Trumpocalypse Now!

Let's have a call tomorrow to discuss?

Following up on my last newsletter, I want to continue to explore the archetypes of the Apocalypse, Ahriman, and Antichrist as they relate to our current moment and what, potentially, lies ahead. Before I get into that, I find myself thinking obsessively about “resistance,” and what it means in our current situation. I thought I would set up a call to discuss this and other ideas, related to what’s happening now.

If you are free, please join us for a video community call tomorrow at noon EST. Here is a link:

Tomorrow, Sunday, Noon EST

What I feel would be helpful is a network of local live, in-person community gatherings where people come together on a regular basis to speak directly with each other about what we are experiencing. Online meetings are good, but the virtual realm feels increasingly treacherous and abstract. I know there must be great initiatives and movements already doing this: Perhaps there is no need to reinvent the wheel. If you are part of such a network or movement, please come on the call. Let us know what you are doing and how people can get involved.

On my podcast, I’ve been trying to start a process of reaching out and speaking to people with completely different views from my own (please check out my episodes with Far Right provocateurs Curtis Yarvin and Laura Loomer). Perhaps a network of community groups can also find a way to do this. What we need is a nationwide (planet-wide?) network of “citizen assemblies” to counteract and challenge extreme corporate and state power.

I just discovered the podcast, Uncomfortable Conversations, where the host, Josh Szeps, holds discussions with his political nemeses regularly. Here is an episode with Newsweek’s Batya Ungar-Sargon, apparently a former Leftist who has convinced herself that Trump will do more for working class Americans than the Democrats. Personally, after listening, I remain flummoxed that an intelligent person can believe this, with integrity. But, hey, that is just me.

I find myself astonished by the collapse of any organized or creative opposition to Trumpocalypse Now. I feel we need a radical new approach — a different rhetorical, conceptual, ideological model. While I use the old, familiar terms “resistance” and “opposition” here, even that isn’t exactly what I mean. I suspect any new alternative needs to be based in severe integrity and transparency, which would give it an authentic moral authority.

The most powerful, resonant essay I have read recently is Paul Kingsnorth’s Against Christian Civilization. For Kingsnorth, the original teachings of Jesus Christ offer a shocking contrast to the construct of "Christian civilization,” which Trump, JD Vance, Pete Hegseth, and so on claim to defend. While Christ spoke of love — that we should love even our enemies as our self — as well as humility, meekness, and self-knowledge, all civilizations, including “Christian" ones, seek to amass power and gain control over the populace. They promote pride, greed, material accumulation; enforce state violence; apply hypocritical morality. Following Christ's teachings requires living in truth — a hard, unrewarding commitment — rather than defending any over-arching national or civilizational agenda.

Kingsnorth argues that “civilization,” as a project, goes against the essence of Christ’s teaching:

When we read the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in fact, it is impossible not to see a man who was, in some fundamental sense, uncivilized. He did not tell us to get good jobs and save prudently. He told us to have no thought for the morrow. He did not tell us to generate wealth, so that economic growth could bring about global development. He told us to give everything away. The rich, he said repeatedly, could never attain the Kingdom of Heaven. He did not tell us to defend our frontiers, or to expand them. He told us never to resist evil. He did not tell us to be responsible citizens. He told us to leave our dead fathers unburied and follow him instead. He told us to hate our own parents and to love those who hated us. Every single one of these teachings, were we to follow them, would make the building of a civilization impossible.

Kingsnorth argues that when people speak of "defending" or "rebuilding" Christian civilization, they are not advocating for true Christianity: They seek to perpetuate “imperialist” modernity, with its destructive fixation on material progress and resource exploitation. This progress, he contends, has ravaged both culture and nature. "Christian civilization" is a part of the problem, not the solution.

Authentic Christianity is impractical, intolerable, and even terrifying because it directly opposes the values of the world. Christianity demands the death of the self for the wisdom of God, which appears as foolishness to the world. Kingsnorth notes that attempting to wage "civilizational wars" in Christ's name is nonsensical. Christ's battles must be fought within the domain of the invisible human heart, not in the realms of worldly power (Similarly Buddha noted that the greatest warrior was not the one who killed a hundred men, but the one who conquered his own mind).

This all rings so true to me, yet at the same time, I maintain a faint and seemingly ridiculous hope — or perhaps even a presentiment — that there is a way to overcome this dichotomy. We can build a human culture, society, or civilization that elevates and redeems the individual, establishes community coherence, while we also regenerate and enhance the natural diversity of the living, sacred Earth. As I explored before, Oscar Wilde’s fantastic essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, points to a possible solution to this dilemma.

The Archetypes of Apocalypse and Antichrist