Russell chats to Marianne Williamson, renowned spiritual teacher, best-selling author and Presidential candidate about some of the most pressing questions of today. What is the biggest threat to peace? Is American's economy dependent on war? Is the biggest threat to democracy Donald Trump or a political system that relies on corporate donations and lobbying? Find out more about Marianne's campaign: https://marianne2024.com/My stand up special BRANDEMIC is premiering on 25th June over on Moment, you will love it! Get your ticket https://www.moment.co/russellbrandFor a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/Come to my festival COMMUNITY - https://www.russellbrand.com/community-2023/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
You know, she's standing for president in the Democrat Party.
We're going to be talking to her about the issues that matter.
We're not going to get bound up in the narratives of the left, are we?
No.
We're going to, in fact, direct her towards populist, libertarian and anarchist arguments about systemic corruption and the failure of power.
Then, Joe, what I'm going to do sometimes, Gareth, my on-screen assistant and my friend, my co-conspirator, I'm gonna keep stitching in the spirituality from which she made her fame and fortune.
Because you know that Marianne Williamson, I think she interpreted a book called the Book of Miracles, which claims that it's a message from Jesus.
You've heard him, let me know in the chat, the comments.
He re-engaged with someone and offered a new prophecy, like an update.
Wow!
People say that from time to time, don't they?
Jesus 2.0.
That's what sometimes people offer, because that's what the Mormon guy was saying, Joseph Smith.
I've had a chat with Jesus.
He's given me these plates.
Can we see them?
No.
Right.
Well, straight away, I wonder if the plates are even there.
Anyway, we're going to be talking about that.
We've got a fantastic presentation for you where we have a deeper look at a new story that I didn't even tell you about because it would surprise you.
We'll be talking about Rand Paul and how the Republican Party are beating the drums for an ongoing war Stay free with Russell Brand.
At least I have a war. There's been wars with China in the past. We had them, the box wars,
they were called in them days. Let me know in the comments and the chat if there's anyone
in American politics who doesn't want a war with someone. I'm going to ask Marianne Williamson who
she wants a war with. I'm going to ask her about that. Do you want a war with somebody? Is that
why you're here? I'm actually going to be nice to her. I know her and I've met her several times,
so politeness. Stay free with Russell Brand. See it first on Rumble. I'd like to say a special
hello to all of you watching us on Locals. And if you want to join us on Locals, press the red
button on the bottom of your screen now.
I'm very excited to announce that I'm being joined by renowned spiritual teacher, best-selling author of A Return to Love, and now presidential candidate without debate, please welcome to the show Marianne Williamson.
Thank you for coming here.
Thank you for having me.
Maren, what do you think it tells us about the state of internal politics within the Democrat Party that we are foregoing the possibility to see some interesting candidates debate the current President Joe Biden?
What does it tell us about power?
What does it tell us about the internal machinery of the Democratic Party?
Well, it tells us that there is an elite, an establishment elite, who feels that they have the right to shoehorn in the president.
And for a party that claims to be and should be such a champion of democracy, There's no reason for it to be so wary of democracy in our own house.
Of course the president should be debating his primary challengers.
I suppose what it shows you is that, in that instance at least, we have the appearance of democracy, or the claim is being made that we live within a democracy, and the party takes its name from that word, and yet we have a managed, siphoned, and stymied process How telling is it that Joe Biden was able to say to a significant portion of the donor class when he addressed them prior to becoming president that nothing will fundamentally change?
What does that tell you about the influence of donation and external corporate funding upon the political process and in particular the funding of the Democrat Party?
Although of course this would be true of both parties would be my assumption.
Let's not pretend that the Republican Party is not completely pervaded by corporate influence.
There's a reason why this is now called, by so many people, a corporate duopoly.
The Democratic Party still tries to have it both ways.
You know, there was a time when, more than not, the Democratic Party was an unequivocal, unabashed advocate for the people—the people, particularly the working people of the United States.
It was during Bill Clinton's presidency, when he formed something called the Democratic Leadership Council, that they sort of decided to try to have it both ways.
Yes, be there for the people, but we, too, can play with the big boys, raise all the money that it will take in order to remain competitive and so forth.
And this really tore the soul—it's a rupture in the soul of the Democratic Party, so that now, in the Democratic Party, as in the Republican Party, there are these two major elements.
And for the Democrats, there are the corporatists, the elitists, the establishment, and then there are the progressives.
Now, the establishment elitists almost act as though the progressives are trying to hijack the party.
But actually, they hijack the party.
The progressives are the tradition of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
And that's how I see someone like myself.
I'm the one standing for the traditional pillars of the Democratic Party, as in the unequivocal advocacy for the working people.
Take an issue like health.
How will it be possible to make the kind of significant changes that are required in the area of health, the way that it's funded and the way that it's administered, when big food has such coercive power over policy and the ability to promote and fund detrimental food sources?
And when Big Pharma, through lobbying, donation and influence over regulation, has such significant power, but one example being the refusal to evoke the law that would prohibit a cancer drug being sold profitably.
How can you change health without changing the corporatization of America, the corporatization of food and pharma?
Well, I mentioned on the debate stage in the last election exactly what you just said.
We don't have a healthcare system.
We have a sickness care system.
We have to ask ourselves, why do Americans have such a higher rate of chronic illness than, for instance, the Europeans do?
And, as you just said, and as I said at the debates, for that, you have to talk about more than just the health insurance companies, more than pharmaceutical.
You have to talk about big agriculture.
You have to talk about the chemical companies.
And, of course, you have to talk about big food.
The corporatocracy itself puts short-term profit maximization—and when I say the corporatocracy, I mean all of them—insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, big food, big ag, big chemical, gun manufacturers, big oil and defense contractors.
It serves us to see they're all one big matrix of corporate What is, at this point, tyranny, OK?
And as long as they are put in short-term corporate maximization for themselves, and as long as the government supports them in that more than not, then that will be at the expense of the safety and the health and the well-being of the American people, animals, our children and our planet itself.
And this has taken us on a trajectory that is now more than unsustainable.
It is Self-destructive to our democracy and possibly long-term to our species.
When, Marianne, the American economy appears to require war in order to sustain itself, and when the military-industrial complex has such significant power, again through lobbying, again through donation, when we have the slightly absurd spectre of an event like Gay Pride, which has always been a counter-cultural movement, being sponsored by Lockheed Martin, what does it tell us about where our values are?
And may I fold into this question, forgive me, what do you think is a greater threat to global peace?
Is it despots like Vladimir Putin and that he's admittedly criminal invasion of Ukraine, which many people believe was subsequent to a great deal of provocation from NATO, or is it an economic system that plainly and explicitly requires war to remain in business?
I would disagree with the word requires, and you used it twice.
We have a war economy.
We have about 51 percent of the American economy that is at least indirectly related to the defense industry.
But it doesn't have to be that way, just as we have to make a just We have to make a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy.
We have to make a just transition from a war economy to a peace economy.
And in terms of—the reason the word requires is inappropriate there is because the return on investment is much greater when you're talking about money that is given to health, that is given to education.
It only is required by those small Donor class, the 1 percent of Americans who make so much money on it, it's only required by Raytheon, by Northrop Grumman, by Boeing and by their stockholders.
So, this is a change that we need to make.
In the meantime, the vast economic power and governmental power and the undue influence of the military-industrial complex on our government does create a problem in the world.
And that goes back to the second thing you said, how much the military-industrial complex
and the short-term profit maximization of defense contractors and that industry prevails
within American foreign policy, to an evil degree.
We saw it with—well, we saw it with Vietnam, but we certainly saw it with Iraq.
We saw it with staying in Afghanistan probably 20 years longer than we should have.
And certainly, it's a complicated issue in Ukraine today.
I'm glad that you made the point that we should not be apologizing for the brutal invasion Vladimir Putin, at the same time it is naive of us to fail to recognize, at the very least, the meddling on the part of the U.S.
defense establishment and the domestic affairs of Ukraine.
One of the stories we covered on the show was how the International Criminal Court could not call upon the United States for evidence because if they were to participate in that trial, it would reveal the degree to which they had been involved in criminal wars themselves.
We're not a part of the court.
And the reason we're not a member of the court is because there's too great a chance that they would come after George Bush and Dick Cheney.
So we have, you know, for us to be now going on and on and on about other people who have caused wars that should not have been fought.
The world sees the hypocrisy and the American people are beginning to see the threat that all that represents to our democracy itself.
How did it feel standing as a candidate for the Democrat Party knowing that within living memory, and in fact recent memory, it was figures like Cheney and Bush and Wolfowitz that were regarded as the hawkish figureheads of militarism and now we have to accept that it is Joe Biden that said I'll make Saudi Arabia a pariah before doing weapons deals and oils deals and facilitating military deals from the LGBTQ plus communities friends at Lockheed Martin.
How does it feel to see as Tulsi Gabbard acknowledges, recognize that the Democrat
Party has become co-opted by the military-industrial complex. And how do you reverse a
process that at this point seems so entrenched and institutionalized?
This is not just about the military-industrial complex.
This is about corporate power itself.
As long as corporate power, all of these corporations that we've talked about, all of these entities,
as long as they have the undue financial influence on our Congress and on our White House at
this point, that they do, then our government has become basically a system of legalized
bribery. So, it's not—you know, I don't want to—none of this conversation should
in any way make nice towards the Republican Party, by the way.
But it's been for decades.
This didn't start with Joe Biden, that you see the same kind of undue corporate influence among the Democrats, in too many cases, that you see among the Republicans.
It's strange though, we covered this today, that it's Rand Paul that's saying we need to challenge the Forever Wars Emergency Act Bill that's being taken through Congress currently.
That it's coming from figures, libertarians within the right, that are most willing, it seems to me, other than the candidature of yourself and RFK, to challenge the kind of establishment power that you are outlining and describing.
Are you saying therefore, Marianne, that you think that it's wrong to accept Is it funding from Big Food that is wrong to allow Big Food and Big Pharma to fund their own regulatory bodies?
Of course it's wrong.
It's more than wrong.
It is corrupt.
These agencies are set up to advocate for the American people.
But what has happened over the last few decades is what's called agency capture, that at the very best, the U.S.
government too often acts as a kind of double advocate.
Let's take something like Department of Agriculture.
The Department of Agriculture should not be led by somebody from Big Ag.
Hello!
Let's say something like the very secretary of defense.
Traditionally, the secretary of defense was not to be a military man.
And the last thing that the secretary of defense should be is someone who comes from the defense industry.
Now, with Trump, Trump made General Mattis a military man.
This is what's so dangerous in this country.
I'm old enough to remember, wait, we're not supposed to do that.
But you have too many younger generations who don't even remember a time—they don't have it in their institutional memory—when people would go, hey, you're not supposed to do that.
And people in Congress who even know it won't say anything.
Now, what they did with Biden, not only is our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, a former general, he is a former president.
Board member at Raytheon.
This is outrageous.
And, by the way, they use race as a cover, because what legislator is going to stand up and complain, right?
Now, isn't it interesting?
You have reports coming out now about the unbelievable price gouging on the part of the defense industry of the U.S.
military.
And remember, one of the first things I would do is audit the Pentagon every cent, because it's not even audited.
But if we have a former Raytheon board member who is a secretary of defense, what's going on that there is such price gouging?
That's what we're talking about here.
We're talking about unbelievable corruption.
Unbelievable corruption must have, at its essence, a warped and broken set of values.
Yeah, it does.
Of course, prior to your incarnation as a political figure, you are most well known for your work in the area of spirituality and wellness, which I know can be regarded unfairly, I think, as somehow unsubstantial or insubstantial.
What I feel is that there is a lack of integrity in politics that you alluded to then.
There's no one saying that you shouldn't be doing this.
There's no one pointing out the obvious fact that you shouldn't have board members of weapons manufacturers within the Pentagon advocating for further deals.
How do you feel, and what do you feel, is the appropriate role for spirituality in politics?
What are we going to do about this kind of moral abyss at the heart of our global politics?
And this kind of, I want to almost say, institutionalized self-centeredness that you see, it seems to me, in figures like, and I know a lot of you love Donald Trump, but he is a pretty egocentric kind of guy, And then career politicians like Joe Biden who, for me, while even when seeming convivial, appears to be an entrenched old-school politician who's there to represent establishment values.
What do we do about this self-centredness?
In our politics over here in the UK, Boris Johnson, it's like you're dealing with man-child mentality, unawakened, uninitiated people.
How do you suggest that those kind of cultural changes could be made and how are we suffering as a result of the lack of those changes?
I want to start by saying the first time I ever heard you speak publicly.
It was at a luncheon in Los Angeles for a home, I think, for women.
You were so extraordinary.
You, so I really want to thank you, because you are one of the people who has helped elevate, for those of us who have heard you, and I don't know how much you've done this in broader mainstream circles, but you, more than anyone that I've ever heard, has talked about spiritual principles, issues of whether it's AA or any other, and how serious they are, and how substantial they are.
Now, in terms of the effect of a lack of spiritual principle on personal behavior or political behavior, when you have a lack of conscience, when you have a lack of remorse, when you have a complete lack of any sense of responsibility, moral responsibility to people, to life, to planet, that's called sociopathic.
It is considered, and rightfully so, in terms of personal behavior, a malevolence, a deadly malevolence.
Now we need to recognize that our economic system is at this point.
When you're talking about hypercapitalism, when you're talking about unfettered capitalism, it is a sociopathic public phenomenon.
Even Adam Smith, who was the primary architect of free market capitalism, said, it cannot exist outside an ethical context.
So, what's happened is that capitalism has completely gone off the rails.
And there is this—has been for the last 40 years or so—this canard, this wool over people's eyes, where people are supposed to agree that that's a good idea.
Because the argument was, well, it's really good, see, if you just move all the money into the hands of the stockholders, even though it's at the expense of the safety of the workers, at the expense of the benefits of the workers, at the expense of the community, at the expense of the environment, People were told—and this is such a delusional, malevolent canard—it's going to be good, because those people who are going to get all that money, they're going to create jobs, see, and all that money will trickle down, and it will lift all boats.
Well, it's now 40 years later.
The jury's in.
It not only did not lift all boats, it has left millions and millions and millions of people without even a life vest.
It has destroyed America's middle class.
Those people's modality is not to create jobs.
It's to eliminate jobs.
It's to optimize their profit and their profit alone.
It is a sociopathic, immoral, ultimately evil paradigm.
And what's happening now is that people are waking up on the left and on the right.
They are realizing this is forming a system of corporate tyranny.
They are realizing that the government is enabling this, that too often our public policies
chop the wood and carry the water for that tyranny.
And the American people are ready for a peaceful revolution, a political revolution, to repudiate
it as we've repudiated such injustices in our past.
How do you imagine that you will be able to convey this message that has some complexity
within it when the mainstream media are housed within the set of corporate interests that
you have already outlined?
Marianne, and even appearing on platforms like this, it's possible that you will be charged with participating in platforms that carry conspiracy theories, that are alt-right, because entire platforms are now being dismissed as somehow morally unhygienic.
I think solely on the basis that we are willing to carry alternative voices, that we are willing to challenge establishment power, that we have no alliance to the Republican Party, Well I'm already in the belly of that beast and I know what they did to me last time, I know what they're doing this time.
will be heard sufficiently to carry some support within the movement?
Well, I'm already in the belly of that beast, and I know what they did to me last time,
I know what they're doing this time.
With some people, they just de-platform you.
Fortunately, you're Russell Brand, they can't de-platform, they're not going to de-platform
you.
In the cases of some people, such as myself, they don't de-platform you, it's more insidious than that.
They just pervert your platform.
They create a caricature of who you are and what you're saying and what you've done with your life,
just to throw enough dust over people's eyes so they won't listen to you.
There is a political media industrial complex.
So, when you ask how you're going to do it, you just keep going.
I do believe the American people are waking up.
The American people are waking up.
We're at the beginning of a political earthquake right now.
More people are nodding their heads, listening to this conversation, than probably were five years ago.
Why are you willing to put yourself in a position of personal jeopardy?
I imagine that you're financially secure and secure in a number of other ways.
Why are you willing to put yourself in such a position of jeopardy?
My father died in 1995.
I think I'm still trying to get his approval.
My father used to, you know, my father used to walk around the house when we were kids.
Beat the system, kids.
Beat the system, kids.
And I think it took me until I was 50 years old to know he actually wasn't kidding.
And he used to say, don't let the bastards get to you.
I have seen how this country, my country, and how this system works, as I know you have as well.
And when you travel in certain circles, you figure it out.
You go, wow.
And I don't, you know, I want to be able to look at myself the last day of my life and go, I kicked ass while I was here.
I didn't let the bastards get me down.
That's what I want.
Yeah, it's a powerful message and it's a personal risk.
It's interesting to know that both political parties have to, in different ways, elicit the support of, let's say, kind of Christian interest, knowing that what those value sets are meant to be representative of are Spirituality, kindness, decency, morality, but sometimes they become representative of a slightly more murky set of interests.
But I think that what people are craving are genuine values, integrity, authenticity, service, willingness to sacrifice yourself in favor of a greater cause.
It seems to me that Our values have been kind of hollowed out and we have the appearance of compassion but not the delivery of compassion.
We have gestures and performance in place of real sacrifice.
But when you arrive at a point where the party that claims to be liberal operates so plainly on behalf of elite interests that we are at a point of, as you say, Peaceful revolution.
It's interesting to watch it unfold because I don't suppose that you imagined that you would find yourself in this position when you were a successful author or becoming a spiritual teacher or and having roles that are not easy really to define actually because the culture doesn't really frame people in that way anymore.
In a secular culture we're kind of that's been absented somehow and yet politics requires it and public life requires it.
The over-secularization of America's political dialogue has not actually served us.
And that over-secularization—and I don't mean a removal of religious language, because we are—I think political dialogue, being secular, is important, but that doesn't mean it should be devoid of spiritual values.
And the spiritual values that you just indicated are not just Christian.
They are universal spiritual values at the heart of all the great religious systems of the world.
Now, Christian nationalism is—people are seeing it for what it is.
The Bible does not talk about how, you know, what you should do is give tax cuts to the very, very richest people.
That's not a biblical precept.
So, people—there is a spiritual revolution going on on the planet.
And people are recognizing—certainly I recognize, and I believe there is a listening for this—that our public behavior, our political behavior, who we are collectively, cannot be devoid of moral values any more than our individual lives can be and have a life that works.
You know, I think that we're living at a time of two simultaneous phenomenon.
On one hand, there is a world that is crumbling before our eyes, an old order of organization, and we see the signs of this crumbling everywhere.
But at the same time, you see that world that is struggling to be born.
And we are called to be midwives both to the death of one world and midwives to the birth of another.
And the world that we want is a world in which we take the best of the old and bring forth and reclaim, bring back into our public and collective lives principles like mercy, compassion, humility, forgiveness, integrity, kindness, If you see a hungry child, you feed that child.
If you look at the earth, you know, you remember this was God's creation.
It was given to us to be proper stewards.
You don't desecrate it so a bunch of oil companies can make a lot of money.
I think that a lot of people are processing all of this right now, and that's why I believe that there is a political possibility that lies before us.
Right now, where we are now is unsustainable.
There is going to be this political earthquake.
You can already feel the rumbling.
It's going to go one way or the other.
It's either going to be in the direction of democracy and justice, or it's going to be in the direction of autocracy and authoritarianism.
And that's why I think it's important for all of us to decide which are we going to contribute our own energies toward, because There's, there's, you can't be neutral at this point.
Being neutral is serving the oppressor.
I believe you and I agree with you and I fancy that this line between democracy and compassion and autocracy and tyranny is no longer, we can no longer claim it's drawn down the line between the two parties.
It's plain that there is a version of centralized authoritarianism that has emerged out of the
Democratic Party in your analysis since Bill Clinton but for me is now reaching
I hope it's Zenith or Nadir depending on how you regard it. It's plain that after
2008 and Barack Obama's decision to bail out the banks rather than bailing
out ordinary Americans and we've since seen nobody prosecuted,
persecuted or held accountable for those financial crimes and transgressions
that we can no longer confidently claim that either party or any individuals
within it have any moral high ground and I think that continuing the conversation
along partisan lines is reductive. I know you've said many times
when I've asked you before Marianne that it's important to change the
system from within it and change the system outside of it that you don't have to
choose one of those options you have to do both of them
And I appreciate the work that you're doing within it and the manner with which you're carrying it out.
Are you concerned even in your discourse about presenting a partisan perspective when something bigger than that appears to be required, by my reckoning at least?
Well, I actually don't agree with you about the moral equivalence between the two parties.
I do think one is worse.
And I do think that the voices of people who are standing forth and saying, let us have a profound Democratic correction, in 99 percent of the time are within the Democratic rather than the Republican Party, sometimes in third parties, sometimes even outside parties.
So, I wouldn't be running as a Democrat if I did not feel a personal choice to be part
of the effort to reclaim the soul of the Democratic Party.
Now, having said that, I hope that there are people—and I think that there probably are—who
are trying to reclaim the soul of the Republican Party, as well.
I think that some people are feeling—I mean, obviously, look at Cornell running as a third-party
candidate.
When you look at the history of the United States, third-party voices have been extremely
important.
Abolition came from the Abolitionist Party.
Women's suffrage came from the Women's Party.
Social Security came from the Socialist Party.
So, no, I'm not a fan of the way, over the last few decades, The Democratic and the Republican Party have formed this unholy alliance, making it very difficult for third-party voices to be heard.
And, you know, George Washington, our first president, warned us about political parties.
In his farewell address, he said it would form factions of men more concerned with their party than with their country.
Well, clearly, that has come true.
President John Adams said that he saw political parties as the greatest threat to our democracy.
At this point, every individual has to decide, and I don't think that there's a right or a wrong answer, because it's one more area where there's a whole systems breakdown, and we have to give a whole systems response and do whatever you feel is the best way, best thing you can do to serve the larger sense of repair.
For me, take something like debating the president.
If I weren't running as a Democrat, I couldn't You need to debate your opponents.
It's because I'm running as a Democrat that I can do that.
So everybody has to do what they think.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there.
Why is Joe Biden not debating you and RFK?
Why is that?
I don't know.
Why do you think?
I mean, come on, let's be real.
They think that they can just shoehorn in the president.
And it makes no sense, because if the president cannot take on Bobby Kennedy and myself in a debate, why should we feel confident that he will do well taking on DeSantis or Trump in a debate, or any of the other Republicans?
Theoretically, it would only make him a stronger candidate.
People should have—in a democracy, as you were saying before, in a democracy, people should have as wide an array of options as present themselves.
Bobby has one view.
I have one view.
The president has one view.
Some places, they overlap.
Some places, they don't.
But a political campaign is a long job interview, and you interview all of the people who are applying for the job.
They should—they should meet Bobby.
They should meet me.
They should meet the president and hear our agendas.
And right now, it's not just the DNC, but it's also their minions in the corporate media, who are doing everything possible to make sure that the likely Democratic voters do not meet in the way that is clear and meaningful, the president's opponents in this primary.
It's clear that at a time when many people think that the Biden administration has something to hide, I'm speaking specifically of the at the moment absolutely denied allegation that Biden took a five million bribe during his time as VP.
Now that we know that the Hunter Biden laptop story was repressed, Biden's unwillingness
to debate people within the Democratic Party that at least superficially would appear or
seem to have the same basic rubric of beliefs, i.e. they are within the Democratic Party,
is a suggestion that if there isn't something to hide, and let me know in the chat and the
comments what you think, there certainly appears to be fear, fear around having conversation
with people perhaps with more moral integrity.
Let me know what you think in the chat and the comments.
Gareth Roy is my favourite journalist online.
Gareth, do you have any conversations for Marianne Williamson?
Or have I done such a brilliant investigation that there's literally no territory?
You usually manage to add to these conversations.
I wonder what you'd like to add this time?
No, I think it's been a great interview and I think it's given us a chance to hear some of your very strong views about the corporatisation of politics, which I think a lot of our audience feel very strongly and passionately about.
I think, as Russell mentioned, the 2008 crash, I think also the pandemic, During which of which there was a wealth transfer, I think people started to, I think from both sides, started to feel like this myth that they'd been told for a long time about trickle-down economics and how capitalism's working started to really see up close how it wasn't working and how it was kind of at warp speeds not working for them.
I just wondered, from your perspective, do you feel like change is inevitable?
We seem to be at a point whereby you're doing very well in the polls, RFK's doing very well in the polls.
In the way that maybe Donald Trump talked about draining the swamp, that sentiment seems to be something that I think voters from both sides Are now, have really bought into the idea that there has to be change to the corporatisation of politics.
Do you feel that if, we have a lot of our viewers who are often quite despondent about change, who ask, what can we do?
How can things change?
Aren't the odds stacked against us?
You know, will anything ever fundamentally change?
Do you feel that it's inevitable that it will if things continue to go in the direction that they are?
No, it's not inevitable.
An addict can die.
You know, we need to end our magical thinking that, oh, our democracy will be OK, oh, our institutions will hold.
We've seen enough happen in the last few decades that it should convince any reasonable person that our institutions are fragile and they are, in many ways, under attack.
I see authoritarianism as an attack on our democracy from the outside, but this kind of trickle-down economics on federal capitalism, neoliberalism, is eroding it from the inside.
So, no, it's time for Americans to wake up.
There is no doubt about that.
It is not a guarantee that our democracy will survive.
However, if you look at the trajectory of American history, we have course-corrected before.
You know, it's Winston Churchill who said, you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted every other option.
We often get there late.
That's sort of our characterological propensity.
We sort of like—we're kind of like distracted, but boy, once we get it.
So, this is—mine is a country that ultimately responded to slavery with abolition.
Ultimately responded to the institutional suppression of women with the Women's Movement and the 19th Amendment, that ultimately responded to the Gilded Age with the labor movement, that ultimately responded to segregation with the civil rights movement.
This is—what we are going through now is simply the latest iteration of a struggle that has baked into the cake in my country, that has been with us from the very beginning.
We have always been a country which is struggling, this almost bipolar nature, on one hand, based on these extraordinarily enlightened principles, and at the—on the other hand, containing forces, starting with slavery, who, for their own ideological and financial purposes, Had no intention whatsoever of seeing those principles realized and would go to great lengths, even violent ones, to make sure that they did not.
So, what we're experiencing now, it's just our turn.
Do I think it's possible for us to do what our ancestors did?
To rise up, to figure this out, to say, hell no, no way, and push back?
Absolutely, it's possible.
Is it inevitable?
No.
What will it take?
It will take a lot of things.
It will take a strong labor movement, which is why the regeneration and revitalization of the labor movement going on in this country, in my country right now, is a really good thing.
But we can't leave out electoral politics.
And it would be very, very helpful right now to have a president who laid it down and told it like it is.
And that's the last one we really had like that was Franklin Roosevelt.
And it's time for another Rooseveltian character.
Thank you, Marianne.
Certainly, if a new poll is to be believed, the American public, even those that define
themselves as Democrats, want debates.
A recent poll says that eight in ten Democratic primary voters want Joe Biden to debate.
Let us know what you think in the chat and comments.
On Locals, which you can join by the way by pressing the red button, it's on your screen now.
The Karen Dorn says, I owe all of my works in the animal rights world to Marianne Williamson.
I used to sing in the choir before lectures at the town hall in New York City.
Though animal rights are not the top of her priority list, they moved me more than anything else and she inspired me to devote my life to what mattered most to me, to shine my light and to pray use me.
She is one of the most Inspiring people on the planet.
So you're having a real impact over here.
Elsewhere, people are commenting on Gareth's tan and saying that Gareth looks very well.
So there's an entire gamut of emotions and opinions.
Marianne, thank you so much for devoting your time to us today on the show.
It's fantastic to hear you.
And I certainly, for one, would enjoy the opportunity to see you debate Joe Biden.
And I think, well, evidently, based on that poll, a lot of people would enjoy that.
Thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations also on your grandchild, if I may say.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
And if you're in the country in the middle of July, we'd love you to appear at our event, Community.
We've got some fantastic people here.
Or are you going to be busy campaigning to be the president?
No, at that point in July I'll be back in the States, but thank you.
But I'll be back a lot with that new grandbaby.
Try and be a president.
Oh yeah, you've got to come back and see your grandbaby.
Thank you.
To follow Marianne's campaign, go to marianne2024.com and continue to advocate for democracy, I would say, across the spectrum in any way possible.
That's all we've got time for this week, but to join our locals community, you've just got to press the red button.
You can hit us up with your comments and stuff and you get lots of podcasts, meditations and all sorts of inside information.
Thanks once again, Marianne Williamson.
Thank you.
Well done, Gareth Roy.
Join us next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
