Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics
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Who are the guests and what is this conversation about?
I always enjoy conversations that I have no earthly idea how to describe. And today's is very much in that vein. My guest is my colleague, Ross Douthat. He's the author of Believe Why Everyone Should Be Religious, a book I enjoyed very much, even though quite a bit of it I had some questions about. And he's the host of the new and really excellent New York Times Opinion podcast, Interesting Times, where he has been interviewing people on the modern American right. This is a conversation about mysticism and the role it is playing in the Trump administration and this era in politics. And belief and the role it plays in society, in our lives, Ross's argument for why I should be more religious and you should be too. And it also gets into some things I did not expect to be talking about today on the show. Just a note before we get into the conversation here. This was recorded on Monday, April 14th. That was the day of the Trump-Bukele meeting.
So that's not going to be discussed in here. And also before the death of Pope Francis. So we also were not able to talk about that here. The conversation, as you'll hear, I think stands on its own. But because those things might have fit into places I wanted to mention, why you won't hear them. Ross Douthat, welcome to the show. Ezra Klein, it is a pleasure to be here.
How is Donald Trump viewed as a 'man of destiny'?
So last year, after the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump, you wrote about Trump as a man of destiny, that he was, quote, a figure touched by the gods of fortune in a way that transcends the normal rules of politics. How are you thinking about that now?
Well, there were other passages in that column that are worth emphasizing. But yeah, I stand by that reading of the Trump phenomenon. I think one of the ways in which my sense of politics generally has changed over the course of the Trump era is just I have more appreciation for weird forces that are outside, certainly outside the control of people who write about politics. You can't have lived through the Trump era without As a conservative columnist or newspaper writer and not have the sense of how fundamentally unimportant columnists are, what happens in American politics. It is a consistent exercise in humility. It is. Well, but even beyond that, you and I both grew up in a period that was, I think, reasonably described as a kind of timeout period.
from grand historical dramas. It was not the end of history in the totalizing sense, but the kind of Francis Fukuyama view of the post-Cold War era as one that had a certain kind of predictability and order and stability. History felt under control. History felt under control, right? And the reality is that much of human history is just not under control in that way. And there are forces that move through history, generally forces that move through history that are sort of hard to predict and assess. But I do think often they are connected to specific personalities. And there is some kind of marriage between particular personalities and particular moments. And the idea of a man of destiny, a great man of history, is a useful way of thinking about that when it happens, as I think it has happened with Donald Trump, the rise of populism, the crackup of the liberal order, and so on. The reason I laughed at the outset is that it's important to stress that someone can be a man of destiny and be bad.
Someone can be a great man of history and be worth opposing. You can look back at Napoleon and say, man, he was sort of above and beyond in terms of historical forces and also root for Wellington at Waterloo. That's okay.
How does it sense that Trump is a man of destiny? Because I agree with you. And I think understanding... The interpretation of Trump is somehow mystic, is very important to understanding his relationship now with the right. But specifically, how do you think it has changed the way his staff and his allies treat him?
I think that it is very hard to go through the kind of drama that Trump himself personally went through in... We can go back further, but let's just say the world that ran from January 6th through his return to power. And if you're on his side through that story, not come away with the feeling that you were sort of moving with the wave of history. For people in Trump's circle, this sense of...
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who are the guests and what is this conversation about?
0:31–1:52
2
How is Donald Trump viewed as a 'man of destiny'?
1:52–12:25
3
What is the role of mysticism and paganism in the Trump administration?
12:25–34:16
4
How do Christian values intersect with Trump-era politics?
34:16–42:56
5
What are the critiques of the Trump administration from a Christian perspective?
42:56–1:05:05
6
Why does Ross Douthat argue for belief and organized religion?
1:05:05–1:17:51
7
What is the relationship between materialism, mysticism, and religion?
1:17:51–1:23:41
8
How do religious experiences challenge secular materialism?
1:23:41–1:35:19