One Weird Trick

28 Feb 2026 - 28 Feb 2026

The attraction of Donald Trump’s political message – that the mere act of accepting him as the savior of the nation is guaranteed to solve all of America’s most apparently intractable problems – to people who think of themselves as born again Christians should be fairly apparent. Evangelical Christian theology, especially in the form in which it is preached in megachurches, primes people to find Trump’s claims plausible and attractive, rather than outrageous and disgusting. To such people, it seems eminently believable that one weird trick can save the soul of the nation, just as a simple commitment to Jesus can save the soul of the individual believer.

Americans in particular are susceptible to this. Advertising relies on it. Got a problem? Here's a solution, all it takes is some of your money.

The two religions that hold some attraction for me (Judaism and Buddhism) seem to have antibodies against this.

Judaism: ethnicity based and not particularly encouraging of in-conversion. Also not focused on afterlife. There is a messianic strain but not in my precincts, and there's nothing you can do about it except wait, so no tricks.

Buddhism: The pop version does sound like an advertisement, get enlightenment through our one weird trick. But actual practice involves radical disappointment. There is no trick.

I'm susceptible to a mild form of OneWeirdTrickism – falling in love with ideas. Cybernetics or software or anarchism or protocols or deleuzianism or chaos theory or design languages or whatever will solve all the world's problems, or at least change them from totally intractable to a little bit tractable. I think I got this from Stewart Brand, the early WEC always had some deep idea guy at the center (Buckminster Fuller --> Gregory Bateson --> Christopher Alexander )