Conspirituality

Trump’s Town Hall DJ love-in stumped a lot of folks. From the conspirituality angle, however, there’s something familiar about this improvised ritual. Because the world we cover is strewn with the wreckage of charismatic patriarchs who bleed their followers dry in the closed-loop system of cultic dynamics. 

When leaders like Trump get to the end of the line, all that’s left is pure affect. They have exhausted themselves in the efforts of self-aggrandizement. They have nothing left to say because they’ve said it a 1000 times. They’re all out of stories. They might even be bored of their own bullshit. Underslept or dysregulated by chaotic schedules, they may not be sure where they are. They’re beset by enemies, ill and in cognitive decline, but can’t admit it. And when they start to feel overwhelmed by their followers' pathetic—in their view—neediness, they will reach for any help they can get in maintaining their emotional dominance. 

What October 14 showed us is that in these moments, Trump’s go-to resource is canned music, and, without his own iPad at the ready, a DJ handler who can spin the tracks and support his reverie of relief and control. 

Show Notes

Trump holds town hall in Pennsylvania suburbs with focus on economy 

How Media Outlets Covered Trump’s Musical Town Hall

Donald Trump is DJing weekly at Mar-a-Lago, plays Broadway songs and Celine Dion from his iPad, report says

DJ T: How Trump controls the music at Mar-a-Lago  

Twitter thread 

152: Tulsi Gabbard’s Krishna Consciousness (w/Nitai Joseph)

PLAYING FOR OSHO 1989 Introduction – Chinmaya Dunster 

Patted Down by India’s Hugging Saint 

The Soft Nationalism of Amma, India’s Hugging Saint

37: Guru Jagat Cultjacks Kundalini Yoga (w/Philip Deslippe & Stacie Stukin)

Letter to Sogyal Rinpoche from current and ex-Rigpa members details abuse allegations 

Trump's bizarre music session reignites questions about his mental acuity 

Brief: Trump’s Impending Ego Implosion (w/ Daniel Shaw)

Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation

Sex abuse allegations surround L.A. Buddhist teacher

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People will reach for anything to relieve the stress of climate anxiety. 

There’s outright denial: this can’t be happening. It doesn’t fit in with my understanding of the world. The science must be wrong. During Milton, Catturd wonders why the wind speed keeps changing on the weather reports. They must be making it up. Or the guy in Galveston, TX, posting that he can’t see any hurricane from his Gulf view.

When denial is impractical, there’s political displacement: our enemies are responsible. They’re seeding the clouds, they’re spewing the chemtrails. The Democrats are sparking tornadoes with invisible drones over swing states. They’re using radio waves to steer the hurricane’s eye. They’re clearing land for lithium mining so they can take our gas hog pickups away.

But when the storm surge is just too high to attribute to Jewish space lasers, there’s also good old spiritual displacement: God is punishing our enemies for their sins. We didn’t stop all their abortions and anal sex, and now we are caught in the crossfire of God’s just vengeance. 

Today we look at the distortions and disruptions, the fallacies and fables—and not all of them from the right—that keep people locked in climate paralysis.

Show Notes

Food Babe misinformation carousel

Wigington v. MacMartin, 2:21-cv-02355-KJM-DMC 

Record Hot Water Is Fueling Hurricane Milton 

Hurricane Milton: what causes such intense storms? 

What Big Oil knew about climate change, in its own words 

Early oil industry knowledge of CO2 and global warming | Nature Climate Change

Exxon Confirmed Global Warming Consensus in 1982 with In-House Climate Models 

No obituary for Earth: Scientists fight climate doom talk 

Guy McPherson and Near Term Human Extinction - The Mike Nowak Show with Peggy Malecki 

Arctic News: It’s time to pursue hospice, by Guy McPherson 

Statement on Guy McPherson - Eugene 

The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of Deep Adaptation - 

Ecological Grief as a Response to Environmental Change: A Mental Health Risk or Functional Response? - PMC 

The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of 'Deep Adaptation' | openDemocracy

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Matthew fields excellent questions about his new book from colleagues Ann Gleig and Michelle C. Johnson. 

NAB Show Notes

This event includes discussions on sensitive topics related to abuse; sexual assault; high-demand tactics; racism; gender-based violence; and systems of dominance, patriarchy, and oppression. We know that these topics may be distressing or triggering to some attendees, and we invite you to take care when listening, and to tend to your needs if you feel activated, overwhelmed, or emotionally impacted. We're so grateful you're here, and we thank you for coming. We also want to thank survivors of sexual violence and abuse in yoga, wellness, Buddhist communities, and beyond, whose stories, voices, and feedback have been invaluable to the work each of us continues to do in service of healing our communities from the harm of sexual violence.

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Born in 1831, Helena "Madame" Blavatsky pioneered the New Age grift. The Russian aristocrat plagiarized her books while claiming to be channeling the “Masters of Ancient Wisdom” to tell a dodgy heroic back-story. She founded the Theosophical Society in New York, claimed to have learned a secret Tibetan language, and laid the foundation for alien channelers and Woo-Anon. She also inspired the Nazis.

In the latest episode from a series on the pseudoscience New Age roots of today’s conspirituality phenomenon, Julian pins Blavatsky on the cork-board map.

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On September 29, a predicted one million people were going to show up for the Rescue the Republic event in Washington DC. Founded by the libertarian party chair, the Defeat the Mandates founder, and “professor in exile,” Bret Weinstein, about 1,500 mostly MAGA acolytes showed up. Yet the event represents something a long time building in America: the strange and at times uncomfortable merging of wellness and right-wing politics via MAHA and MAGA.

Sure, RFK Jr was there, but today we’re going to look at a few figures we haven’t covered in a while, or at all. As can be expected in conspiracy land, the C-list celebrities brought some of the most outlandish, and most dangerous, ideas along with them.

Show Notes

Orange Shirt Day | The Canadian Encyclopedia 

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the History of Residential Schools - Foundry

Phyllis’ Story - Orange Shirt Society 

More Than Anything Else, the Rally to Rescue the Republic Was Awkward

Are food dyes used in the US banned in other countries? No, not really.

IDF Ordered Hannibal Directive on October 7 to Prevent Hamas Taking Soldiers Captive - Israel News - Haaretz.com 

Have no childhood vaccines ever been tested using double-blind placebo controlled trials?

​​Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" paintings vandalized hours after activists sentenced for similar incident - CBS News

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With MAHA taking over stages nationwide, we’re experiencing a deluge of wellness influence and contrarians screaming about systemic issues with food, medicine, and government. Yet the solutions they offer never actually address public health. 

Ironically, the same trend has been occurring in investment-driven medicine, where both government and private sector money is flowing into individualized medicine at the expense of public health. 

Derek dives into this sordid affair, concluding with six steps experts agree would actually do something about the state of our health.

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Finally: a dedicated, concise report on RFK Jr’s sordid history with women, with all the sources.

Why? 

Because now one of the allegations involves a criminal act. 

And because it’s becoming clearer that the emotional manipulation he allegedly deploys in his personal life—many sources say that “love-bombing” is his technique—rhymes so closely with his political day-to-day that it’s hard to find the lines between stumping, white knighting, seducing, and screwing.

Correction: The RFK Jr clip “I’m not a church boy” ran on Breaking Points, not Majority Report.



Show Notes

The real victims of Olivia Nuzzi’s affair with RFK Jr are other female journalists | Moira Donegan | The Guardian 

Exclusive: Multiple Women Claiming Romantic Relationships With RFK Jr. Threaten His Standing in Trump Orbit 

RFK Jr.’s Family Doesn’t Want Him to Run. Even They May Not Know His Darkest Secrets. | Vanity Fair 

Damning Report Reveals RFK Jr.’s History of Alleged Sexual Assault | The New Republic

RFK Jr. Was a Compulsive Womanizer, and Yes, We Should Care | The New Republic 

43 suspected mistresses found in RFK Jr.’s phone 

Former babysitter for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accuses him of sexual assault in Vanity Fair profile 

Woman who accused RFK Jr of sexual assault says he apologized by text | Reuters  

Keith Edwards — “I’m not a church boy.”

Massachusetts Sexual Assault Laws

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Texts Apology to Woman Who Says He Sexually Assaulted Her 

A Timeline of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Controversies 

The Last Days of Mary Kennedy: 'She Is Angry and Depressed, but She Is Not Ill' (Exclusive) 

AA meetings in the White House? Kennedy, a recovering addict, says it's just one of changes he'd make

RFK Jr. Wants to Send People Addicted to Antidepressants to Government “Wellness Farms” – Mother Jones  

Brief: The New Age Origin Story of RFK Jr’s Campaign — Conspirituality

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Cleanse the soil! Purify the blood! Save the children! Make America Healthy Again!

On Sept 23, Jordan Peterson, RFK Jr., rising alt-health stars Casey and Calley Means, and many other nutrition non-experts gathered for a live streamed event they called the American Health and Nutrition Roundtable, hosted by Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Their subtitle, A Second Opinion, was an apt description for the alternative fact-filled diatribes that ensued. The soil has been poisoned, everyone is fat and sick, the entire medical industry is corrupted by Big Pharma, and Big Food is enacting a genocide on the American people via metabolic dysfunction. COVID skepticism and anti-vax messaging lurked just beneath the surface.

The speakers painted a terrifying picture and then presented themselves as benevolent common-sense saviors. At the climax of her speech, Casey Means, fresh from her career-boosting Tucker Carlson appearance, took a deep breath before declaring that this is all actually a spiritual crisis.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The real history behind diabetes and Native Americans. 

Special Report: QAnon Fantasies Look Like Colonial Realities (w/Julian Brave NoiseCat) — Conspirituality

Palestinians pampered”— Robert Kennedy Jr

CDC Sociodemographic Data on American chronic disease

Commonwealth Fund: Portrait of the Failing US Healthcare System

Mikhaila Fuller | Yeah, I get botox. From the latest Q&A, link in bio. | Instagram

Mikhaila Peterson’s life at the molten core of the culture wars - New Statesman  

NPR on International Journal of Obesity Study

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Matthew here with the second installment of Five Big Questions Posed to an Extremely Thoughtful Person. 

Does Natalie Wynn need an introduction? Or do we simply know that every frame of every Contrapoints essay is a gorgeous still life, a love letter to the unknown viewer thirsty for smarts and queerness and justice?

Often, top-tier artfulness will wind up concealing the artist. But despite the rigors of curation and the introversion Wynn ‘fesses up to in this interview, she also communicates welcome and generosity, and it was an honor to hear her speak personally about these Big Things.. 

BTW: here are the five questions. You can think about them too.

Show Notes

ContraPoints - YouTube

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An essay from Matthew exploring the problem of authenticity which plagues every investigation we do on the spiritual influencer beat. 

There are queasy questions we’re always contending with when we’re listening to the preaching of Charles Eisenstein, Kelly Brogan, Zach Bush, or RFK Jr: 

Has this person really committed to the spirituality they are presenting? Or is spirituality instrumental to them? Do they have experience to share, or programs to sell?

It’s hard if not impossible to find the line between these things, especially in the society of the spectacle, especially when we’re talking about influencers we don’t personally know. But it's an important consideration because assumptions made in one direction or another taint the entire discourse. 

Maybe, we’re talking about the difference between unearned faith and earned faith.

Show Notes

Zero at the Bone: Wiman

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