RFK Jr's maloca of mystical politics

Never in American history has a presidential candidate been so surrounded by psychonauts

Update - since I wrote this, RFK appointed a vice-presidential candidate (Nicole Shanahan, ex-wife of Sergei Brin and yet another taker of psychedelic drugs), and then dropped out of the presidential race, endorsing Trump and launching the ‘Make America Healthy Again’ movement. Shanahan had a ketamine-fuelled affair with Elon Musk, according to the New York Times - Musk is one of Trump’s biggest donors. Seems they have fused a ketamine koalition! RFK says if Trump wins, he will try and push the FDA to legalize psychedelics. Trump has said that if he wins he will let RFK ‘go wild on health’.

Key RFK supporters Aaron Rodgers and Aubrey Marcus at Soltara, the Costa Rican psychedelic centre, last year

Robert F Kennedy Junior, the son of RFK Sr, is running as an independent candidate in this year’s US presidential election, and is currently polling at 15-20% . The two main parties are getting worried.

In a year when many Americans are unenthused by the choice between a 81-year-old man with memory issues and a 77-year-old man with honesty issues, a 70-year-old Kennedy can do chin-ups might just be worth an outside bet (here he is working out with Aubrey Marcus and Charles Eisenstein).

Yes, RFK Jr says vaccines cause autism, yes, he still promotes ivermectin as a cure for COVID, yes he says Anthony Fauci led a coup d’etat and COVID vaccines caused more harm than good, yes, he claims HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.

But you never know, he might just win.

What strikes me as most remarkable is how many of his closest supporters, advisors and donors are psychonauts.

Senior advisor Charles Eisenstein, chief promoter Aubrey Marcus, possible VP pick Aaron Rodgers, another advisor Brittany Kaiser, donor Jeff Hays, endorsers Kelly Slater and Joe Rogan, tech friends like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey – they’re all very into psychedelic drugs. Aubrey Marcus even said he decided to support RFK Jr while on ketamine, while Aaron Rodgers heard he was a possible VP candidate while at an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica.

Never in the history of the United States has a presidential candidate been surrounded by so many psychonauts.

RFK Junior himself hasn’t said he’s done psychedelics, but he often talks about his son finding healing on ayahuasca, and he’s the only candidate who has said psychedelics should be legal. Meanwhile, light the sage, pass the purge bucket, and check out who’s in RFK’s maloca of aya-buddies.

Aubrey Marcus

Aubrey is the millionaire founder of a fitness and supplement company called Onnit.  He also has a popular podcast, on which he often discusses psychedelics, especially ayahuasca. He’s recently spoken about his encounter with a demonic entity, and how his wife got cursed at an aya retreat, but neither of these experiences put him off psychedelics.

Marcus stayed out of traditional politics while focusing on what he calls ‘the revolution of consciousness’, a revolution mainly waged at the fringes of alternative health and spirituality.  As he recounted at at Psychedelic Science (where he appeared on stage with Aaron Rodgers) he first heard of RFK’s presidential bid when hosting him on his podcast. Shortly after, while taking the ketamine-cannabis homebrew combo that he regularly uses to connect to God (it’s OK, he has a prescription) , he suddenly received the download that if he, Aubrey Marcus, went all in in his support, RFK Jr would win the presidency of the United States. The Keta-Ganja God told him so.

He said to RFK at one public event: ‘I see this as a necessary miracle. You’re gonna be the next president, and I just know that in my bones. I am all in.’

Aaron Rodgers

Then there’s Aaron Rodgers, quarterback for the New York Jets, a man so famous for his fondness for ayahuasca that his team mates even invented a touchdown celebration mimicking an aya ceremony. In the photo at the top of this article, there he is with Aubrey at an ayahuasca retreat at Soltara in Costa Rica – they hired the whole retreat centre for them and mates like Gaia TV aliens expert Matias de Stefano.

Rodgers was actually tapped as a possible vice-president candidate last week, while he was at an ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica, down the road from me at retreat centre / ‘decentralized sovereignty zone’ / condo project Resonance.

Can you imagine coming of an ayahuasca retreat and getting that call?

Rodgers now looks unlikely to be RFK’s VP pick, he may be too kooky even for the man known affectionately as Real Fuckin’ Kooky. Rodgers has long been fond of conspiracy theories, asking one team-mate in 2013:

What do you think all that stuff is flying behind that jet stream? Do you think that has anything to do with maybe why everybody's getting cancer?

He has apparently argued that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a government op – a claim that got chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones sued for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Charles Eisenstein

Then there’s Charles Eisenstein, spiritual author, environmentalist, and RFK Jr’s senior advisor. Eisenstein has been on quite a journey the last few years – he experienced the pandemic and the various public health measures as the last-gasp response of a ‘hollowed out’ evil regime of separation. Some dubbed him an anti-vax conspiracy theorist for his response to COVID, while he bewailed the scapegoating that people who are ‘vax-sceptic’ experienced. In other words, he was right at the heart of the polarized splitting that New Age spirituality experienced during the pandemic. He then announced plans to move to an eco-community in Costa Rica before suddenly throwing his hat into the ring as RFK Jr’s advisor.

Like Rodgers and Marcus, Eisenstein is a big believer in psychedelics – he thinks they are catalysts for a revolutionary spiritual shift from separation to unity. He’s also, like Rodgers, quite into conspiracy theories. He thinks the US went into a bad timeline on November 22 1963, the day JFK was shot (and Aldous Huxley died). He is sure JFK was killed by the deep state, and the cover-up created a cancer in the American body-politic which the election of another Kennedy might just heal.

There was a timeline in which America was, however flawed, it was moving towards greater and greater virtue. I feel like maybe that timeline hasn’t died. Maybe we can pick up that thread. And it’s so significant that a Kennedy just so happens to be in a position to do that. It’s one of the synchronicities that speak to, or speak from, a larger organizing intelligence in the world.

‘Timelines’, ‘downloads’, ‘synchronicities’, ‘organizing intelligences’ – there are rumours RFK’s inauguration speech will be in light language!

As RFK’s senior advisor, Eisenstein is in apparenly in charge of foreign policy. He thinks the US should pull back from all its 800 military bases abroad.

if we pull back from 800 military bases, there’s almost no limit to what we could do. When we set our vision toward healing rather than domination, toward real wealth rather than the stealing of the wealth of other nations, then we can cash in the peace dividend.

The end of the Pax Americana - this would indeed be an extraordinary dividend for every dictator to grab himself some new territory and murder some opponents.

Like Aubrey Marcus, Eisenstein is absolutely sure RFK is going to win and that it will be a miracle. He said on Marcus’ podcast:

A lot of people fall into despair when they take in the hopelessness of our situation. And it is, in fact, hopeless if you don’t incorporate what we’re calling miracles.

The language of miracles sounds familiar to anyone in Costa Rican psychedelics – it’s a marketing phrase of Rhythmia, the biggest psychedelic retreat in CR and the world. Its slogan is ‘Awaken to Miracles’. On the board of Rythmia is another RFK endorser – pro-surfer Kelly Slater.

Then there’s Brittany Kaiser, another RFK advisor. She’s famous for her time at Cambridge Analytica, before she left and took on various gigs, including a board seat at psychedelics company Lucy Scientific Discovery (LSD).

There’s Jeff Hays, an RFK donor, who is a documentary maker and friend of Aubrey Marcus – he appears on Marcus’ series Psychedelic Revealed.

There’s Joe Rogan, podcaster and psychedelic cheerleader, who told Aaron Rodgers that RFK ‘is an amazing guy…I really love him’.

And there are the billionaire psychonauts of Silicon Valley who have endorsed or at least spoken warmly of RFK, like former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and current X CEO Elon Musk (who hosted a Twitter Space with RFK and has retweeted his speeches).

It looks likely that, later today, RFK will pick a Silicon Valley wealthy hippy for his VP – Nicole Shanahan, laywer, philanthropist, and ex of Google founder Sergey Brin. She met Brin at Wanderlust, then met her present partner at Burning Man, so I would bet that she’s either tried psychedelics herself or is psychedelic-friendly.

So RFK’s team includes a lot of psychonauts – so what? Well, it’s another example of the rising trend of New Age politics, previously seen in movements like Occupy Wall Street or Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign. RFK’s first campaign manager, former Ohio congressman Dennis Kuchinich, himself ran for president in 2004 on a similar vision of mystical politics – his speeches have been shared by MAPS as an example of psychedelic idealism (Kuchinich was replaced as campaign manager by RFK’s daughter-in-law Amaryllis Fox Kennedy - who previously presented The Business of Drugs on Netflix.)

In mystical political movements, there’s often a sense of faith-healing – simply believe in an outcome hard enough and it will manifest. As a supporter said at a recent RFK rally:

You could say ‘manifest,’ or you can say ‘prophesize,’ but we need to see that this is possible. We all need to hold that view and magnetize it.

It’s also notable that his supporters include three podcaster-influencers - JFK smoothly conquered the cliquey world of TV studios, while his outsider nephew is better-suited to the authentic bro fireside chats of alternative news / health / reality.

Two Kennedys, two media models

What you can’t fault is the passion of RFK’s supporters. You see Eisenstein and Marcus choking up while speaking about why RFK’s candidature is a unique opportunity to regenerate America from evil.

But RFK Jr’s campaign also points to the limits of psychedelic politics, and the dream – touted by Rick Doblin and many other psychedelic activists – that psychedelics can help us heal the wounds of society, transcend our cultural differences, and come together in global peace and unity.

If you look at the pronouncements of Aaron Rodgers, Joe Rogan, Aubrey Marcus or Charles Eisenstein – psychedelics don’t seem to dissolve the arguments of the culture wars of the last few years. They amplify them. They don’t make it easier for western democracies to find common ground. Instead, they send us all off into our separate rabbit holes, our separate epistemological universes, to the point where we can’t even agree if a school shooting happened or not.

Psychedelics don’t dissolve the arguments of the culture wars. They amplify them.

Well, if a miracle doesn’t happen and RFK’s campaign doesn’t win, they can all move to Costa Rica and live in a decentralized sovereign health ayahuasca community. Oh God, it’s going to happen isn’t it…

After the paywall, MindMed ditches the ‘therapy’ bit of ‘psychedelic therapy’ - is this bad news for MAPS’ FDA submission? I asked MindMed’s chief scientific officer Dan Karlin. And an update on AWE and issues in the world of Gesalt therapy.