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June 16, 2023 - Stay Free - Russel Brand

01:11:41

WTF! Lockheed Martin Sponsor Pride!? Plus, Marianne Williamson - #148 - Stay Free With Russell Brand

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	birds chirping music playing
	music playing In this video, I'm going to...
	In this video, you're going to see the future.
	Hello there, you Awakening Wonders.
	Thanks for joining me.
	We've got a great show today.
	Marianne Williamson's on the show.
	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 going to 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.
	Yeah.
	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 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 gonna ask Marianne Williamson who she wants a war with.
	I'm gonna 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.
	Anyway, our country, England, is ever so hot and the military are struggling to deal with it.
	Look at this display of pageantry.
	Watch a loyal Kingsguard so committed to his duties that he attempts to continue to play the trombone while he is unconscious and on the floor.
	Because I know some people who play the French horn We'll give up the slightest obstacle.
	It's Gareth Roy who wouldn't play it in Sydney Opera House just because he didn't have the right type of little fissile thing in it or something, wasn't it?
	That's right, yeah.
	That's the correct word.
	Let's have a look at the Kings Guards.
	He's still going and that's good and overcome the stretchers.
	The other lads, though, they've been told, like, just, if ever, they must be a bit in the training, but they go, if ever one of you falls over, just act like it's not happening.
	Nothing.
	Yeah.
	We've got to presume that it didn't start like this.
	Mate, get up.
	There's literally nothing in our training that suggests that you should do this laying down on the gravel.
	Hey, I'm a maverick.
	I'll play my trombone down on the ground.
	Ba-da-ba-ba-boom!
	🎵 There's already someone else who's been carried off,
	he's been going on all day.
	Cancel the concert!
	Yeah, yeah.
	How much do we really need this?
	I mean, it's very nice and everything.
	It's not even that good, is it?
	It feels like they're making it up.
	All music sounds like that.
	You know, when they're not trying.
	I'm in indictment of all music, then.
	All music?
	Wait for it.
	From Eminem to Bach.
	Sounds like that.
	No, I mean like brass band.
	Right.
	There's always a bit like... I mean, you're doing the same song.
	Right.
	See?
	I can do it!
	You don't see me fainting, do you?
	Anyway, they're doing it to the point where people are passing out.
	Now this is good. This tells you a lot about institutions.
	The stretcher folk come running over.
	He's up now. He's over it.
	They're unwilling to accept the reality has changed.
	This is like the mainstream media.
	This is like the mainstream political system.
	They can't accept that things have changed.
	They're trying to carry on as if people haven't awakened.
	Look what happens when they come over the stretchers to a man who doesn't need a stretcher
	because he's standing up playing a trumpet in a delightful hat.
	-♪♪ -♪♪
	you Back down on your stretcher.
	I don't need a stretcher.
	I'm playing a trombone.
	He probably can't even remember that he fell over.
	Of course he can't.
	Does that ever happen to you when you're playing the French horn?
	No, it's not happened to me before.
	Stayed upright.
	I've had to wear one of those hats though.
	Yeah, that can't be helping and the chin strap.
	Right, so now what they're trying to do is, what exactly are they doing?
	They're still in their mind, he should be on a stretcher.
	They're struggling to let go of that.
	This is like in a football match when someone goes down injured and then gets up and then the stretcher people come on and go, Go on.
	Get back on the stretcher.
	I can't.
	It's embarrassing.
	I'm up now.
	I'll just walk off.
	Yeah.
	I'll walk off.
	And then they try to treat him like he is the stretcher.
	They can't let go of the concept of the stretcher.
	🎵 They're actually hindering him, I think now, dragging him
	by his arm.
	What have they got all those medals for?
	Wars that they pretended were still happening and participating, even though this was for the Falklands.
	That's World War II.
	We just carried on as if the war was rolling on.
	Don't mean to be mean to the military.
	I respect you all and all that.
	Also, it is like football.
	They've got a substitute.
	Yeah, right.
	You, in you come.
	What, another geezer just stepped in?
	A guy just walked in.
	I bet he's miming.
	They can't have another truck.
	How many back-up trombones do they have?
	How much does this happen?
	Right, we're going to need 100 trombone players and 200 stretchers.
	400 stretcher bearers.
	It's ridiculous.
	What I think is happening now, and you tell me if you agree, you watching at home, let me know in the chat and the comments.
	He starts acting as if he ain't well.
	Like, watch this.
	See, I think he's putting on at this point.
	Oh, I'm woozy.
	He's fine by that point.
	He's over it.
	Yeah.
	He's back to normal.
	He's back to his fine best.
	God bless you.
	It's almost like Her Majesty was still with us.
	Would you see that sort of fortitude and spirit?
	That's right.
	Good, innit?
	Although, you know, it's complicated, isn't it?
	War, armies, all that, royal families, trombones.
	The whole thing's very complicated, I'd say.
	Hey, guess who wants an endless war?
	Everybody!
	Republican senators are introducing an endless war act.
	Rand Paul's announced that his colleagues are beating the drums for a war with China.
	Hopefully they're not playing the trombones.
	They'll pass out and they'll need to be resurrected, poor fools.
	Which bit's more interesting?
	So I've got... Rand Paul, actually, in this case, is...
	Very positive.
	So he's introducing an end endless wars act.
	He wants to end endless wars?
	That's it.
	So what's so amazing about this is that the idea of endless wars is something that's like, no, hang on, I'm not sure we should debate this, whether to end endless wars.
	I have this idea.
	End endless wars.
	Hmm.
	Well, let's look at the pros and cons.
	In the pros column, I like endless wars.
	They're very, very profitable.
	Yeah.
	I mean, is it any wonder that war has become acceptable, that war undergirds the American economy, when even in an event that ought to be and used to be counter-cultural, like Gay Pride, it's Gay Pride Month, Lockheed Martin are allowed to sponsor Gay Pride?
	I love the gays.
	I love the LGBTQ plus community.
	I think everyone should be who they want to be and in a consensual way.
	Be who you are.
	Glory, glory unto the limitless God to all acceptable and lovable as you are.
	Got no time for any prejudice or bigotry.
	Separates us, divides us, plunges us into despair and needless conflict.
	But I don't think that Lockheed Martin, who make weapons that kill people, should be sponsoring gay pride.
	But they are though.
	Have a look.
	No.
	Like, you know, it's not Coca-Cola.
	Oh, you have any idea of the impact they're having in Latin America with their union busting or a hotel chain?
	They won't pay minimum wage.
	This is Lockheed Martin that literally make weapons that rain down on Yemeni children.
	It's about as overt as it gets, isn't it?
	What else could it be?
	If you're accepting sponsorship from Lockheed Martin, what would be unacceptable?
	Let me know in the chat and the comments.
	I mean, if you're taking Lockheed Martin's money, our Lockheed Martin, we are committed to making bombs with people that have sex with whoever they want.
	We don't care about that.
	It looks so ridiculous in the same way as the Ending Endless Wars Act would be discussed as maybe not a thing that we should do.
	We've got to such a mad point now.
	Who opposed it?
	Lockheed Martin.
	Well, it's only a few Republican senators that are proposing it.
	Clearly outsiders!
	We talked about it recently, so this was the Authorisation for the Use of Military Force Act, which was signed in 2001, which is the most bipartisan bill to ever take place.
	As in, the most amount of both Republicans and Democrats voted for this thing, under George Bush, to basically go in and use this ability to go to war with anyone.
	I remember that, because Joe Biden said, we've brought Democrats and Republicans together.
	Oh, well done.
	What for?
	More war!
	And endless war, and endless funding for war, and the ability to use the Emergency Act to perpetuate war.
	That's hardly a victory, is it?
	Let us know in the chat and comments.
	So, Rand Paul and a few renegades from the right, is that true?
	Yeah, it is.
	It's from the right at the moment, which again, you get to this point where now it's Republicans.
	Obviously, at that point of George Bush, it was Republicans that were Well, it was both sides.
	It was both sides.
	But now it's Rand Paul.
	Rand Paul is also talking about the fact that fellow Republicans are banging the drums for war with China.
	So he really is someone who's coming out there and challenging the military-industrial complex and the foreign policy of the United States.
	that the Republican Party are meaningfully and significantly better than the Democrat Party
	or vice versa? Or do you believe now that you need a new independent movement both in media
	and in politics that unites people from across the political spectrum to challenge elite
	establishment power? If you have a situation where Lockheed Martin is sponsoring gay pride,
	where it takes people from the right to campaign against war, how do you...
	Haven't all the categories gone all muddled up into some sort of swirling chaos, some nonsense that creates conflict among us and actually perpetuates the ability of the elite establishment to regulate in the way that it likes and profit in the way that it has become accustomed to.
	And is independent media a significant part of the solution to that?
	Now, we know people over the Daily Wire, I've been on Ben Shapiro's show, I've met Candice Owen before, but I think the conversations I've had with both of them have been really based around the differences we have Politically, that sometimes I think there's a lack of, what do I want to call it, compassion and empathy in some of the arguments that they advance.
	Let me just put it that way.
	But I also believe that they should have the right to be on YouTube.
	Are they being censored?
	Have they faced strike?
	Be monetized.
	This is related to conversations around gender.
	I think these are specifically around that and YouTube guidelines have changed again with regard to that.
	So I think Jeremy Boring's position on this is that YouTube have again kind of changed their guidelines and eliminated certain things that, you know, can't be talked about anymore.
	I don't think powerful corporations care.
	about stuff like that. Yeah. That's what I think. I don't think, let me know in the chat in the comments,
	do you think that Lockheed Martin, when they're making all their missiles and they're doing their
	projections and they're lobbying for ongoing conflict, also really care about LGBTQ plus
	issues? Or do you think they go, oh this is a contemporary matter that we can, same as Budweiser,
	do you think the Budweiser care about anything other than selling the maximum amount of Bud Light?
	And if you... Why would they?
	And how could they?
	And in a way, why should they?
	So it's obviously perfectly... It's ludicrous and cynical to imagine that political issues cross over with these... I mean, how can there be a connection between missiles that are blowing up kids around the world, and even if they're being legitimately used in just wars?
	What the hell's it got to do?
	Why are you trying to mangle together some weird way of life based on corporate interests and liberalism towards cultural issues?
	It's really odd.
	It doesn't make sense.
	Yeah, you're right.
	I guess there's a hypocrisy.
	I mean, obviously, you know, discussing, you know, gender identity and things is something that, you know, you wouldn't want to in any way make anyone Feel uncomfortable with at all in the kind of content that we create but I guess maybe the hypocrisy there is well, you can have Lockheed Martin Sponsor gay pride and yet this you know, and yet the Daily Y will be censored on YouTube
	That's an odd set of priorities.
	Let us know in the chat.
	If you're watching us on Rumble now, press the red button and join us on Locals and let us know.
	Are you gay or trans?
	You're very, very welcome here.
	Do you have a problem with Pride Month sponsoring Lockheed Martin?
	And what does it mean to Pride as a force for counterculture, activism and service of previously maligned and potentially still maligned communities if a corporate interest of that nature can hijack the event?
	Yeah.
	Sorry about burping during that.
	I just drank a little bit of kombucha.
	That wasn't a comment on any of the issues.
	I was just... It was coming up the gullet.
	No, I recognised it.
	I can see it coming now.
	You can do it, can't you?
	You've learnt the sign.
	You spot it a mile off.
	OK, we're going to leave you.
	If you're watching us on YouTube, we're going to leave you now.
	Not because we don't love you.
	You are 6.4, nearly 6.5 million Awakening Wonders, potentially a shadow band away from our content for all we know, that we adore.
	and love. But you've got to click the link on Rumble if you want to hear us talk about
	the first month of lockdown and how it cut potentially up to a year and a half off the
	lives of heart attack victims, which is something that's been recently alleged.
	We're also going to be talking more broadly about how those measures potentially create an environment of compliant, dumb, numb citizens incapable of confronting corrupt power.
	That's also... And Marianne Williamson's going to be on the show.
	We're going to be asking her about her campaign for the presidency as a Democrat, the lack of debates that are being offered.
	So if you've got any questions for her, please feel free to post them in the chat over on Locals, the red button.
	See you later, YouTube.
	We love you, you gorgeous, glorious people.
	Now, we're on Rumble.
	We can relax.
	We can be ourselves.
	We're not going to go crazy with free speech.
	You know, I love free speech.
	I live for it.
	I love free speech.
	But what I'm not going to do is be silly.
	I will say that what is this study, Gareth, that says that the first month of lockdown potentially cut up to a year and a half of the lives of Heart attack victims.
	Presumably they didn't have access to care.
	That was it.
	Well, it was actually... This was published by The Lancet.
	So this is not, again, it's not conspiracy theorists.
	It's not someone in the far-flung corners of the internet.
	This is published by The Lancet and features in The Telegraph.
	So it was about the stay-at-home orders, protect the NHS, save lives edict of Boris Johnson at the time when he did that first.
	Well, there's nothing to suggest we can't trust Boris Johnson.
	It's there Boris Johnson is a Prime Minister and a good man.
	Whether it's campaigning for ongoing laws, or lying through the teeth about how many parties he had during the lockdown period, or refusing to name and admit to how many children he's had, there's something for everyone when it comes to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a sort of blubbery haircut of a man who managed to gaff his way to the top.
	Certainly did.
	And when he said stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives, What people who had heart attacks did was stay at home and not bother the NHS.
	This is what they've discovered, is that I think it was a 40% fall in admissions for heart attack victims.
	So people were literally having heart attacks and not administering themselves into hospital.
	for fear of bothering the NHS because they've been told by Boris Johnson who, as we know, has been, you know, won't release his WhatsApp messages around lockdown.
	They've admitted they wanted to scare people during the pandemic.
	People with actual heart attacks didn't go to hospital.
	Now I don't have access to the data here for what is statistically more dangerous, a heart attack or coronavirus, but an educated guess might be that you are more likely to die of a heart attack than of coronavirus.
	A hysteria was induced during that time.
	And I feel that more broadly and beyond this issue, when we are in a state of fear, we are unable to make correct, rational, sensible, pragmatic decisions.
	Like, for example, a person who's had a heart attack not calling an ambulance because they're worried about someone that's We've got a version of a cold and their impact on that.
	Now loads of people died of coronavirus.
	Coronavirus certainly had an impact, not denying the existence of coronavirus or doing anything that's legit, crazy or mental.
	It's just so plain that the framing of the pandemic was advantageous to one set of interests and disadvantageous to another set of interests.
	And the second set is almost everybody in the entire world.
	And the first set is a Yeah, exactly.
	of elite, elite interests, whether that's the pharmaceutical industry or the state or people
	like Boris Johnson who benefited throughout that period, not least because he had transgressive
	little parties. Yeah, exactly. And I guess certainly the more we discover about lockdowns
	and the ineffectiveness or effectiveness of lockdowns, however you want to talk about it,
	the more that information like this becomes more and more relevant, you know, and what we were
	talking about the other day, this counter disinformation unit that was set up by the
	government as well to track and monitor and censor people who online were raising suspicions about
	lockdowns in particular and vaccine passports and things like that.
	Things that you could say now with the evidence that we have were valid, and much in the same way that Mark Zuckerberg recently admitted to Lex Friedman that Facebook were censoring things that have now turned out to be true.
	You know, it's all becoming a lot more relevant.
	Along with Joe Rogan being dismissed as a conspiracy theorist for his use of ivermectin, which I can mention over here, and the BBC, our publicly funded, that means you fund it, broadcaster over here has just established a new misinformation, malinformation, disinformation unit that will label, according to his own tastes and presumably
	according to his own funding, an additional 4.1 million from the government, information
	and sources of information, primarily from independent media, that it deems to be unsuitable.
	It's clear that there is a new industry around censorship. It's clear that they are
	looking for new ways to smear and control narratives that are at odds with the interests of the
	powerful. That's why it was so important for me to have that conversation with Michael and Matt Taibbi.
	And Gareth, it's so unforgivable that you saw it as a platform for your own demented views
	and your own strong sexual feelings for both Matt and Michael. We're going to be
	speaking to Marianne Williamson live in the studio in a minute before that. Here's the news. No,
	here's the effing news.
	Now here's the fucking news!
	Oh Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook censored true information.
	So why are we creating a censorship industrial complex that will be able to do that to all of us whenever it wants?
	Mark Zuckerberg admitting in his brilliant interview with Lex Friedman that Facebook censored information that turned out to be debatable or true.
	That doesn't seem like the right way to treat information does it?
	It might be true or it is true.
	Censor it!
	Let's get into this story and watch what Zuckerberg said to Friedman that started us off on this trail of inquiry.
	So misinformation I think is has been a really tricky one, because there are things that are kind of obviously false, right, that are maybe factual, but may not be harmful.
	So it's like, all right, are you gonna censor someone for just being wrong?
	It's, you know, if there's no kind of harm implication of what they're doing, I think that that's, there's a bunch of real kind of issues and challenges there.
	But then, I think that there are other places where it is, you know, just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier on in the pandemic, where there were real health implications, but there hadn't been time to fully vet a bunch of the scientific assumptions.
	Unfortunately, I think a lot of the establishment on that kind of waffled on a bunch of facts and asked for a bunch of things to be censored that, in retrospect, ended up being more debatable or true.
	That stuff is really tough and really undermines trust.
	It does undermine trust and it is indeed tough, so we certainly shouldn't create models that are able to continue to behave in that way.
	In retrospect, let me know in the chat in the comments, do you think that what should have happened is that views from all sides of the scientific and sociological spectrum ought to have been included And a consensus formed around it because what actually happened is assumptions were made that were beneficial to the state and their ability to regulate and impose law and order and to various industries but most notably and obviously the pharmaceutical industry.
	Now, it's not a conspiracy theory to say that the information was presented in a way that was beneficial to the state and beneficial to the pharmaceutical industry.
	Doesn't mean that they even manipulatively and deliberately did it.
	There is such a thing as unconscious bias.
	We've had on our show Robert F. Kennedy and his views are, as I know a lot of yours are, a little more pronounced.
	Shall we say than that?
	Let's get into a little more detail now so that we can together form a consensus around how information should be regulated.
	At the moment my perspective is it ought not be controlled and we ought decide for ourselves.
	I mean aren't we living at a time where Instagram is being used potentially by sexual predators around children?
	If that's not being curtailed and controlled then surely an open conversation around medical matters is something we can be afforded?
	Let me know in the chat in the comments.
	This is by our friend Michael Schellenberger and again if you want to see me live with him there's a link in the description.
	Thank you.
	Governments around the world are cracking down on free speech.
	What they are demanding includes the ability to read private encrypted text messages and invade homes in search of wrong speech.
	In order to do that, they have to create a state of fear, don't they?
	They have to say there's this massive threat, there's so much hate speech, there's so much prejudice and bigotry.
	And I'm not suggesting there isn't hatred, prejudice and bigotry.
	Plainly, there is.
	There is also people using Instagram for pedophilia.
	There are Nazi units in the Ukrainian armed forces.
	That's sort of well documented.
	So hatred, hate speech, we're not debating or doubting that those things exist.
	It's just that we believe they're being highlighted Where it's germane and apposite and beneficial to the interests of the powerful, for want of a better phrase, and being ignored if it can't be mobilized in order to justify censorship and measures of control.
	Let me know what you think though.
	Their demands thus go far beyond what the censorship industrial complex was able to get away with over the last six years.
	Across thousands of pages of attorneys' general lawsuits, thousands of pages of congressional reports and testimony, and hundreds of pages of Twitter and Facebook files themselves, it's clear that here was a highly coordinated campaign by top White House officials, government agencies, and government-funded contractors to demand Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies censor, in their own words, often true content, including about drug side effects, both to prevent the public from seeing it, but also to spread misinformation on behalf of a political agenda.
	It's Beyond irony that the category of misinformation itself has been created in order, I believe, to perpetuate misinformation.
	In order that the state or certain other establishment or elite interests can convey their message to you, to us, the category of mis, dis, and mal information has been created so that true and debatable information can be censored.
	That, as you are already aware, is literally Orwellian.
	Words are starting to be changed.
	The meaning of words is being altered in order to expedite measures that would have been unthinkable, as Schellenberger says, just a few years ago.
	The picture many of us have of journalists is Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President's Men.
	He clearly thinks that him and Matt Taibbi are like, we're the new Redford and Hoffman.
	Yeah, we're breaking down barriers, man.
	Or the journalists in Spotlight, She Said and The Post.
	They are dogged seekers of truth determined to overcome any obstacle in their way of discovering it and reporting it to the world.
	They advocate giving voice to the voiceless and uncovering secretive and dangerous abuses of power by everyone from senior government officials to powerful corporate executives to religious leaders.
	Because of our new economic models, we have new economic partners.
	Here's an advert from one of them.
	And look at how funny I've made it and thank me for it in the comments below by staying and watching it.
	Cheers.
	Hello there, you awakening wonders.
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	Oh, it's really actually quite satisfying because you can hear it.
	Can you hear that?
	That's the sound of youth returning.
	But the real world But the real-world behavior of many journalists today at top news media companies is the exact opposite.
	They plot secretly with the Aspen Institute, each other, and social media executives about how to kill stories damaging to the president.
	And they help former CIA directors and fellows spread ridiculous conspiracy theories, including that Russians stole the 2016 election, controlled Donald Trump through a video of prostitutes urinating on him, and somehow had stolen Hunter Biden's laptop.
	I mean all of that is a bit mental and ridiculous in retrospect and also for me is the scalpel that we can use to cut away the idea that the Democrat Party are the representatives of righteousness, justice and ordinary people.
	The idea that they are led by any incentives other than how to best serve the donor class is, to me, ridiculous at this point.
	Rather than quote from different sides, these journalists denounced their enemies.
	They dismissed as racist and as a debunked conspiracy theory that COVID-19 might have escaped from a Chinese lab, while insisting that it was somehow less racist and far-fetched to believe the virus travelled a thousand miles from the countryside before sickening someone at a live wet market.
	And they demanded that Twitter de-platform disfavored voices like Twitter Files reporter Alex Berenson.
	I guess what Michael Schellenberger is pointing out is the necessity for principles and values that don't alter depending on where you stand in the argument.
	Censorship is a great example of that.
	If you're against censorship, it means that you've got to allow people to criticize things that you believe to be true in order to achieve a mutual consensus.
	That's what that value means.
	If you say, oh actually I do believe in censorship now, I didn't a few years ago when it wasn't convenient.
	This is the problem that we're facing now, a kind of a moral abyss at the heart of government and at the heart of all of our institutions.
	There's a warping of reality taking place.
	When you couple a more grounded story like this about the observable establishment of the censorship industrial complex achieved through the consensus of government and big tech platforms, then add to it UFOs seem to be real now.
	Don't you recognise that things have really got to change?
	Let me know in the chat.
	Why do so many journalists participate in the war on free speech, including the freest social media platform, Twitter?
	Last summer, Berenson released documents showing reporters from CNN and Axios urging Twitter to suspend Berenson for criticizing vaccines.
	It's like librarians burning books, he told Public yesterday.
	Why are journalists attacking journalists?
	Yeah, I don't understand that at all.
	It's become so madly tribalised and hysterical that people are willing to shut down perfectly reasonable opposing perspectives.
	Because of the age I am, the experience I've had, I remember if someone's right-wing or left-wing, it's like, oh, that's interesting.
	It's not like, shut that person down!
	And conspiracy theories were either something you treated with whimsy Or investigated seriously, depending on your perspective.
	Not, don't you say that, and then try to bolt it onto something truly nefarious, like racism or antisemitism, in order to shut it down.
	For me, what I feel like we're experiencing is a time of real sanitization.
	Not in order to generate safety, but in order to generate control.
	Recently, I was watching Harry Potter 5, which is my main reference point these days.
	And when Imelda Staunton's character comes into Hogwarts, It's with the pretense of making things safer, more secure and regulated.
	But what she of course actually does is removes magic.
	And this is happening across our culture.
	We're being closed down, shut down, sanitized, a kind of astringent antiseptic being applied to everything.
	But the cost of that is the removal of the rather viscous and effervescent quality that human beings have when we're allowed to rub against one another.
	I don't mean that literally, I mean psychologically.
	It's clear there are both organic cultural and ideological reasons, as well as partisan political motivations, but there are also financial ones.
	Consider the mass media attacks on Joe Rogan, whose podcasting model has drawn viewers away from traditional media and upended the economics of the news industry.
	In other words, it's not just that independent sub-stack journalists like Berenson threatens establishment orthodoxies, it's also that we threaten the media's credibility and viability.
	That is precisely what's happening.
	Where this coalesces neatly is the issue of Tucker Carlson versus Fox News.
	Tucker Carlson saying the kind of stuff he used to be able to say on Fox News.
	Fox News want to shut him down and sue him for both economic and ideological reasons.
	Mainstream media is Quaking now because of new models independent media organizations like ours or Lex Friedman the platforms like Twitter and Facebook and Google that have themselves now become oligarchical and are in league with the state necessarily and some of them as you're aware had funding from the state oddly early stages of their inception have
	And now what's essentially being attempted is how do we assert control in an almost entirely alien landscape.
	So it's not just ideological, as Schellenberger points out, it's also economic.
	But economics is the dominant ideology of our time.
	If you threaten their financial interest, you're threatening the heart of their cathedral.
	Meanwhile everyone from President Joe Biden to former President Barack Obama is actively promoting the big lie that hate, including antisemitism, is rising in a transparent effort to give governments more power to censor.
	Of course they have to amplify the threat to legitimize the action that will lead to censorship.
	You remember this in the post 9-11 environment.
	New measures of security and surveillance were introduced.
	Now that that threat seems to have been somewhat lifted or somewhat diluted, have the measures changed?
	Of course they haven't.
	In fact, when it came for time to review the bill that allowed the government to surveil Americans abroad, And at home, they didn't review it or change it, citing Mexican drug cartels as the reason that these surveillance measures would have to remain in place.
	Governments don't give up power.
	Corporations don't give up profit.
	They find reasons to justify continuing the pursuit of both of those things.
	At the same time, resistance to government censorship and propaganda is rising worldwide.
	Free speech advocates are fighting back in every one of the nations where crackdowns are underway.
	The picture we had of mainstream news reporters speaking truth to power is no longer accurate.
	More frequently than not, reports from those same institutions speak power against truth.
	The evidence for the censorship industrial complex is abundant and they know it because they're part of it.
	The media's problem is not that the censorship conspiracy is unproven, it is that we proved it.
	It has been proven.
	There is a censorship industrial complex.
	Mark Zuckerberg himself, who of course was in correspondence with Fauci during the pandemic asking how he could help, has now done a public mea culpa in a new alternative media space, the brilliant podcast of Lex Friedman.
	The world is changing and if we continue to act with Integrity and authenticity.
	The correct changes will be given a chance to flourish.
	But of course there is an oppositional force.
	Those old institutions aren't going to give up without a fight.
	That's why you're seeing Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger sat before congressional committees being treated like criminals.
	That's why I am publicly smeared.
	That's why Joe Rogan is publicly smeared.
	Because they recognize, oh no!
	They can talk directly to people!
	Our market!
	Our economic model!
	We of course have economic interests ourselves but hopefully they do not override our ideological interests and our desire to connect with you truthfully and openly and learn from you and share with you because I'm on this planet with you and I'm frightened as well and I know that on my own I'm not enough and that on my own I will fail.
	That's why I need you to believe in us the same way that we're trying to believe in you so that we can confront unprecedented power.
	It truly is.
	For the first time there is the opportunity to impose global measures on entire populations Let me know what you think in the comments in the chat. See
	you in a second Like 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 a 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.
	Mariam, 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, right?
	Yes, 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 health care 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.
	Okay?
	And as long as they are put in short-term corporate maximization, and 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 health and the well-being of the American people, animals, our children, and our planet itself.
	And this is taking us on a trajectory that is now More than unsustainable, it is self-destructive to our democracy and possibly long-term to our species.
	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 his 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% 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 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% 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 what we saw with Vietnam, but we certainly saw it with Iraq.
	We saw it with staying in 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 of 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 US defense
	establishment and the in 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
	as Tulsi Gabbard acknowledges, recognize that the Democrat Party has become co-opted by
	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
	the military-industrial complex, and how do you reverse a process that at this point seems
	so entrenched and institutionalized?
	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 funding from Big Food, that it's 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 US 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 Board member at Raytheon.
	This is outrageous.
	And by the way, they use race as a cover because what 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 you know, one of the first things I would do is is audit the Pentagon every cent because it's not even audited.
	But if we have a former Raytheon board member who is the 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 hyper-capitalism, 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, paradigm and what's happening now is that people are waking
	up on the left and on the right
	they're realizing this is forming a system of corporate tyranny they're realizing that the government is enabling this that
	too often our public policies chop the wood and carry the water for
	that 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 alt-right, because entire platforms are now being dismissed as 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 or the Democrat Party. How are you
	proposing that your message 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'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.
	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, 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 Or centralised 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, 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 the 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% 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.
	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 be saying you need to debate me, Joe.
	You need to debate your 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.
	What 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.
	Yeah.
	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 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 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 corporatization 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.
	Um, an addict can die.
	You know, we, we need to end our magical thinking that, oh, our democracy will be okay.
	Oh, our institutions will hold.
	We've seen enough happen in the last few decades that it should convince any reasonable person that our, 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, unfair to 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 character or logical propensity.
	We sort of like we're kind of like distracted before 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 some what we are going through now is simply the latest iteration of a struggle that is 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 right 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 her lectures at the town hall in New York City.
	Though animal rights are not the top of her priority list, they move me more than anything else and she inspired me to devote my life to what made most of me, to shine my light and to pray use me.
	She is one of the most Thank you very much for joining us.
	Thank you.
	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.
	Until then, stay free.
	Man, you switch it.
	Switch on.

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