of a cosmic joke that his last name is “Trump,” which is the Joker in a deck of cards, a wild card, the card that can be any card. So it is that Donald Trump can be any character, whatever people hold him to be. This serves both to elevate him and debase him. Whatever his flaws and virtues, he is definitely a talented showman, a creator of spectacle, as one would expect from the Joker, the Jester, the Trump. The showman’s openness to projection allows the spectators to see in him that which he is not, whether hero of villain. He is a cipher, a proxy through which society’s intensifying divisions can materialize in human form. He also, therefore, represents an opportunity to heal those divisions. That opportunity is not up to him. It is up to us, and we can choose it by cutting through the demonization and the valorization both to see the man beneath the Trump. From what I can see, Trump has changed a lot since he was last in office. Unlike in 2017, he and the people around him now have a deep antipathy toward the neocons who have been pushing the country into one military confrontation after another since 2001, and who are now pursuing a policy of maximum confrontation with Russia. As I write this, Reuters has reported that the US is set to approve shipments of long-range, radar-evading JASSM missiles to Ukraine, missiles capable of striking Moscow (using, of course, American training, targeting, and intel). Kamala Harris has offered no resistance to this insane escalation. Her rhetoric has been, if anything, more bellicose than Biden’s, earning her the endorsement of neocons like Dick Cheney. Trump, on the other hand, favors a negotiated peace. As for his 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. I worry also that, having pulled back from the brink of direct conflict with Russia, he will be vulnerable to the next stage of the neocon plan—to “pivot” the war machine toward Iran and China. He and, I’m sorry to say, Kennedy, both accept the ideological basis of Israel’s attempts to incite war between the United States and Iran. (More on that below.) On the bright side, contrary to liberals’ fears that he will usher in an authoritarian dictatorship, I believe he is more likely to roll back the censorship, surveillance, secrecy, and media control that has intensified dangerously under Biden, and to break the power of the intelligence agencies (Kennedy priorities with which he resonates strongly). That is because he is angry at having been censored and prosecuted himself by a weaponized justice system. I could go through the list of Trump’s policy ideas and compare them to those of the Democrats, but I won’t — for two reasons. First, my point here is not to argue the relative merits of him as a candidate compared to Kamala Harris. My point, rather, is that the narrative that collapses a complex and changing person into a caricature of evil is untenable. And it is precisely this narrative that makes him, and anyone linked to him by a chain of association, untouchable in polite society. It would sure make things easy if this election were a simple contest of good versus evil. But this is the way of thinking that is tearing the world apart. Those who think that way always consider themselves to be members of Team Good, of course. If your opponent is evil incarnate, then any means to stop him are justified. So to say that Donald Trump is anything but pure evil (or some dehumanizing equivalent), to fail to say something derogatory, will incite fury among Team Good, for it contradicts their very identity and their understanding of the world. It offends them to say that I agree with some of Trump’s opinions and disagree with others, or that some of his ideas have merit. Because then I am elevating him to the status of full human being. I am validating his inclusion in polite society. Those people will recite the litany of Trump’s crimes and misdemeanors, his sayings and doings, as proof that I am deluded in believing him to be someone of normal sanity, empathy, and feeling. Certainly he is no saint. But in the context of information warfare, with its cherry-picking and decontextualization, its hype and its spin, its narrative management and weaponization of media, one must be suspicious of the story that Trump is a singular danger to democracy. “He will embolden white supremacists and unleash a tsunami of racist, homophobic, anti-immigrant violence.” “He has stated he won’t accept the results of the election.” Be skeptical. Talk to his Black, gay, and Latino supporters. Read alternative views on the January 6th riot. Do that, and black and white dissolve into shades of many colors. One must be skeptical of the elements of the antihero narrative. And one must be even more wary of the simplistic worldview and that habit of thought that so quickly accepts that portrayal of Trump (or anyone else). That habit is no less pervasive on the right than on the left. Both sides default to mockery, scorn, and contempt. Both pursue the strategy of arousing maximum indignation toward their opponents. Both feed the fires of hate that make the situation in my country and the world so explosive. The right does it especially now to immigrants, characterizing illegal mass migration as an “invasion” and highlighting the presence of criminal gangs among the migrants. That lens reveals a sliver of truth, perhaps, but it hides and distorts a lot more than it reveals. The issue with the “issues”The second reason I won’t spend more time comparing the policies of Trump and Harris is that the terms of the whole policy conversation are too shallow. What really needs to be done is not articulable in the lexicon of policy. It is beyond the pale. The polarized, divisive debates obscure what we really need to be talking about, and the menu options that politicians offer us obscure any real solutions. To return to the example of immigration: the controversy is all about building a border wall and deporting migrants. I could opine within the confines of those options, but then I would be ignoring the real issue: why are there so many immigrants in the first place? It is because many other countries are virtually unlivable, due to US-sponsored wars, ecological devastation, and the apparatus of neocolonialism. It takes a lot to induce people to forsake their homeland and all they have known to make a dangerous journey to a foreign land. But when debt pressure compels a nation to strip its forests and minerals, when austerity programs require it to cut salaries and pensions, when development projects destroy traditional ways of life, when international currency speculators crash the currency, life gets worse every year, more and more of the populations sinks into destitution, and the more enterprising among them flee. Another way to look at it, is that when a country has exported everything else of value that can be stripped from it, the final export is its young people. Now, this explanation is still too simple, but it conveys the truth that immigration is not an issue of us-versus-them. Mass migration is a symptom of a deeper malady and, harmful as it might be to the receiving nation, it indicates even greater suffering in the source country. The immigration issue is really about imperialism and indebtedness. These, in turn, are inseparable from the financial system that reigns today, in which money is born as interest-bearing debt, which necessitates a growth economy, which drives capital abroad in search of sufficient returns, which puts pressure on governments and societies everywhere to liquidate natural and social capital… and so on. None of these are part of the political debate on immigration, except perhaps on the fringes. Left unaddressed, they ensure that immigration pressure will never wane, and that societies like ours will continue face morally impossible choices that split the public in two. I could make similar points about the rest of our “issues” — trade, education, public health, foreign policy, race, trans issues, guns, criminal justice, abortion, and so forth. One more quick example: the Kennedy campaign and now Trump and Harris are making an issue of subsidized child care. If child care is indispensable for modern parents, then I suppose it is better if it is affordable to all. But why aren’t we looking with horror at a society where community and extended family, let alone village and clan, has disintegrated to a point we pay strangers (low wages) to perform one of the most intimate, precious functions there is — taking care of our children? Within the Kennedy campaign, there was some receptivity to my views on such things, at least on a philosophical level. To some degree they infiltrated messaging and policy. But mostly the campaign was quite conventional. It had to be, I suppose, to speak a political language that people even understand. And if the campaign lacked the boldness to (or had the good sense not to) adopt my thinking fully, at least the candidate’s statements were generally oriented in the same direction. But there was, and is, one glaring exception: Palestine. The Palestine problemPalestine is the reason why Option 1 (to stay in the race) was a dead end. In order to truly be the standard-bearer for an independent, anti-establishment political movement, Kennedy would have had to embrace the cause of peace and justice in Palestine. Before October 7, 2023, Kennedy had risen to as high as 24% in national polls. He was the darling of the alternative media. If he had energetically advocated a just solution to the Palestinian conflict, the enormous political energy that lit up Chicago outside the Democratic convention and energized students and young people across America would have made his campaign unstoppable. As it was, his strident “pro-Israel” position (which I put in quotes because Israel is in my view destroying itself in the name of its own security) baffled many of his supporters because of its inconsistency with his other messages. He has devoted the last twenty years of his career to protecting children’s health — but what about the hundreds of thousands of Gazan children who have been killed, maimed, orphaned, uprooted, malnourished, and stunted in Israel’s murderous war of revenge? He has laid bare the workings of the propaganda machine through which the government-corporate establishment engineered consent for medical tyranny and endless regime-change wars, yet does not see through the handiwork of one of the most sophisticated propaganda operations in existence. He offers a trenchant critique of US imperialism in Latin America and the neocon agenda to incite war against Russia and China. Yet, he does not understand how central Israel is to US imperialism in West Asia, even though he has named it “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier.” That too contradicts his stated position of dismantling the war machine. Do we need aircraft carriers, sinkable or otherwise, patrolling the planet? He is rightly alarmed that continued escalation of the Ukraine War could lead to World War Three, but offers little resistance to the machinations of Israel and the neocons in Washington to engineer a war between the US and Iran. He understands the role of the CIA in his uncle’s and father’s assassination and its pervasive unwholesome influence in the media and politics, yet does not recognize its close ties to Israel’s intelligence agencies. Of course, if I gave him the chance, Bobby could explain (to his own satisfaction, anyway) how his views are perfectly consistent. From his seat, from the totality of information and influences that have shaped him, it looks like Israel is in a fight for its life against regional and global forces of bloodthirsty anti-Semitism; that the suffering of the Palestinians is exaggerated through Hamas propaganda; that there is no famine in Gaza; that the IDF is the most moral army in the world; and that the accusations against Israel are a continuation of a long tradition of blood libel against the Jewish people. From my perspective though, no leader who fails to pierce the veil of ideology and propaganda to recognize and speak out against genocidal war crimes and ethnic cleansing, can possibly summon the moral force necessary to inspire the united populist movement we’ve been waiting for. Trying to run as an anti-establishment candidate, while holding a thoroughly establishment position on such a central issue, is like a track star racing with a sprained Achilles tendon. His muscles, heart, and lungs may be at the peak of fitness, but he will still limp last across the finish line, if he reaches it at all. And Kennedy is indeed a formidable “athlete”: a man of gravitas and wit, indomitable will and kind heart, steady courage and deep humility. Many people have expressed their heartbreak that he has joined Trump. I was heartbroken last October. And so, I must invest my hope for thorough-going change somewhere other than any of the candidates in this election cycle. (True, Cornell West, Jill Stein, and many other of the hundreds of candidates who have filed with the FEC have better positions on Palestine. But they have other deficiencies, and no hope of winning.) From all appearances, Donald Trump shares Kennedy’s views on Israel, while the Democrats make feeble squeaks of protest even as they keep the pipeline of guns and bombs to Israel wide open and affirm their undying support. The future looks grim for the people of Gaza and the West Bank. One might grasp at a straw of hope, though, that if Kennedy really has the chance, with Trump’s backing, to pry the lid off the corruption, cover-ups, secrets, and lies of the last sixty years, some of what flies from that Pandora’s Box will shock him to his core. Then his moment for courage will come. Israel is a central cog in the machinery of global imperialism. Anyone seeking to dismantle that machinery, whether as a scholar or a politician, will eventually discover that Israel (as it has been) is inseparable from the America-centric imperial world order. But Israel can transform. I believe a beautiful nation will emerge from the wreckage of the Judeo-fascist state that Zionist Israel is fast becoming. The dream of a secure Jewish homeland will be fulfilled, but not through force of arms, not through walls and checkpoints and ethnic cleansing. A truly secure nation needs none of those. It is no measure of security to be constantly at war. I admit it is a desperate hope that Kennedy or Trump will awaken to the horrors that Israel has perpetrated on the Palestinian people over the last 80 years, and exert the peace leadership necessary to effect a transformation of the Holy Land. A more reasonable hope is that the antipathy toward the neocons and the veneration of peace that Kennedy fortifies in the Trump camp will derail the neocon/Israeli agenda of war with Iran. The questions that compassion asksAs I wrote early on in the War on Gaza, my disappointment with Kennedy was not primarily that he had taken the wrong side, but that he had fallen into the very pattern of sides-taking that he called on us to transcend. It’s not that he got hero and villain mixed up. It’s that he saw the conflict in those terms at all. That is not to deny that the dynamics of oppressor and oppressed, victim and abuser, are clearly at play in Palestine. However, there are other story lines too, other dramas, and therefore other paths to peace besides one side finally admitting it was wrong. However, if one side holds the other as irredeemable, beyond negotiation, then no peace is possible outside of total annihilation, and the side that succeeds in annihilating the other will have destroyed its own soul in the process. The parallel with American political rhetoric is obvious. The Democratic establishment and its most zealous followers who see Trump as an irredeemable fascist bent on overthrowing democracy, are well on their way to becoming the very thing they have projected onto him. They are destroying democracy in the name of saving it. The revolution we are seeking has compassion at its core. Compassion asks earnestly, “What is it like to be you?” “How did you come to be as you are?” “What is your story?” “What are your circumstances?” “What are your hopes?” “What are your fears?” “What do you want?” “What do you need?” And, as Orland Bishop says, “How must I be, so that you may be free?” There surely exist a small number of truly psychopathic individuals for whom these questions will bring alarming answers. But there are no whole populations and classes and ethnicities of psychopaths. Such questions, then, yield complexity. They disturb certainties and crumble ideologies. They forestall violence. They allow us to transcend divisions and find the common ground that lies not between two poles, but beneath them. And one cannot apply them selectively, admitting some people into the circle of compassion and not others, and still remain in that consciousness oneself. Withhold it from the people of Gaza — or the people of Israel, or any group or party or class — and you will have admitted a stowaway aboard your ship, destined one day to usurp command and steer you back to where you came from, or somewhere worse, mission unaccomplished. If the USA’s leaders would ask the questions that compassion inspires of Palestine, the carnage there would end in days. By upholding the hardline Israeli story of Palestine’s history and present, Kennedy and Trump sit in the same consciousness that casts them out of the circle of acceptable humanity. The consciousness that accepts the killing of tens of thousands of children in the name of security, also accepts lying, cheating, stealing, legal warfare, even assassination to prevent Literal Hitler from ascending to the White House. Evil is always committed in the name of something good. Evil believes itself to be good. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength*** What is to be done?So what is to be done? Earlier, when I asked, “Why do you want to know [whether I support Trump]?” I was perhaps a little ungenerous in my response. It’s not just that people want to know whether I’m still an acceptable member of the group. There is also genuine consternation, confusion, vertigo in the face of swift and dramatic events. At such times we naturally look to Substack writers for guidance. That was supposed to be a joke.*** Anyway, I’m not going to tell you whom you should vote for. I have a more important request. The world is in great peril and we have to step away from us-versus-them thinking NOW. The mindset that demonizes one's political opponent is the same one that demonizes a foreign enemy to make war, or that demonizes a population to facilitate ethnic cleansing. Left unchecked, it will erupt into civil unrest, violence, and then tyranny. It may even lead to World War Three. I speak here as an American, but the same dynamics are rampant across the West. My country is not exempt from what it has sown in the world. The fate of Libya, of Iraq, of Venezuela, of Ukraine, of Syria, of Yugoslavia, of Lebanon, of Gaza could easily become our own. What allows political authorities to commit heinous crimes against humanity? They are not, after all, superhuman. They don’t have special powers like Magneto or Darth Vader. So they must turn the population into willing accomplices in their own oppression. They instigate wave after wave of fear and hate , and ride each to new heights of power. As the Nazi Hermann Goering put it, “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” There’s always a bogeyman. The insane escalation in Ukraine requires the bogeyman of Vladimir Putin leading the resurrected corpse of the Evil Empire (the Soviet Union). The wave of surveillance and censorship and persecution of dissidents in the West requires the bogeyman of “MAGA extremists” or “Russian agents” or “domestic terrorists” or “spreaders of dangerous anti-vax misinformation.” The razing of Gaza and slaughter of its people requires the bogeyman of implacable hate-crazed enemies of Israel thirsty for the blood of Jews. Every hateful word, every dehumanizing smear, every note of mockery and contempt, every denunciation and condemnation that we put into the public square feeds the powers that would manipulate us into war, genocide, and fascism. And so, politicians and media set the example of hate for us to follow. It isn’t even deliberate — that’s the thing. It is just the way things are done. I don’t mean here to set up politicians and media as the new evil. “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.” But that is what they do. They divide us. They teach us to hate each other. Don’t fall for it. That’s my request. Don’t fall for it. Instead, enter the political sphere with the questions that come from compassion and lead to love. That is the only revolution worth having. Thanks for reading my blog on Substack, You can support my work by becoming a paying subscriber. (Same content, with an extra little buzz of gratitude.)
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