In this fascinating essay, Brooks points out how, in the age of Trump, progressive ideology is increasingly allying itself with new-age spiritual practices that were once the province of occultists deemed beyond the pale of science or rationality. These include astrology, tarot-reading, magic, witchcraft, and even Satanism. Learn why AOC's natal chart was a social-media sensation. Or why thousands of witches (belonging to the "anti-Trump resistance") cast a hex on Brett Kavanaugh. Or why dark arts are being deliberately invoked on behalf of those who feel marginalized or oppressed by the patriarchy's evangelical Christianity.

Tara Isabella Burton concludes an American Interest essay exploring this movement with an arresting sentence: "Back in 1992, Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson warned of the dangers of feminism, predicting that it would induce 'women to leave their husbands. . . .practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.' Many of today’s witches would happily agree." Wow.

What to make of all this? Clearly, it owes something to "the rise of the nones" and declining adherence of Christian orthodoxy. (See "Rise of the Religious 'Nones'.") It may also owe something to growing ideological polarization (many progressives may want to directly confront red-zone values) as well as the inevitable human desire to connect with a transcendent power--if not with God, then possibly with something else.

Brooks is off base, however, to connect this new-age spiritualism to Millennials. When you look at surveys of belief in astrology, for example, young Millennials today are less likely (relative to older Americans) to believe it such things than young Boomers were back in the 1970s. To the contrary, many of these practices show every sign that the sort of spiritualism once pioneered by Boomers in their own youth has become mainstream as Boomers have aged. (See "The Aging of Aquarius.") A recent Pew survey shows some evidence that Democrats lean more to spiritualism than Republicans, but there's little evidence that younger Americans lean more to the irrational than older Americans.

Spiritualism and magic, in fact, are typically negatively correlated with education, income, and political engagement. To go back to Pew again, those who are working actively in political reform movements tend to be either overtly religious (in some orthodox sense) or overtly atheistic and generally hostile to spiritual or magical practices, "dark" or otherwise. Brooks seems to agree that occultism is more a sign of alienation than genuine activism: "I doubt that much of this will be sustainable. I doubt it’s possible to have tight community and also total autonomy, that it’s possible to detach spiritual practices from the larger narratives and cultures and still have something life-shaping." I would go along with that assessment.