Williamson’s spiritual politics fit Trump era
My friend is not a dingbat interloper in the 2020 race
It turns out Marianne Williamson isn’t just some kook who levitated into the presidential debates through the sheer force of love.
On Tuesday night, she wowed the crowd with well thought out expositions on race, the Flint water crisis, gun safety, reparations and the “dark psychic force of the collectivized hatred” that President Donald Trump has unleashed. Political observers seemed stunned to hear the best-selling author and teacher speak eloquently on issues close to the average Democrat’s heart. They shouldn’t have been. A Google search or website visit could have disabused them of the idea that she’s a dingbat interloper in the 2020 race.
But why do research when you can snark and mock instead?
Full disclosure: Williamson is a friend, so I am well aware of her brilliant mind, well-honed worldview and deep thinking. I’ve been frustrated watching her be denigrated and caricatured based on a profound ignorance of her experience and abilities.
Meanwhile, the random men who think they should be president and have almost no chance of winning (I’m looking at you, John Delaney, Tim Ryan and Steve Bullock) have been spared the mocking heaped upon Williamson.
A Daily Beast headline called Williamson a “dangerous wacko.” Longtime Democratic strategist Bob Shrum dismissed her as full of “woo-woo talk.” A Salon.com piece deemed her “kooky” and nominated her for “secretary of Crystals.” Memes about Williamson and orbs abound, though she told an interviewer recently that she isn’t even sure what an orb is.
Eyes roll when she talks of creating a Department of Peace. That’s nutty to the political gatekeepers, but invading country after country with disastrous results is called sober-minded leadership. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Joe Biden, voted for a war to invade a country that had never attacked us and had nothing to do with 9/11. We will be dealing with those consequences for generations. But Williamson is the crazy one, with her talk of harnessing love and waging peace.
Like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Williamson is delivering a hard-nosed critique of our country. She isn’t interested in nibbling around the edges because she recognizes that we are a country in a crisis that goes well beyond Trump. She has pointed out many times that America has devolved “from a democracy to a veiled aristocracy.” She has dinged the political establishment for ignoring the political revolution that was brewing under their feet and led to Trump’s election.
She recently has come under fire for criticizing the overprescription of antidepressants, but any sentient being knows that pharmaceutical companies are predatory. As ProPublica wrote, in 2017 pharma paid 75% of the Food and Drug Administration’s scientific review budgets for branded and generic drugs. The fox is guarding the henhouse. Also, did people miss the opioid crisis?
By all means, if you have a chemical imbalance, use medication. But we should also have a broader conversation about the pharmaceutical industry and the deep structural flaws in our economic system. Maybe we feel anxious and disconnected because we are all so busy “hustling” and “grinding” to survive in an immoral system skewed to favor a very few at the top.
Much of the snark directed at Williamson stems from her spiritual worldview. “I talk to Democrats all the time who are deeply involved in their religious and spiritual lives,” Williamson told me Tuesday in Detroit. She said Democratic leaders use corporatist, secularized language that makes many people of faith feel invalidated. “The projection onto me that I’m some kind of New Age nutcase, for no other reason than that I’m a woman who values prayer and meditation, pretty much says it all,” Williamson said. “Modern politics is stuck in this late-20th century overly secularized mindset that is so entrenched. In its arrogance, it points to everyone else as fringe.”
Call me crazy, but I think Williamson’s on to something.