By Romi Mahajan
The alchemists of yore tried in vain to derive gold from lead. With the advent of science, alchemy faded away though even in 2025 we still find people who deny science and believe in magic.
In some ways, one cannot blame them. It appears that magical thinking is a winner and that magic itself is possible.
Imagine transforming someone’s hatred of transgendered humans or darker races into fanatical support for policies that could very well kill that very someone. Is that not magic?
This is not far-fetched. As the world watched in awe, Donald Trump was re-elected in November 2024 and assumed the position as one of the most powerful people in the history of the world. His fanatical base loved his casual cruelty, his racism, his belief that normal people are pathetic pawns, fodder for his violent gamesmanship. They loved the hatred so much that they, wittingly or unwittingly, mortgaged their own futures just to spite those they hate.
Soon many of his votaries will be hungrier, sicker, less free. They and their generations hence will inherit debt borne of further subsidies to the gilded class. To get them there is an act of political magic. It is alchemy. It is deriving political gold from dread.
We live in times of strange transposition. A person can be so bothered by reductions in standard of living that he supports someone who will further reduce it. Other magical transpositions include white women voting for restrictions on their own freedoms, black men in record numbers voting for a man who openly thinks of them as inferior, right-wing antisemites using “antisemitism” as a cudgel against those they hate even more than Jews: Muslims, Protestors, and Leftists.
The list goes on and on.
We watch for the lights to go on, for the show to end, for the sleights of hand to become visible, for the trap doors and secret compartments to be revealed. Yet, the curtain never drops.
4 July 2025
Source: countercurrents.org