Bob Schwartz

It is easy to describe the current American president and his presidency as unprecedented in a number of negative ways. His version of a special 4th of July this weekend can be seen as more glaring evidence of that.

But consider another radical possibility.

What if this president is actually a supreme political performance artist? What if his presidency is a groundbreaking art project, rather than simply a reflection of his own infirmities for the office?

Proposed here is the possibility that he is just such an artist, a surrealist. In his own terms, the greatest artist ever in history.

Could it be?

© 2026 Bob Schwartz

These are some of the oldest stories. People are exiled and journey to an unknown land. People arrive exiled into an unknown land. People are subject to catastrophe, natural or human, that fundamentally changes the land they live in, making it an unknown land. A flood inundates the earth and only a few remain to float and start again. A civilization flees across the desert to start again. The Bible includes the earliest of many stories, especially science fiction, of strangers in strange lands—even when that strange land is their once-familiar home.

There have been a few of these stories in modern times. Weapons, first atomic, then hydrogen, transformed this into a world that might disappear in an instant. A disease infected the world. A technology, artificial intelligence, seems capable of, to use the cliché, changing everything. This is now another strange land.

Our history of dealing as strangers in a strange land, starting with the Bible, is mixed. Early concerns about nuclear weapons—“Ban the bomb” rallies—gave way to dangerous proliferation. The covid pandemic led to welcome emergency scientific vaccine breakthroughs, but also to millions of unnecessary deaths, as some number of people stubbornly refused to believe it was as bad as science said, or bad at all. Arriving in the strange lands of nuclear annihilation or covid, some wanted—still want—to go back to the way things were. They just wanted to go home to a familiar land. We don’t know how we will do in the strange land of AI, though some current indicators are not promising.

In the words of Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter in The Wheel:

The wheel is turning and you can’t slow down
You can’t let go and you can’t hold on
You can’t go back and you can’t stand still
If the thunder don’t get you, then the lightning will

© 2026 Bob Schwartz

The Democratic Party is now loudly concerned that insurgent progressives running under the Democratic Socialist banner are hurting the party. As if the party isn’t hurting itself just fine.

Where to begin? Two years ago, instead of intervening, telling Biden he shouldn’t/couldn’t run for the nomination, holding a real nominating contest, and selecting a strong and charismatic candidate to defeat Trump…we know what happened. And then, as Trump set out on a mission to demolish democracy—and the White House East Wing—the Democratic Party tried to figure out what it was and how to respond. One-and-a-half years later, it is still dithering, trying to decide. When newer and younger leaders emerged, with ideas the party found too bold and risky, the party could not suppress them fast enough.

Leading to two things. One, Democrats, that is the remaining people still willing to be included in that group, are disaffected beyond disappointment, and are showing their lack of enthusiasm in a way the party understands, as donor support is cratering. Two, those newer and younger leaders are catching fire, no matter how much the party tries to put that fire out.

America desperately needs an effective opposition party in this existential crisis. The Democratic Party, as now established, is not it.

© 2026 Bob Schwartz

Philosophy is embedded in all that we do, believe, and is done to us. It often goes unrecognized and unattended. Among other places, it appears in our religious traditions, though we receive the philosophies of God, the founders and the wise people as givens which we follow and practice. The same goes for calls to patriotism, nationalism and war.

There are those whose lives and careers are devoted, in whole or in part, to philosophy. Some are in the academy, some are outside. If philosophy is important, and it is, it should be front and center. If media reports regularly included philosophical notes or discussions with philosophers, events and issues could go far and deep beyond “He said, he said, this country attacked, this country fought back, these children were killed, the killing is unfortunate but excusable.” Like that.

Philosophers don’t come more forward, or out at all, for many reasons. Some philosophers, brilliant and insightful as they are, are not easily comprehensible to ordinary people—including other philosophers. This lack of communicative clarity keeps media from regularly including philosophers in their interviews and round-tables. When issues are hot and controversial, as they are now, it is risky for philosophers to offer any insights, especially when the very higher ed institutions they work for are under investigation and assault.

Nevertheless, we need to dig deeper into war and the death of democracy, or the dozens of other issues we face, beyond black and white, good guys and bad guys. Philosophers can do that, as they have always done, when they are given a platform and can make themselves understood.

Philosophers: Come out and come forward.

© 2026 Bob Schwartz

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite.”
–William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Aldous Huxley used this quote for the title of his 1954 essay, The Doors of Perception, about his experiences with mescaline.

It is commonly, if simplistically, thought that psychedelic experiences open the floodgates of perception and cognition, control valves that in everyday life are regulated and closed down to allow our lives to go on in a relatively orderly and productive way. The response to those experiences may be happy delirium (Oh wow!) to scary delirium (Oh shit!), and levels in between and with variously lasting impact. One might conclude, as Blake, Huxley and others have, that one will have experienced infinity—whatever that might be.

It is mentioned here to suggest what may be one of the biggest overall problems we now face—and it is not psychedelics, though strangely related.

We are living in a time when in some ways the floodgates of perception and cognition are wide open 24/7. Just as most people, despite their confidence in their balance and stability, are not ready or able to handle 24/7 psychedelic experiences, or at all, so are most not ready or able to handle the flood of everything we seek or is thrown at us. This is not to say that most people are walking around tripping, though that imagined scene is intriguing. This is to say that with those floodgates of perception and cognition open, keeping balance is an overwhelming challenge.

Immediately some will point out that this analysis fails, because so many are still engaged in productive and constructive activities. That would be impossible if, as is posited, everyone is going around, doors cleansed, experiencing infinity all the time.

That misses the point. We can find a way to handle this flood, which for the moment seems inevitable and unavoidable. Just as, from the earliest days of psychedelics, there are those able to manage the flood beneficially, so that they become or remain balanced, stable and sane.

Since we are now drowning in media and thinking, this is not going to be easy. So much stuff. If we want to extend this possibly tortured metaphor, we need to pay attention to our dosage. Whether or not is good for us, here it is, not going away, just growing everywhere all the time.

Handled right, we might even find infinity.