Mysticism Under Trump
HOBOKEN, APRIL 9, 2025. I settle on my couch before dawn, mug of coffee in my left hand, pen in right, journal in my lap, and look out my window at the Hudson River and Freedom Tower and Pier A, where lamps irradiate the trees, which are fuzzy with buds because it’s finally spring, and the weirdness of it all god-smacks me…
Ding! Text from Vicki, update on the richest guy on earth axing aid for the poorest.
Ack. Look at that story later, back to the weirdness not of anything in particular, not my naked feet, although they are truly weird, dinosaur-ish, not the orange faux fireplace flickering merrily in the corner, not the air filter I ordered from Amazon when a plume of smoke from Canada descended on us like a portent of apocalypse. No, I’m wonder-struck by everything, by the improbability that anything exists at all, especially creatures that can grok their own...
Ding! Another text from Vicki, update on that woman, Tufts graduate student, yanked off the street by goons because she thinks bombing kids in Gaza is bad.
Shit. Back to gawking at the world, but it feels forced now, phony. I indulge in this exercise when I feel habituated to my own life, stuck in my routines, like eating yogurt and granola, emailing students about their final projects, working on my lecture about the pointlessness of self-examination. Stop, I tell myself, pay attention, describe what you see in all its entropy-defying glory.
But this has become just another routine, squeezing an epiphany and column out of my caffeine-induced euphoria, a column that serves up the same mystical cliches: every instant of existence, even the most mundane, should blow your mind in ways that words can’t possibly convey blah blah blah.
And even this, what I’m doing right now, mocking my half-assed pseudo-mysticism, calling it just another item on my To Do list, another routine, is just a meta-routine resulting in more cliches possibly packageable into another column that gets a Like or two.
I fancy myself a mystic, but I’m not, really, because I can’t afford to be aquiver with mystical fervor. I’m a professor, father, friend, boyfriend with duties to fulfill, so I indulge in word-mediated simulacra of mysticism, museum doses, while remaining safely inside my comfy bourgeois cave with a view.
And that’s fine, I’m happy to while away non-transcendent hours listening to my students envision their utopias, to Vicki talk about the pros and cons of colored bonbons, to Michael worry about his trans daughter’s plans. Not to mention the hours I spend in my cave at night watching escapist shit like Blacklist.
This weekend I could try to disrupt my habituation, rustle up a little mystical epiphany, by taking a sliver of blotter and drawing garbage cans on Pier A or hiking in the Hudson Highlands. But what good would that do? I could sit atop Anthony’s Nose beaming at the other hikers--children of god!-- and at the gleaming Hudson and thinking, Come on, life is good.
Then I’d remember the ugliness, children of god killing and imprisoning and bullying other children of god. Maybe Trump is just an instrument of Shiva like my friend Karen says, but his divinity or whatever is irrelevant. He’s a bad guy, he’s making people suffer, he demands a reaction, not mystical acceptance, which is arguably akin to collaboration, but resistance.
What should you do? How should you resist if you’re a mystic? Or even a pseudo-mystic? Oh, hell, I don’t know. You could do what Simone Weil did and starve yourself to show your solidarity with victims of cruelty, the poor and oppressed. You could set yourself on fire like one of those Buddhist monks.
What can mystics do, short of suicide, when times are bad? I google “how mystics cope with fascism” and get info not on mystics who resist fascism but on mystics who embrace fascism or fascists who embrace mysticism. Ugh.
Mystical exaltation--triggered by meditation or prayer or ketamine--doesn’t turn everyone into a kind, loving saint. Far from it. Mysticism can make us meaner, amplify our worst instincts, turn us into fascists, for whom nirvana is the triumph of the strong over the weak.
Mystics say mysticism is the solution, but maybe it’s the problem. Mysticism is supposed to enlighten us, to propel us out of the cave, but it can drag us deeper into darkness.
Okay, chill. Take a deep breath, eyes closed, and exhale muttering my mantra: D’oh. D’oh. D’oh. Open my eyes and look at the weird, weird world. Across the courtyard from me, a light flicks on in a corner apartment, turning it into a dimly lit aquarium. A humanoid shadow glides from left to right like a shark seeking prey.
Too portentous, try again. Pay attention. Ah, here we go. A ferry, white with blue trim, churns jauntily across the Hudson toward Manhattan bearing commuters, infinitely improbable creatures, god’s children, who are thinking about, or trying not to think about, what lies ahead.
Ding!
Further Reading:
The Election and the Problem of Evil