The Rich Roll Podcast - Marianne Williamson: The Politics Of Love

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Extreme political polarization. Weaponized misinformation. Media incentivized to divide. And growing inequality. Our democratic experiment has seen better days. How do we reimagine it for the betterment of all? Spiritual thought leader, activist, and political writer Marianne Williamson says it begins with love. You may know Marianne for her Presidential bid in 2020—the democratic candidate unafraid to ask the bigger questions about what matters most. But if that’s the sum total of your relationship with this human, prepare yourself for a force of nature that extends well beyond that singular life chapter. The author of 14 books (including four #1 New York Times bestsellers), Marianne has been a leader in spiritual and religiously progressive circles for over three decades. She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a non-profit that has delivered more than 14 million meals to ill and dying homebound patients since 1989. Marianne created the group to help people suffering from the ravages of HIV/AIDS. She has also worked on poverty, anti-hunger, and racial reconciliation issues throughout her career. In 2004, she co-founded The Peace Alliance and continues to support the creation of a U.S. Department of Peace. I first met Marianne at a fundraiser back in 2014 during her bid for Congress. Fascinated by her bold and unconventional presence on the Presidential stage—particularly her debate performances—I’ve followed her career closely for years and always admired her unique perspective on democratic principles and responsibility. Today’s conversation is about what’s required to solve our most urgent problems—from the perils of our entrenched government-media-industrial complex and the ills of corporate stranglehold on governance, to the legacy of 60’s activism, the role of spirituality in politics and the complex relationship between personal evolution and global change. To read more, click here. You can also watch it all go down on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I really enjoyed spending a couple of very insightful hours with Marianne. I appreciate her voice, wisdom, and courage. May her words equally inspire you. Enjoy! Peace + Plants, Rich

The problem is not democracy. Our system is so corrupt, it's become a system of legalized bribery. People know it. It's not like people are not aware, and it's not like people are not upset. But we're all living with this conundrum. What do we do? We are now at a point where it's not just that we must move in another direction, but we must move quickly. We must open our hearts and still passionately disagree,

form boundaries, just like you have boundaries in personal relationships, you have boundaries in political relationships. But you can do all of that with love. You can do all of that with respect and humility. To me, that's the portal through which we can walk to a more sustainable world. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, internet. It is I, Rich Roll, your host. Welcome to the podcast. My guest today is Marianne Williamson. Marianne is a teacher. She's an activist, a thought leader, a badass, an absolute legend in spiritual circles,

and the author of 14 books, four of which have been number one New York Times bestsellers. You may know Marianne because she quite famously ran for president in 2020. But if that's the sum total of your relationship with this human, I think you're in for a ride today because she is a force of nature that extends well beyond that singular life chapter. This one is both fascinating, it's fun, and it's coming right up. But first. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite

literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com, who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of

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go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place

and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem, a problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey.

When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Marianne. So, I met Marianne at a fundraiser back in 2014 during her bid for congress i've followed her career closely for years i was utterly fascinated by her presence on the presidential stage particularly her debate performances and her rather unique perspective on democratic principles and responsibility. So this is a conversation about all of that. It's about what is required to solve our most urgent problems, the perils of our entrenched government slash media industrial complex,

the ills of corporate stranglehold on governance, the legacy of 60s activism, the role of spirituality in politics, the relationship between personal evolution and global change, and many other topics. I really enjoyed spending a couple of very insightful hours with Marianne. I appreciate her voice, her wisdom, her courage. And so with that, here we go. This is me and Marianne Williamson. Marianne, I'm so happy to have you here today. Welcome. Thank you.

Thank you for coming. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, I've been looking forward to this for a long time. Thank you. So many threads that we can pull on, but I think a good place to start is just talking about where we find ourselves right now. Obviously we live in very interesting times. It's a very unique period that I haven't experienced

in my lifetime in terms of the division and the divisiveness and the acrimony and this era of social media. So, you know, I suppose like, I'm just curious, like how are you feeling about this current moment that we find ourselves in? I think all of us are feeling rather discombobulated by the whole thing, but what we're thinking about,

I think is very important. I think we're living in two simultaneous realities. I think on one hand, it is the fall of Rome. On one hand, it is the dissembling of a civilization, a kind of cratering of American civilization in many ways. And on the other hand, it is the dawning and the struggling to be born of a new world, a new renaissance.

I think they're both true. And I think that we are called upon to be both death doulas and birth doulas it's our job to help that which in many ways has to die to die tenderly and with as little harm as possible and with as just a transition as possible and to passionately and vigorously give birth to a world that works and it's just like when we were children and we were taught about evolution. If a species moves in a direction where its collective behavior is increasingly maladaptive for its survival, one of two things will happen. Either that species will go extinct

or a mutation will occur. It will evolve in a different direction. And I think that that's what's happened in many ways to our democracy. And I think that that's what's happened in many ways to our democracy. And certainly it's happened to the entirety of the human race. We're moving in directions that are increasingly maladaptive for the survival of the species.

We will now turn, we will now move in a different direction. We will now mutate and evolve or global cataclysm catastrophe on a level that most of us can't even imagine is a very real possibility. Yeah, it does feel like this epic arms race of light versus dark, which is obviously like a, you know,

a touchdown theme in your teachings and what you talk about. And I think the difference, you know, if we kind of root this in the political landscape, the difference in tenor of our moment is this ticking clock in the background, right? Like we could quibble about policy changes and the direction of the country

and where we're at as a collective consciousness and address those items in a kind of incremental way. But now we have this looming existential threat that elevates the urgency of all of this. And I think also exacerbates the antipathy and everything else that's going on right now that makes it like this crucible where it's very difficult to figure out the best way forward.

And I'd like that idea that you mentioned around kind of evolution of the individual and how that is reflected in society at large. It's this idea of like ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Like you can't evolve the whole without the evolution of the individual. I think the issue of incrementalism that you mentioned is very relevant. I think it was in the letter from the Birmingham jail that Martin Luther King talked about incrementalism. And he said, if you take an incremental approach to change, then the status quo,able solutions and a more sustainable future, there's a tendency of the economic and the political system to provide too little, too slow, too late. We have taken it to a point now. So many of the solutions are being offered, for instance, even right now by the Biden presidency, et cetera. They should have been offered in 1995.

Biden presidency, et cetera, they should have been offered in 1995. We are now at a point where it's not just that we must move in another direction, but we must move quickly. Because as you said, the risk is so great. You know, even like when I think of things like protests against the Vietnam War, passionate, important, huge.

But when we thought about the worst that could happen, global cataclysm was not the worst that could happen. We're now living at a time where the worst that could happen, global catastrophe on a level, like I said, we can't even imagine. It's a complete shift psychologically that I think that we have to move into. And if you make that move without any consideration of larger, more expanded sense of possibility, almost from a metaphysical perspective, then you are left with understandable nihilism, cynicism, anger, and fear. Because if you only look at this moment from a rational perspective, it could be argued it's over. It could be argued that the gig is up. I think of it much like when the Israelites

were standing at the Red Sea. If they go forward, they'll drown. If they go back, Pharaoh decided he wanted his slaves back and sent his soldiers to go get them or to kill them if they refused to come. That story, like all stories of miraculous transformation, indicate that there is a level of consciousness at which the laws of time and space as we know them are transcendent. You know, if you think of the abolitionist movement, there was no reason from a rational perspective to think that slavery could be abolished given how ensconced it was within the economy of the South. If you look at the women's suffragette movement, there was no reason to think that women could gain suffrage

given how infused the system was with the institutionalized oppression and suppression of women's rights. Even if you look at the civil rights movement, there was no reason from a rational perspective to think that it could succeed given how embedded the systemic racism and institutionalized oppression of the rights of black people were within the systems of segregation in the American South. And yet these changes occur. They have occurred in American history and they have occurred throughout the world. And I think we need to keep our eyes on those moments where very quickly,

in a way that no one might have predicted, the right prevailed, love prevailed, justice prevailed, mercy prevailed, that there was such a burst of yearning and passion for those things within enough human hearts that humanity moved in that direction. Yeah, I suppose there is a seed of hopefulness that can be mined in thinking about those instances, but I can't help but reflect upon the inadequacies of a democratic system that is sort of systemically ensconced in an incremental way of progressing change with this ticking clock and this existential, like, do we have enough time? an incremental way of progressing change

with this ticking clock and this existential, like, do we have enough time? Is there adequate political will? Is there too much denial? Is the kind of corporate stranglehold on that political will too powerful to really create the change that we're gonna need in order to survive as a species and as a thriving planet.

Well, let's deconstruct that. The problem is not democracy. The problem is the anti-democratic force field represented by the corporatized political duopoly that now is keeping the will of the people from being expressed in political terms. If you look at issue after issue, the problem is not the American people. If you look at issue after issue, the consciousness of the American people is not the problem.

The problem is how often the will of the American people, because of gerrymandering, because of the corporatized forces within both political parties that peripheralize any non-corporate backed candidates. Now voter suppression rights, and first and foremost, the money, the undue influence of money on our politics. So democracy is the answer. The problem is that our democracy is not now functioning as a democracy.

Old school democracy, democracy as originally- Well, it would never have been perfect, but yeah. At this point, our system is so corrupt, it's become a system of legalized bribery. And people know it. It's not like people are not aware and it's not like people are not upset, but we're all living with this conundrum. What do we do? Yeah. The distinction between the voters and the systemic ills of a democratic system that's been co-opted by corporate interests. So in looking at that problem or that dilemma,

like how do we untangle that knot and get the democratic system back on the rails so that it can function in the manner in which it was originally conceived and not be held hostage by the corporations that seem to dictate policy on every level. Well, with the current Supreme Court, makeup of the Supreme Court,

we certainly can assume that Citizens United will not be overturned anytime soon. In Letters to a Young Poet, I'm sure a book that you're well aware of by Rocha, he says, there are times when you don't know the answer, but you live with the question. And that is a question, the one you just posed, that every thinking person that I know is dealing with right now. What do we do in 2024? We have seen, the way I look at it, the Republican Party as it now stands represents a nosedive for

our democracy. And the Democratic Party as it now stands represents a nosedive for our democracy. And the Democratic Party as it now stands, certainly under the leadership of its corporatized forces, represents a managed decline of American democracy. We all know the risk. You go third party and you could risk helping neo-fascist forces get back into power. You work within the Democratic Party and you see what they did to Bernie twice. I know what they did to me. What is the way forward? I'm living with the question in my heart and most people I know are living with the question in their hearts. And I think that the answers are going to emerge because I think the anguish of that question exists in enough of us and very serious people are doing very serious thinking

and reflection on this question. Yeah, I mean, there's many ways to dissect this. We could just look at the two party duopoly and have a exploration of the possibility of a third party like Andrew Yang is doing right now. And he was in here recently talking about that. And he's got a series of ideas about how to untie this knot. We can look at incremental policy decisions,

but ultimately I think the conversation that I wanna have and where I think you are uniquely suited to speak to is the broader conversation about the crisis of consciousness that we're experiencing right now, a situation in which materialism and consumerism drive priorities. It's all buttressed by this government industrial complex that's propped up by corporate interests that places accumulation and comfort

above community and conservation, all at the cost of our wellbeing, of course. And it's all being denigrated by social media and these algorithms that foment division and hate, ultimately dividing us from each other and from ourselves and distancing ourselves from the shared fabric that kind of unites us and creates the cohesion that's required to function as a healthy society.

I think that there are two points of demarcation that are worth noting. One, the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and second, the advent of trickle-down economics. It was in the late 1800s that the Industrial Revolution exploded onto the scene in England, then in the United States. And there were quite a few artists and philosophers, writers, thinkers,

both in Europe and in the United States, who tried to sound an alarm, a warning, that we were becoming as a civilization so mesmerized by externalities that we were losing the balance between the outer and the inner self. We were losing the balance with internal issues that were just as important as what we could see with our physical eyes. When I was in college, I had these huge posters on my wall. Like remember we used to have like

from an art museum, art posters, right? And I had these huge angels and it said, you know, Burne-Jones, but I didn't know who Burne-Jones was. I just knew I loved these huge angels. And it said, you know, Burne-Jones, but I didn't know who Burne-Jones was. I just knew I loved these huge pictures of angels. Many years later, I was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York City, passing the Metropolitan Museum. And, you know, they have these big flags. This is what our exhibit is today.

And there were these huge angels by, you know, Edward Burne-Jones. So I was so excited. I was going to see them. And I took one of those, you know, you have a littleJones. So I was so excited. I was going to see them. And I took one of those, you know, you have a little machine, a little earphone, they tell you things. And I had already started writing my book, Healing the Soul of America. And I knew about the transcendentalists and I knew about the industrial revolution and all of this. I had no idea that his paintings were part of this. And this is what Burnt Jones said.

Every time they build a machine, I will paint an angel. He's been painting a lot of angels. This was the beginning of this horrifying split within human consciousness. And then by the 20th century, it climaxed with this, the Industrial Revolution, and this idea that we would solve all of humanity's problems through this mechanistic paradigm the newtonian idea that the world is just a machine and if you want to fix it you just tweak the machine well obviously that has turned out to not be true but the damage has been done in terms of so much of particularly the Western mind being drawn so far into the material world

that it has almost withered our spiritual musculature. Nothing is more of an example of this than what happened in 1980. Now, I'm not romanticizing American capitalism before 1980. I'm not romanticizing or whitewashing the behavior of corporate interests in this country before 1980. But I can tell you, I'm old enough to be able to tell you that there was a time in my lifetime, not that we were perfect, not that our democracy was perfect, not that corporate ethics were so exemplary. But the social consensus was we were supposed to try. But the social consensus was we were supposed to try. With the advent of trickle-down economics, this propaganda, this horrifying canard was like wool pulled over the profits, the short-term profits of your stockholders, even if at the expense of the other stakeholders, at the expense of workers, at the expense of the community, at the expense of the environment, this will be good, see, because it'll lift all boats. Those people, those new corporate aristocrats will just create so many jobs that money will just trickle down, lift all boats. Well, obviously after 40 years, we can see it did not lift all boats. It left

millions and millions of people without even a life vest. In the 1970s, I think a lot of people don't realize, in the 1970s, the average American worker had a decent job with decent benefits, could afford a car, could afford a home, could afford a yearly vacation, and could afford to send their kids to college. This is aberrational. This massive transfer of wealth that began with Ronald Reagan, it began with the Republicans, but no Democratic president has stopped it. And we're now at a point where, as I said earlier, the status quo will not disrupt itself. It's no different than, you know, it's interesting, Rich, because you and I are, you know,

coming from the sort of wellness community, et cetera. There is very sophisticated thinking within that community regarding drugs and alcohol. And it's very sophisticated because people have known so many people who died. And we know that if it goes too far, you know, most of us have had this situation in our lives. Either we've made the call or had someone else make the call to us. You think we ought to do something? Because if we don't intervene, this person could die. We need to stop our magical thinking about democracy and about the survival of the human race. You continue like this, you could die.

We will lose our democracy. So at this point, we need to stage an intervention. And as John F. Kennedy said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. And that to me is the point where we are. Yeah, we can place all our focus on Donald Trump and label him as a malignant narcissist and the like,

but ultimately he's a symbol, he's a reflection of decades of tectonic economic shifts that have led to a situation where people who have been so deprived and unheard for so long and have to work three jobs, as opposed to the one job that provides the car and the picket fence and all of that, of course, you're gonna have anger and resentment

and all of the kind of emotions that we're seeing flaring up. It's reflective of that. And it's either gonna lead towards some kind of revolutionary act and the dissolution of the union. Ultimately, there has to be a reckoning, right? The most healthy way to address it

is to have some form of intervention where we can course correct what has gone wrong and find a way to provide for those people in a meaningful way who have been so deprived for too long. If you look at history, it's very interesting to see not only what conditions provided the opportunity for Hitler to gain power, but also how the United States and the other allies

responded to that problem at the end of the war. At the end of World War I, the attitude towards Germany on the part of the allies was basically reparations in the form of Deutschmark till we tell you to stop. Interestingly enough, it was the American president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, who tried to warn them that this was a bad idea. He was not listened to. And the desperation of the German people at that time became a petri dish. When you have large groups of desperate people, it becomes a national security risk, whether it's in a corner of the U.S. city or a corner of the world, because large groups of desperate people become a petri dish out of which a certain level of societal dysfunction is almost inevitable.

Ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces becomes pretty easy. That's why the Marshall Plan, that's why we treated Germany so well after World War II. That's why we treated the Japanese so well after World War II. We knew that when people have been defeated, don't keep kicking them. Something terrible is going to happen. Even if you don't see it from a moral perspective, just see it from a political perspective. So you're absolutely right. For 40 years, people have been kicked down. Vote for us and it'll be better. Vote for us and it'll be better. And at a certain point, one man who I don't think any of us thought could have done that much damage so quickly,

who was willing to take advantage of all the anger, all the anger to harness that for his own political purposes, then that coupled with what you've mentioned, the power of social media. And we've gotten not only the problem we have on our hands of a genuinely neo-fascist force field, but what should have been seen as a predictable one. And I believe that the Democratic Party had been truly holding to its principles over the last 40 years. Well, listen, if either political party had held to their principles over the last 40 years, it wouldn't be, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Yeah, and it feels like the Democratic Party can't get out of its own way. It's very feckless in terms of how it's dealing with this with bullet points and policy initiatives that fail to kind of penetrate the emotional force field of the people who could benefit from those policy shifts the most, right? Like there needs to be a broader conversation where these people are actually feeling heard. Well, these people were told, vote for us, stand in line for seven and eight hours, give us the White House, give us the Senate, give us the House, and we're going to make your life better.

What happened to the conversation of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour? What happened to the conversation about canceling the college loan debt? What happened to the conversation about Medicare for all? They are peripheralized like it's a bunch of errant children who don't know what they're talking about, too far left. Even though the issues that are considered such as I just mentioned that are considered so far left in America today are considered like moderate centrist views in every advanced democracy except for ours, certainly in Europe. And so to say to people, it's not just the, I don't even think it's just the emotional force field. It is their pocketbook. And now the Democrats winging their hands, how are we going to win in 2022? I'll tell you what you do. You raise the minimum wage,

then people will vote for you. You cancel those college loan debts, people will vote for you. You pass Medicare for all, people will vote for you. It's really not rocket science and it's not just messaging. It's not just messaging. It's who they are willing to serve at the end of the day. And why can't they just get that done? Because they, at the end of the day, are under the thrall of the same corporate donors, whether it has to do with the military industrial complex, whether it has to do with big pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuel companies, big agricultural companies, big chemical companies, not the NRA, but on that one, they are better, but they're still not getting it done. So let's not, we all need to awaken. It's like a woman who, her friends just have to say,

honey, he's a bad guy. He's not who you think he is at this point. These people are not doing it because they do not choose to. Yeah. It was fascinating to kind of observe during your presidential bid, like how the media treated you so unfairly, the manner in which you were marginalized.

And I mentioned earlier, I had Andrew Yang in here and he shared a little bit about his personal experience with that, which was kind of a lesser version of what you experienced. And he wrote quite extensively about it in his book, but it was quite disheartening to see the manner in which you were kind of maligned and made fun of and marginalized when your kind of debate performances

created so much conversation and a lot of interest. And yet you would read the pieces about those performances and they were written with such a tone of like mockery and dismissal. There's a causal relationship there. After the second debate, I was the most Googled person in 49 states. And clearly somebody, we know his name, Tom Perez and that whole gang, get her off the stage. They knew that if I was getting my sea legs in that second debate, you're right. I was talking about environmental justice had not been discussed as I did. Reparations, a sickness care system, all of those things.

And by that third debate, I would have been an inconvenience. And it was get her off the stage. And within three days, the talking points were so obvious. She's dangerous. She's crazy. I love that one. I mean, we're going back to ancient times, right? She's dangerous. She's crazy. I love that one. I mean, we're going back to ancient times, right? She's dangerous.

She's crazy. She's kooky. She's a crystal lady. She's anti-vax. She's anti-science. She's anti-gay. I mean, things that were like, I mean, it was the talking points.

You couldn't open your computer, you couldn't turn on television once someone wasn't saying it. And for exactly when you said, these people who did that, they didn't do it because they thought I was silly. They did it because they knew that I was serious. That's why they created the mischaracterizations

and the silly girl bullshit, because they knew that I was very, very serious. Right, because if you were truly silly, it's easy to be dismissive. But if you're actually saying things that are connecting with voters and people are reacting and responding to that favorably, then you become a threat to the kind of hegemony

of the DNC and their greater agenda, right? But like how, so all we know as citizens is we watch the debates, we read the newspaper, we scroll on Twitter, we see the hot takes, but what is it really, like, what do we not understand? Like you had this incredible firsthand experience of like running for president, you know, going behind the curtain

and really seeing how the sausage is made and the relationship between the media and the kind of campaign industrial complex and the mechanics of all of that. Right, it's all intertwined. Yeah, they chop their wood and carry their water. Yeah, so share a little bit about what the average person doesn't understand

or might not get about how that machinery actually functions. Well, I felt in my case, when all those things were said, there were two issues. One was the smear, and the other was how easily people were duped. How, I mean, would you really think everything you read on the internet is true? And grow up.

I mean, you know, no, people post an article, you know, I mean, it's ridiculous. And I know in you know, no, people post an article, you know, I mean, it's ridiculous. And I know in my case, when certain things would be said, I was, I believe, ill-advised. Don't respond to it because it will pull attention to it. But that's so ridiculous because when you're running for president, the attention is there. If I were to do that again, I would have gotten on Facebook Live or whatever would have been equivalent and just spoke to it. No, the quackery here is not my views. The quackery here is the journalism that is saying these things.

Let me tell you where the quackery is and talked about the points. But it became such a, it's such an assault. It's such an ubiquitous assault. So when you say, what does the average person not understand? I don't see the average person so much as a victim here. I think the average person, as citizens, we become lazy, we become complacent. And we need to wake up and realize that misinformation is a much bigger field than we even think it is, that the whole thing has become a corporate matrix and its minions who have these predetermined agendas, predetermined sets of people who it feels that it will allow into the conversation. it feels that it will allow into the conversation

and the viciousness with which they will make sure that anyone who they do not approve will not be in the conversation. And I think when you were talking about Andrew, Andrew did not get it nearly as bad, because I think a large part of it is because he's a man. Yeah, the layer of misogyny, the craziness and the wackiness and all of that. Yeah, what makes him more of a businessman than, I mean, come on.

Mm-hmm. So do you like depart that experience? Like, how do you not find yourself cynical? I mean, I suppose you, maybe you are cynical. No, I hope that I'm not. I knew that the year after the, first of all, in the Course in Miracles, there's a line that you pay a very high price

for not taking 100% responsibility for your own experience. And the price you will pay is that you won't be able to change it. I'm responsible for my experience. I was not a victim. I ran for president. As someone said to me after I was just ambushed in the most unfair way by Anderson Cooper, someone said to me, and they were right,

if you couldn't take on Anderson Cooper, what would make us think you could take on Vladimir Putin? Don't run for president if you're not ready to take on what it was. And there were too many ways in which I was unprepared. I naively thought I was going to be judged on the issues. People didn't even have any, you know? Or at the very least,

judged on my actual weaknesses and the things that are true about me that are not perfect, character defects, whatever. I thought those would come up, but this mischaracterization of wacky girl who doesn't go to the doctor and doesn't believe disease is real. So I take responsibility. That's number one. And number two, what I knew I had to do was clear all that. And that's what that year was about for me. It's true. It's a cliche, but it's true. You get better or you get better.

I had to forgive myself. I have to forgive others. I didn't want to go forward with a chip on my shoulder. We all fall down in life. But I think the issue is who gets back up and how. Hemingway said, what did he say? Everybody's broken, but some grow stronger at the broken places. So the issue for me is, can I be a truth teller

and point out what I think needs to be pointed out without playing violins like poor me, what they did to me? Because what they did to me is small compared to the larger issue of what's being done to the planet and to people all over the world. Yeah. I just remember you being on the stage

and just kind of very bluntly speaking truth to power in a manner that was very bold and extremely unusual, like perhaps unprecedented for that type of dais, right? Like to just say, look, we gotta confront the dark with the light and in a very matter of fact and convicted way. And I think that's why you ended up getting Googled so much like, holy shit, like I've never seen anything

like this before. Like, what are we gonna do with this? Well, the DNC had ideas around that, of course. But I look at it as almost as if, listen, you knew you weren't gonna win the presidency, right? It's almost as if you were this Trojan horse. Like I'm gonna insert myself into this equation and I'm going to seed the national dialogue

with certain ideas that I think are hyper relevant. And I know that I'm gonna be perhaps mocked for them, but I am opening the door, but I'm opening the door for the next person, right? Like I'm gonna be perhaps mocked for them, but I am opening the door, but I'm opening the door for the next person, right? Like I'm creating permission so that this can actually occur in the future. Like, it's sort of like you're just, you are the courageous adventurer,

the first person to kind of say, let's talk about this more broadly. Let's talk about this from a broader spiritual perspective in a situation in which we have the Democratic Party that has kind of abdicated any relationship with anything spiritual or religious in any regard. That's kind of been monopolized by the right in a certain way and has left the Democratic Party

like fearful of even talking about these things in a meaningful way? I don't know about fearful. I think that by surrendering, we just abdicated the moral conversation. Traditionally, on the political right, they talked about issues of private morality. And on the political left, there were issues of public morality. War and peace should be seen as a moral issue. Whether you invade a country that didn't do anything to you is a moral issue. Economic justice should be seen as a moral issue. But over the last few decades, and I don't even know how it happened. I mean, Bobby Kennedy said that the contest was for the soul of America. JFK said we can't afford to be materially rich and spiritually poor. When I was growing up

during the anti-war movements of the 1960s and 70s, Reverend William Sloan Coffin, the Berrigan brothers, that was definitely a religious left. So this is an aberration that the left in America has become so overly secularized. But I'd like to go back for a moment to something you just said about you opened the conversation. Oh, you brought up the conversation. You know what? Let me tell you something. We don't have time left to just influence the conversation.

So, yes, in my campaign, hopefully I did what you said, open the door, next person, et cetera. But this idea, you know, sometimes people say, oh, Marianne, you really influence the consciousness of people. The consciousness of people is not the problem. That's not where the problem lies. The problem lies is in those who are holding the levers of political and economic power. I have had the experience of, quote unquote, advising the most powerful people in the country. It's too late to just advise them. We need to replace them. So that goes back to this whole issue of incrementalism. And you don't go through a situation as brutal as running for president, only wanting to influence the conversation.

Not that I thought that I would become president in that election, but if somebody is sending you money to support your campaign, even if it's $10, you have a moral, I think, an ethical responsibility to play it as seriously as you can. And I tried. And the fact that I, in moments of nervousness, sounded silly, clearly was used by those who sought to mock me. But once again, that's my responsibility. I own it. You've spoken many times about the legacy and the impact of, you know, Bobby Kennedy and MLK

and what their assassinations kind of meant in terms of the chilling effect on activism. This sense that we can be active or raise our voices only to a certain degree, but that the powers that be are going to ensure that that sort of pressure valve gets released a little bit, but as long as you go back and become sort of a quiet citizen.

How do you reconcile that? Like this idea, like, okay, in the private sphere, go consume, do whatever you want. In the public sphere, leave that to us. Here we are in a very precarious situation. Like, can that be changed? What you're saying, I I think is so important. And as someone who lived through that,

the Kennedys, Dr. King, the people who were holding a loft, the highest aspirations, philosophically, morally, spiritually were being channeled within a political context. They were older than the youth movement at that time. They were literally shot and killed in front of our eyes. And it was very clear that the message was for all of us.

Those bullets psychically shot all of us. It was a very loud, unspoken message. There will be no further protest. You will go home. You will do whatever you want in the private sector. You'll have a lot of choice, a lot of choice. You can have the yellow one. You can buy the blue one. You can buy the red one. So much choice. And just in case we didn't get the message, they killed the kids at Kent State. We all did as we were told. But you know what? Something has

changed now because that generation that was young then has become older now. And today, the idea I know for myself, and I think for a lot of people in my generation, the idea that we might die knowing in our hearts that the bastard got to us, as my father would say, knowing in our hearts, we didn't really do what we came here to do in this lifetime is actually scarier to us than the thought that they might kill us if we do. Now, you have tremendous, I believe, political potential in harnessing the impulses of those who are still young enough to dream and those who are experienced or old enough to have now become wise. I have never seen anything, I don't think there's been anything in American history, like the way the US government collectively and systemically abuses our young.

It is unbelievable. Between the college loan debt, the lack of healthcare, the lack of availability of free education. It's like, instead of saying, hey kids, like we would as parents, this country should not be run as a business. This country should be run as like a family. We're going to give you everything possible so that you can go out there and you can thrive and make it. And we're going to hold you accountable, but we're going to give you all the tools of success. We thwart the dreams of our young. And to me, where I see hope is how many young people really are, they don't want to take it anymore. They look at global capitalism and they say, what has global capitalism ever done for me?

And they look at socialism and they go, what should I be so afraid of, the free health care or the free college? So that the shadow side, the most irresponsible, amoral strain of unfettered, unregulated capitalism is now holding the chokehold it has on the young, the chokehold it has on our democracy. You have young people who are just, they're ready to break through this. You have older people who are like, I'm not going to die without weighing in on this. And we need to harness the political potential of the dreamers and the wise. Yeah, very well said. I mean, that pendulum is definitely swinging back from the Gordon Gekko, greed is good,

rugged individualism, me, me, me, how can I- Became rugged narcissism. Yeah, we're reaping the havoc of too many decades of that. And we have these young people who you're very right. It's like, seriously? Like not only is higher education restricted, it's impossibly expensive, I'll be saddled with debt and then enter a job market where there's no real,

you know, legitimate opportunities to move upward? Like what are the options? Right, and so these kids take out these college loans in order to get an advanced degree in the field that they want to pursue. But then they actually can't take a job in that field because they will not get the benefits that they need, healthcare, et cetera.

They need to take the jobs that they hate in order to ever pay back the college loans, which theoretically were giving them the education for the life that they want. Yeah, I feel a certain sense of like urgent activism and energy that they have. Like you talk about the aging up of the boomers and their relationship with the legacy of activism

and Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, et cetera, and this sense of unfulfilled destiny in terms of like manifesting the promise of that era. But I see young people who are picking up that cause and are not taking any bullshit. Absolutely. And you see that like the protests at COP26. That's what I was just gonna mention.

I mean, it was perfect embodiment what happened in Glasgow. The people holding the power inside the building were the incrementalists, were the apologists. The greenwashing. Yeah, and then you had hundreds of thousands or at least over a hundred thousand of people on the street. That's where the energy is going. The issue is number one,

will we be able to pull it off in time? Number two, sometimes people say to me, Marianne, don't worry about the Earth. Don't worry about the environment because worse comes to worse. Mother Nature will just have to kick off the planet, this predatory species, for 200,000, 300,000 years. So the Earth will be okay. But I think we need to allow ourselves to imagine the horror

of the amount of human and other species suffering that would result from that scenario. Something fierce has to arise in us now. You're a parent, I'm a parent. There's something that happens, usually when they're teenagers, usually it involves sex or drugs. There's fears that will not be happening in this house. And you don't even necessarily know what you would do if they push you at that point, but they're not going to push you because the look on your face is so serious. That's how we have to become. That will not happen. And I do believe in my heart, there are more lovers than haters. There are more people yearning for the good and the merciful and the humble and the true and the beautiful and the democratic.

But there's a line in the Course in Miracles where it says, miracles arise from conviction. Conviction is a force multiplier. So more people in this country and in this world love than hate. But those who hate, the bigots, the racists, the anti-Semites, the homophobes, the Islamophobes, love are willing to stand for our love on Tuesdays and Thursdays between two and four. And I think people need to realize you can't really wage a revolution over white wine and brie. We have to become as convicted behind our love as some people are convicted behind our hate. If you have 10 people who hate with conviction and 100 people who love but with weak musculature, weak conviction. Then the conviction will carry the day. You know, Vladimir Lenin was asked, how are you going to be able to pull this off? How are you ever going to be able to convince the peasants?

He said, I don't need to convince the majority. I need 10 good men who understand what I'm talking about. I think that we get too concerned about the majority. And when you're too concerned about the majority, you're willing to dumb down your message because you think that social change occurs on the horizontal axis. I think social change now occurs on the vertical axis.

Go deep with what's true. It's always operated that way. And that's why the abolitionists won. That's why the civil rights movement prevailed. That's why suffragettes won. But we need to step up our conviction. It's my sense where it's that enough of us get it. Enough people get it.

It's not like people are stupid. And I found that as a candidate, the system was even more corrupt than I knew. People were even more wonderful and intelligent than I hoped for. But we have to stand for what we know now and courageously, and we'll be able to pull this off. I certainly believe that love

is a more powerful force than hate, but there is something very particular about hate that lends itself to that level of conviction. Like hate is a very enervating emotional state. It's an agitation that kind of compels somebody into a state of conviction. Whereas love doesn't really operate that way. Like how do you function convicted around love?

Like I can understand being convicted about justice or truth or the difference between right and wrong, but love is so much more, it's elusive in that regard. Like what is the fulcrum that can create that situation as a counterbalance to the amount of convicted hate that we're seeing. I'm not sure I see it totally the same way. Look how you love your wife. Look how you love your children. It's not elusive or effusive. It's fierce. When you learn history, when you read American history, when you read the history of Europe, when you read the history of World War II, you learn to have a fire in your belly about freedom and about liberty and about democracy. This is serious stuff.

There's such a failure of our educational system. If you look at the Declaration of Independence, those principles are a mission statement. And what has happened is that they have become emotionally eroded. They're still written on marble walls and they're written on parchment. We hold it behind glass at the Smithsonian or whatever. But too many generations have lost their moral force. All men are created equal. We have to love that the way we love our lovers, our spouses, our children, that all men are created equal and all men have the inalienable rights given by God to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But governments are instituted to secure those rights. And if government is not doing that job, we have the right to alter it or abolish it. I love that. I love it just like I love a lover or a child. To me, that's not elusive. And that's why we have to teach our children. And I also see it as the difference between adrenaline and healthy food. That's a good analogy. Yeah. If anger is the motivating force behind your activism, it's like an adrenaline high, it's a sugar high, and then you crash. This is a marathon, guys. But it's addictive too.

There's a dopamine hit with it. But as you well know, I mean, your own work, when you do eat healthy food, it becomes its own driving force. But it's kind of a slower, more gentle. Yeah, it's slower, but over time it gives you more energy and it gives you more peace than you realize. But it's kind of a slower, more gentle. Yeah, it's slower, but over time it gives you more energy and it gives you more peace than you realize. But it's a process.

Yeah. How do you think about the role of spirituality in politics? I mean, you've mentioned earlier, like we were talking about how the Democratic Party has sort of abdicated any relationship with this and is very secular in the way it conducts itself. But the truth is most people have some form of spiritual

or religious life, whether you're on the left or the right. And there is this, I mean, there's a very kind of like, there's a religiosity to certain factions of the right, but there is no real meaningful dialogue around spirituality and politics. Like these things are seen to be separate entities. And part of your messaging or your ethos is that these are the same thing.

Like we need an injection of higher consciousness and spiritual awareness in our politics if we wanna solve these problems. First of all, there's a profound misunderstanding of the whole concept of this separation of church and state. The separation of church and state is one of the most enlightened aspects of the U.S. Constitution, but it was not instituted by our founders to suppress the religious impulse. It was instituted to protect it. It has a dual function. On one hand, it means that when Congress is meeting, no minister, priest, rabbi, imam, ayatollah is going to walk in there and say, you can't pass this law or you

have to pass that law. So it protects the government from interference by religious authorities. But it also means that in this country, no policeman or policewoman is going to come into a church, a mosque, a synagogue, or an atheist meeting. Because religious freedom means not only the freedom to worship as you wish, but whether or not you wish. As Thomas Jefferson said, whether a man believes in 20 gods or no gods, neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. So no one is going to be told by governmental authorities, you cannot pray if you wish and how you wish. So they weren't trying to shut people up. They were trying to make sure that people were protected. Now, that's the first thing that you don't give up your right as a citizen to have an opinion if your convictions are based on spiritual or religious principles.

The over secularization of the American left has made too many people who do have religious convictions, which is the majority of Americans, by the way, feel that such thinking is unsophisticated. It doesn't belong in the public realm, and you need to shut up about it. This has had very deleterious effects on American politics, particularly for the left. Now, if you look, go back to the Declaration of Independence. All men are created equal, given by God the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You know, on my sub stack just last night, I published an article about abortion. I'm very much pro-choice, but I'm not pro-choice with this idea that it's not a moral issue. I think it's very much a moral issue.

But I trust the moral decision-making of the American woman, and I don't believe that the government should weigh in on somebody's private moral decisions. But those people who, over the last few years, have deemed themselves arbiters of the way Roe v. Wade could be discussed, have acted like any admission that there's even a moral dimension to this question would lead to political disaster. I think the fact that we have failed to contextualize it morally

is what has led to political disasters such as we're experiencing now. I think it's been a gift to the anti-choice movement. And like I said, there used to be a religious left. Today, if you are, you know, the black churches have never separated progressive politics from religion and spirituality, but anyone else is deemed, you know, we're not supposed to be allowed to say it. Sure. I mean, there's this, you know, kind of elite, coastal elite, you know, we're not supposed to be allowed to say it. Sure, I mean, there's this, you know, kind of elite, coastal elite, you know, denigration of anything religious or spiritual where people who feel strongly

about their particular vein of faith feel, misrepresented is the wrong word, kind of like dismissed or condescended to. Yeah, don't like to feel patronized. Yeah. Yeah. Or condescended to. Yeah, don't like to feel patronized. Yeah. Yeah. I'm somebody who's been sober for a long time. I kind of got sober and stay sober in the construct of 12-step.

And I always tend to kind of evaluate problems and problem solving through the efficacy of 12-step, which I know has kind of overlap in the Venn diagram with the course of miracles and kind of your perspective. The 11th step. This idea of like, you have strong feelings about reparations and the amends process is fundamental to recovery,

as is a spiritual connection, right, in a non-dogmatic way. So when you look at kind of rectifying where we've gone off the rails, socially, politically, culturally, there does seem to be a necessity of inventorying those missteps and actually implementing amends,

like not just sort of incremental policy change, but like how can we not only acknowledge the ills of our past, but also make them right so that we can be whole as we move forward? Well, the United States does need 12-stepping. It needs to get out of its denial. I can handle this. We've been going, can the Republicans handle it? Can the Democrats handle it? Which can manage this? The situation has become unmanageable. My life has become unmanageable. It's so true, right?

Absolutely. Yeah, it's amazing. And once again, like- But I got it. Yeah, I got it. You don't got this. Your best thinking got you here, right? And we're relying on the people that created the problem to solve it,

telling us like, go home, it'll be fine. Oh, and that's so much a part of the way the political media industrial complex operates. We're supposed to think that the only people qualified to lead us out of this ditch are people who have had careers ensconced in the car, driving the car that led us into this ditch. They act like we need better political car mechanics. No, the problem is we're on the wrong road. But that's a separate issue. Let's go back to the 12 steps. So the 12 steps is a program of

amends, obviously. You have to admit your character defects. You have to admit them to another person and you have to seek where possible to make amends. In the Catholic religion, this is what confession is. You have to atone. In the Jewish religion, it's what Yom Kippur is, the holiest day of the year, the day of atonement. You have to admit the exact nature of your wrongs and seek to make amends. Now, when it comes to reparations for me, I have for years been at my lectures doing these ritualized apologies. In my book, Illuminata, I have the ritualized apologies to Native Americans, blacks in America, et cetera. But I came to realize that if you took $1,000 from me, I would really appreciate the apology, but I also want my money back. And so it got to the point where we can talk about

white privilege, we can talk about deconstructing our own racism. But at this point, I feel it's time to do more than atone for slavery. It's time to do more than atone for the 100 years of institutionalized oppression of blacks that occurred after the 250 years of slavery. It's time to make amends now. And like you were saying, the same psychological and spiritual principles that prevail within the life of an individual prevail within the life of a nation because that's all a nation is, is a group of people. Germany has paid $89 billion in reparations to Jewish organizations since World War II. And this has gone far to create a kind of emotional reconciliation between Germany and the Jews of Europe. Not only the Formea Culpa, which they certainly did, but also two things, reparations and the guarantee that in perpetuity, school children in Germany would learn the history of the Holocaust, that they would understand how these things start. And that's where the United States is.

We have not evolved on the level of consciousness to realize we will not be moving forward the way we want until we do make this change. Look at the history here. World War II was over in 1945, and look how much Germany has cleaned up. I mean, global anti-Semitism is an issue again, but not based on that. They cleaned it up. We, my gosh, the Civil War was over in the 1860s. We are still passing this toxic baton of systemic racism and the reactions and the horrors of this evil and how it has infused too much of our economic functioning, etc. Generation to generation to generation. We could be the generation to clean it up. I mean, Germany can't make the Holocaust not have occurred, but with reparations and the level of mea culpa,

they've gone far towards beginning again. And the United States could do the same. I feel like we're very far from that though. Not that we're in denial of that reality, but it's sort of dismissed as politically suicidal and economically like, you know, unfeasible. Okay, if I may, this is because we have such a corrupt

political establishment that follows rather than leads. That should be the point of leadership within any system, but particularly within political leadership, that you build consensus. My experience as a candidate, I would go into audiences, all white audiences, in states that hardly had such a small black population that most of the people in the room hadn't even had a lot of relationships with black people. Let's say it was in New Hampshire, or let's say it was in Iowa or someplace like that. I walk into the room. This was my experience over and over and over again, including among white people in states like South Carolina. Okay. I go into the room and the subject of reparations comes

up. The body language I'm getting from people is like this. And then I give a little 10 minute maximum thumbnail sketch of the history of race in America. The first slave ships came here in 1619. There was almost 200 years of slavery in this country. At the end of the Civil War, historians believe there was anywhere between four to five million people who were formerly enslaved. Those people were promised 40 acres and a mule for every former slave family of four. Most of the time it was not given. Even when it was given, it was then repatriated. What were people to do? You tell somebody, you're not a slave any longer, but how are you supposed to make a living if you had that 40 acres and a mule you could?

The North sent, during the years of Reconstruction, federal troops to the South to guarantee that slavery would not be reinstituted. Once they left, many in the South had just held their breath until the soldiers from the North were gone, and then they passed the Black Code laws, which would ensure subpar economic, political, and social opportunity for black people. That lasted almost 100 years until Martin Luther King. We passed the Voting Rights Act, 1964-1965, the Voting Rights Act to give black people to ensure their voting rights, which now the John Roberts Court has gutted, which is why we have all these voting suppression efforts.

Passed the Civil Rights Act to dismantle segregation. So you've got 300 years of institutionalized violence against black people. Now, anybody would, I'm sure, agree that if you've been kicking someone to the ground, and certainly kicking someone to the ground for 350 years is quite a bit of kicking, you morally and ethically owe it to them, not just to stop kicking, but to help them get back up. And if Martin Luther King had lived, they had dealt with voting rights, they had dealt with civil rights, and they would have gotten to the issue of closing that economic

gap that was understandable between whites and blacks at the end of the civil rights movement. And we've never closed it, and it's simply time. I would go through this. I would talk about the history and many of the things that I just said to you. I'm sure none of what I just said to you, Rich, was news or a surprise to you, but you'd be surprised how many Americans, I don't believe, are racist in their heart, but are just under-informed and under-educated. The point of my story is that I would go through that, what I just told you, and people whose body language had been like this at the end are jumping up on their chairs, standing ovations. We need reparations. Don't pin this on the American people.

That's what the politicians do. Oh, the American people don't want it. No, you mothers don't want it and you won't go there. And if it is politically suicidal, lose your job. Why do politicians think they're the only people who have jobs where they have to make ethical decisions? And if I make the ethical decision, I might lose my job. What's the answer to that in an ethical society? Lose your job. Reparations is the right thing to do. And I think, from my experience, having run for president and having talked about this issue all over this country, I believe that the decency of the American people, the dignity of the American people, the basic sense of right and wrong and

fairness of the American people could indeed be harnessed for this purpose. When you're talking about even $500 billion, people don't, you need to make people recognize the parties move in lockstep to give the military industrial complex, what, $780 billion every year. So we have to just bust through these illusions and these myths and these toxic lies that hold progress at bay. And race relations, lies that hold progress at bay. And race relations, I think, is just one of many examples. Yes, very beautifully put. It reminds me of what we were talking about earlier,

this difference or dissonance between voter sentiment and the kind of establishment of the political infrastructure that is recalcitrant and sort of dictates what voters want and don't want, but in a way that's disconnected from the truth of that. On such a level. Yeah. Yeah. On the subject of defense budgets, another idea that you've proposed that I love

is this idea of a department of peace, which when you think about it, like, yeah, okay, it can be, oh, yeah, okay, it can be how woo woo, but actually wouldn't that be the most prophylactic in terms of maintaining, you know, comedy across the world, comedies, you know, C-O-M-I-T-Y, like prevent these young people from becoming disenfranchised and thus radicalized

and thus a national security risk? How do you preserve cohesiveness in our country and in other countries across the world as an insurance policy against war to begin with, which is much more expensive, right? Once we're waging it. Unfortunately, American foreign policy is not run or driven by the idea of an effort to create comedy within the world.

It's sort of like medicine. It's basically about disease management and treating symptoms as opposed to being preventative. Right. So let's talk about why that is, though. As John F. Kennedy said, we will end war or war will end us. war or war will end us. The American foreign policy establishment is, you look at a $40 billion budget for the State Department versus a $780 billion or more budget for the Defense Department. Whereas the State Department used to drive American foreign policy, it does not so much now. Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, the defense contractors, short-term profits for defense contractors is what now drives our military policy. If you do what you just said, and statistically we know what creates greater peace, there are four factors that create a higher incidence of peace and a reduced incidence of violence.

Expanded economic opportunities for women, expanded educational opportunities for children, the reduction of violence against women, and the amelioration of unnecessary human despair. Yeah, you're right. You do that, you'd have a more peaceful world. Where are the corporate profits there? And that's all that this is about. This is about a sick game of merchandising death. We don't have universal health care because of the profit-making factor for health insurance companies and big pharmaceutical companies. climate change because of short-term profits for fossil fuel companies. And we don't have anything close to a foreign policy that is driven by an agenda for peace over the next 100 years because of profit-making factor for the military-industrial complex. And this is one of the ugliest, you know, monopolistic. We talk about the corporate duopoly of the political parties. What's important is for us to realize the ways in which they're not a duopoly, they're a monopoly. And one of the places where they are monopolistic is in

complete lockstep with the military industrial complex. Of course, they don't want a Department of Peace because a Department of Peace, you wouldn't just have a military academy, you'd also have a peace academy. You'd have people who were resourced in building peace, in peace building measures. When I was running for president, all over the country this would happen. I would talk to people who were helping children, because this is where it all starts. If you want peace in the world, we need a massive front-ending. I also want a department of children and youth.

We need to massively front-end our resources in the direction of people 10 years old and younger. Now, the average American, I don't think, registers how many millions of American children are food insecure. I don't think the average American registers how many millions of Americans live in food deserts, people who cannot get access to fresh fruits and vegetables. How many of our obese children, you know why these kids are obese? fresh fruits and vegetables. How many of our obese children, you know why these kids are obese? Because their bodies keep trying to get the necessary nourishment.

So they're actually undernourished. They're not overnourished, they're undernourished. That's why they keep eating calories. So they go and they eat more M&Ms or they eat more crap fast food. They live in food deserts where healthy food is not available and the cheap low hanging fruit is in the bodegas

and that's what they're eating. But this is where the corporate profits do not lie in helping them. The survival of our democracy lies in helping them. The survival of our species lies in helping them. So just as we need to make a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy, we need to make a just transition

from a war economy to a peace economy, we need to make a just transition from a war economy to a peace economy. And it's the same issue. A lot of people would say, why is it that these politicians continue to walk in lockstep? In large part, because of the jobs created in their districts and in their states by defense-related activities. We spend hundreds of billions every year over what even military leaders say is actually needed for our military security. But just as with dirty economy, the same talents and expertise of research and development, manufacturing, et cetera, can move in the direction of peace. And it is also statistically true that a peace economy

where your investment is in education, healthcare, economic opportunity, et cetera, gives you more of an economic return on investment. Raytheon ain't having it though. Oh, Raytheon is not having it, but we have to have it. We've got to say it. We've got to stand on it.

We've got to run on it. I love the idea, but ultimately do we not have to have it. We've got to say it. We've got to stand on it. We've got to run on it. I love the idea, but ultimately, do we not have to disentangle campaign finance laws and find a way to prevent this insane undue influence that these industries have on legislatures? It's anti-democratic in every... It's the cancer underlying... Yeah. And it's like, can't we all find some way to fundamentally agree on that? Well, I think the American people do agree on that. Sure, I think they do too. The undue influence of money on our politics, particularly corporate money,

is the cancer underlying all the other cancers, particularly dark money, particularly that which has exploded since Citizens United. Ultimately, we're going to need, we certainly need to repeal that, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. Ultimately, we will need a constitutional amendment that establishes public funding for federal campaigns. I don't think most people realize that your average congressman spends half their time on the phone trying to raise money. Probably more than half their time. It starts on day one. And yet these

people were supposed to look at them and go, oh, they're so qualified for leading us forward. It's the Ken and the Barbie dolls. Yeah. You were talking about the manner in which money goes into like the medicalization of- The sickness care system rather than the- Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, we don't have a health care system. We have a sickness care system. But that also, it's metastasized into much more than that, right? Like we've medicalized sadness and grief, like we're over-medicating everybody. And that also speaks to kind of the undue influence of these huge pharmaceutical companies

and their financial interests in making sure that everybody is adequately medicated at all times. And that's another reason they came after me, actually, on the campaign. Yeah, and that's not to say that medication certainly has its place in mental health in appropriate situations.

But as somebody who understands very well the difference between what one might consider clinical depression versus grief or having a hard time. And the fact that we're now like sort of giving people pills that just are going through something that they kind of need to go through because we're human beings and life is hard.

I look at antidepressants the way I look at painkillers. They have a place. But we now know the Sackler family, Purdue Pharmacy, et cetera, we know about predatory behavior on the part of pharmaceutical executives creating profit centers, dangerous, immoral profit centers where they did not belong. And I think it is absolutely naive of us to think that that's not happening in relation to antidepressants as well.

And the fact that if you even suggest that, you are considered naive or irresponsible about mental health is absurd. What's happening is how naive and irresponsible people are to so blindly trust big pharmaceutical companies. And like you said, they do wonderful things. I mean, my God, I had surgery not long ago, and believe me, I was grateful for those painkillers. Of course they have a place, as do, I'm sure, in many people's lives, antidepressants. But the fact that you can't even suggest that the overprescription of medication in America

is a real issue and we should be able to talk about it, that has to do with the chokehold of big pharma and the fact that the political system and the media, you know, like when Anderson Cooper came after me and I pointed out how many were talking about that issue. I said, well, that's interesting because look how many pharmaceutical companies advertise on your television show.

And he said, I don't know who advertises. And I wish I said to him. It's constant pharma ads. Of course. And by the way, before Ronald Reagan, this was not legal. Pharmaceutical companies could not advertise on television before Ronald Reagan and the orgy of deregulation

that his administration brought forth. Yeah, I mean, it's a sticky wicket. It's all one in the same though. All of these issues go back to this, you know, inextricable connectivity between government and giant conglomerates. Well, and also you bring in on the sickness issue. And one of the things I brought up in a debate was

that we have to ask ourselves, why is there so much more chronic illness in the United States than among citizens of other equally advanced European democratic societies? For instance, this goes back, as you well know, you talk about this, than among citizens of other equally advanced European democratic societies, for instance. This goes back, as you well know, you talk about this, this goes back to our chemical policies, our agricultural policies, animal factory farming. And subsidies.

Yeah, it's a whole corporate matrix. We have this corporate aristocracy. We have reverted to an aristocratic condition. And we have to understand what that archetype means. An aristocracy means that a few people are considered entitled to the major resources of the country. We repudiated that in 1776, and we need to repudiate it again. I mean, it's outrageous, the idea that profit-making for companies whose practice of capitalism is so predatory that it is constantly at the expense, or at the very least too often at the expense of the health and wellbeing of people and planet. The American

people have every right in the world to push back against this. It is the most traditionally American thing in the world to push back against this. We've never been a perfect union. I mean, obviously we had slavery from our inception. We've always been a dichotomy. You had out of the 51 signers of the Declaration of Independence, establishing these enlightened principles, more enlightened than had ever been encoded in the founding documents of a country. 46 of the 51, or is it 41 of the 56? I think it's 41 of the 56. I think it's 41. Yeah. Were themselves slave owners. So we've always been this dichotomy between people who held in our hearts this flaming love for what was possible versus people willing to transgress in the most violent ways against the

execution of those principles. Our generation in that sense is no different than any other and other generations have pushed back. And I just pray in my heart that we will not be the first generation of Americans who wimp out on doing what it takes to say hell no to that kind of nonsense. All of these ideas and themes are almost perfectly crystallized

in this Steven Donziger situation. Yes, yes, yes. I know that you've been very active in speaking about. So explain a little bit for people who don't know this situation, because it's unbelievable. In the 1960s, then oil giant Texaco went down to the Ecuadorian Amazon,

so out of the Amazon river. In order now, already Ecuadorian Amazon, south of the Amazon River. In order now, already, Ecuadorian environmental regulations were less than ours, and ours were never so wonderful. So they were even less than ours. Even in violation of those, Texaco, in order to save $3 a pit, left their pits unlined.

And they admit that they did this, thus poisoning that area of the Amazon, the food, the water, even the air. They would actually say to the indigenous farmers down there, oh, it's good for you. This oil has vitamins in it. It's mother's milk. Now, Stephen Donziger, I know it's so evil.

It's like farming with Brondo from Idiocracy. Stephen Donziger, I know, it's so evil. It's like farming with Brando from Idiocracy. Steven Donziger, Harvard-educated lawyer, leads a team, goes down there, realizes what's happened, leads a team of lawyers in holding what was by then Chevron accountable because Chevron had bought Texaco. Chevron doesn't even deny that happened. So Chevron said,

we don't want the case tried in the United States. We want the case tried in Ecuador. And if it is tried in Ecuador, if we are held accountable or liable, we will pay whatever the judgment is. The judgment that came down ended up at somewhere eight, $9 billion. It was like nine and a half billion.

It was a while ago. Oh, yes. that's right. This has been going on for years. Chevron said, hell no, and ended up coming at Steven Donziger and they have sought to destroy his life. And they had him on this misdemeanor where they claimed that he had,

there was some money that they said he owed them. They wanted access to his computer. Now, we all know how sacrosanct the relationship attorney-client privileges. The last thing he wanted to do was to give over his computer in which there was all this contact information about Ecuadorian environmental activists. He wouldn't do it. He was filing an appeal. And what happened there was this was just a misdemeanor. New York State said, we're not even going to deal with this. A judge, Lewis Kaplan, found a loophole and basically gave over the prosecution of Stephen

Donziger to Chevron. This is very important that we see this for what it is. This is Chevron, and I think in many ways on behalf of the entire fossil fuel industry, putting its line in the sand, trying to freeze human rights and environmental activism, saying, you go this far, we will destroy you. Steven Donziger was held in home detention for over two years with an ankle bracelet. He was denied a jury trial. And Judge Prescott, these people are all related to the Federalist Society,

et cetera, on behalf of Chevron, basically, using a law firm, which is Chevron related, has now thrown the book at him. And he is now in Danbury Prison in Connecticut, serving a six-month prison sentence. And what we want is for Merrick Garland to take this case. And several Congress people have written a letter. The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights has called this political prisoner, has said that it is a human rights abuse,

has said that he should be released and he should be paid money in recompense. Greenpeace, there's more and more of a building energy of the outrageousness of this. He's basically a political prisoner. And at this point, it's not just that Merrick Garland needs to step up. Merrick Garland needed to step up a while ago. Joe Biden should step up.

Joe Biden should step up and commute the sentence now. Yeah, this is such a crazy situation. I mean, first of all, Chevron still hasn't paid the 9.5 billion. No, they could have paid, but they will pay any amount of money, they've said, in order to prosecute Stephen Dantziger, because they realized that if you let this go through, that's the way the fossil fuel companies are looking at this. It's all about freezing environmental and human rights activism. Yeah, it's so crazy that they've been able to amplify what is essentially a misdemeanor charge

on a trumped up, I think fraud claim, where he's just like, look, I'm not turning over my phone and my laptop. Ordinarily that would be, so there's a contempt charge, right? But that would be a fine or a slap on the wrist or something like that. Two years.

With an ankle bracelet. And the six months now in addition. And then six months. It's unbelievable. It is unbelievable. And it's clearly sending this chilling effect message on anybody to say, not so fast, not so far. Yeah, you can't go, it's not so far.

But there is so much energy in this case. Like people are talking about it and he's been very forthright. You know, he's been doing videos and stuff like that from his home before he went to Danbury and you've been doing Instagram lives with him and stuff like that. And it's a fascinating test case

and an example of just how far a company like Chevron will go to make sure that anybody who challenges them in a meaningful way will get put in the grave. Also, I don't think the average American knows. I certainly was shocked. Everybody I know was shocked. Who knew that there was a loophole? Yeah, I still don't understand how this came to be.

I mean, I was at the trial, the first part of it, the first day. A Chevron-sponsored lawyer comes in and uses a U.S. courtroom. This is a show trial. This is the corporate prosecution of a U.S. citizen.

This is a corporate prosecution of a U.S. citizen. Right, in the context of a civil trial. Yeah. It's not even criminal court. Like it's wild. Yeah, it's not, these, you know, just one of many things that's quote unquote,

not supposed to happen in America, but it is happening. And that goes back to what you and I were saying earlier. We can't just influence the conversation. We need to stop this. I can't end this without talking to you a little bit about the idea of forgiveness, because that's so central to your core philosophy and perspective on everything.

Like how do we develop the facility to forgive? And why is that so important in terms of living our lives in a manner in which to be most whole and complete? Well, I'm a student of A Course in Miracles, and the concept of forgiveness, which is central to A Course in Miracles, presents the word in a very different way than it is presented within traditional Christian terminology or any religious terminology. Usually when we think of forgiveness, it's, you're a jerk, but I'm so spiritual now that I deign to forgive you.

The condescending, my favorite kind of forgiveness. It's judgment to destroy, the verse of miracles says. But forgiveness within a deeply spiritual metaphysical concept means knowing that we are all created by God as innocent and good and we make mistakes and that God does not punish us for our sins. Sin is an archery term. It means you missed the mark. He seeks to correct us for our mistakes.

And when you are in that place, you realize that the love that is who you are and who I am is real. The rest is this mortal hallucination that we're having. Buddha called it an illusion. Einstein said, time and space are illusions of consciousness, albeit persistent ones. That there is some bedrock of love, unalterable love, that is the truth of who we are. And I think that everything that we're talking about today, if you stand on that, that our function on this earth is to see that love in each other and to stand on that love and to invoke that love, everything changes. Your criminal justice system changes. Your economic system changes. Your personal relationship changes. Your treatment of the earth changes. Now, that doesn't mean you don't say no. Sometimes love says no. Forgiveness doesn't make

you a doormat. Forgiveness simply makes you someone who is capable of owning your yes and owning your no. You have children. If a child, a small child walks into the kitchen, hi, mommy, daddy, look at this razor blade I found. It is incumbent upon you out of love for that child to make sure the razor blade is taken out of their hands. But you don't look at that child and forget who they are just because they were so uninformed and not old enough to realize you can't play with razor blades.

Forgiveness means knowing that who we are is good. Living on this earth, we forget that. But when I look at you and I base my perception of you only on your error, only on your lovelessness, then I am stuck within that realm of lovelessness. And the Course in Miracles says you are at the effect of the laws that prevail within the world that you identify with. If I'm willing to extend my perception beyond what my physical senses perceive, your error, your lovelessness,

to what I know to be true in you, then I remind both you and myself what is true in us, and the situation repairs. And we're gonna have to do that on a larger level. The hatred, the cynicism, the anger on both the left and the right dispels and deflects the possibility for political miracles.

And we must open our hearts and still passionately disagree, form boundaries, just like you have boundaries in personal relationships, you have boundaries in political relationships. But you can do all of that with love.

You can do all of that with respect. You can do all of that with respect and humility. And to me, that's the portal through which we can walk to a more sustainable world. The resistance to forgive that impulse that we feel when we sense that we've been wronged is ostensibly to shoulder a burden. It's a self-p self punishment, right? And there is a liberation or a freedom that happens when you can develop the facility to let go of it, to forgive as difficult as that might be. And that forgiveness should be, sort of turned inward as well,

like self forgiveness is a big piece of that as well. Well, you can't forgive yourself if you don't forgive others. That's why the course says you become generous out of self-interest. The Course says when you're attacking someone, blaming someone, imagine that there is a sword falling down on their head,

but it's actually falling down on yours because at the deepest level, if you get into the metaphysics of it, there's no place where you stop and I start. None of us, except enlightened masters, are perfect at any of this, but even making the effort transforms our lives. Yeah, we've all seen our soul elevated

by witnessing somebody forgive somebody where logic would dictate that maybe they shouldn't. And we understand fundamentally that that is a noble act, right? That is nourishing. And yet we're in a culture where we're increasingly judging everybody based on their worst day and canceling people and saying, you go away now and that's it for you.

There is no room, at least in the social media space for that forgiveness. And yet, unless we find a way back to that, a way to prioritize it and inject it into our kind of discourse and conduct, you know, we're lost. You are so right. I think you put it so well, you know, we're judging everybody according to their worst day

or their most stupid tweet. Everything's I gotcha. It's terrible. You know, many years ago, my best friend who has since passed, we were sitting in my bedroom and I was on the phone with someone who worked for me. And I started yelling at the guy. I got off the phone and Richard said to me, what was that? And I said, well, he did this, or he didn't do that or whatever it was. And Richard looked at me and he went, Marianne,

And Richard looked at me and he went, Marianne, he made a mistake. People make mistakes. And, you know, it was a brick to my forehead, I remember. And no matter what he did, the fact that you were such a bitch about it makes you know better than I got it. I mean, I'm not 100% of practicing it, but a lot better than I used to be because people make mistakes. Yeah, so how do we try to create space for that? The Course in Miracles says, you say, "'Dear God, I'm willing to see this differently.'" You know, the path that we are here to monitor is not somebody else's. You know, it's like you were talking about AA, you're not here to take somebody else's inventory. Right. The path you're here to take somebody else's inventory. Right.

The path you're here to monitor very vigilantly is your own. Dear God, I see how self-righteous I am in this moment. Dear God, I see how judgmental I am in this moment. Dear God, I see how blaming, like, how do I think I am? Dear God, take this away from me. And then, and I see this all the time, then what happens is sometimes you realize, just keep your mouth shut. There's nothing that even needs to be said. Sometimes you realize, oh, there's something that's gonna need to be communicated here, but you will communicate it from such a different place.

You will communicate it from elegance and charity and compassion. Of course, a miracle says, if you're judging and attacking someone, you're wrong even if you're right. Right, but we have a social media ecosystem. Oh yeah, we do. That has a misalignment of incentives

because it's rewarding people for that level of judgment and invective. We do, but each and every one of us can refuse to participate in that and do what we can because there's also some beautiful stuff on social media. You know, there's a line in the Course where it says, nothing in the world is unholy or holy except as determined by its purpose, what the mind is doing with it.

And you can see incredible things, incredible good that comes from social media, and you can see terrible, even evil things that emerge from social media. It all gets back to the ethics and the principles of right and wrong and enlightenment that I do think so many of us are at least trying for. Yeah. It's sometimes difficult to understand the best move. Like, for example, the other day, Massey, that congressman, the guy from Kentucky who posted the holiday photo of his whole family

with all the guns. And I saw that and I was so appalled, we're days away from school shooting. Normally I don't mix it up on social media and sort of inject myself into that kind of discussion or acrimony, but I felt like I couldn't let it stand. And I tweeted it and said, you know, I just feel like these people are, you know, I can't, it's difficult to imagine how like weak and secure and broken these people must be to like, think that this is a good idea to share this photo. It was met with a lot of different opinions, obviously.

And then I thought, I probably shouldn't have tweeted that. Like, why am I doing this? Or is there a responsibility to say something when somebody does something that I feel is so deeply inappropriate? Well, I think on that one and where I land on that one is that it's not about Massey, it's about that school shooting in Michigan. Within two days in Oakland County in Michigan, due to credible threats of mass shootings, every single public school in

the county was closed. Now, I raised my daughter in Michigan. I have a lot of friends there. There's an inflection point. It's really interesting what's happening there. A lot of people who would not necessarily have gone there since then have said this has gone too far. Americans are afraid to send their kids to school. But this is also an issue where the consciousness of the American people is not the problem. Poll after poll shows the American people want to close those loopholes. Poll after poll shows the American people want to close those loopholes. Poll after poll shows the American people want to outlaw bump stocks.

Polls show the American people want to rid our streets of average citizens who are carrying assault weapons, AR-15s, AK-47s, et cetera. This has to do with the chokehold that the NRA and gun manufacturers has on our Congress. So it all goes back to money and politics. But the idea that right now, a bogus interpretation of the Second Amendment, this is not about the Second Amendment. This is about the money of gun manufacturers and the hold that this holds in terms of congressmen and senators who were told, if you vote for the most common sense gun safety law, we're coming after you and

you're going to lose your job. And we need more of them. We'll say, fine, I'll lose my job. And right now, the first thing that Trump did, I don't think a lot of people realize, the first official act of Donald Trump when he became president was to repeal a law that kept violent criminals from being able to buy a gun. These people, the NRA will not be happy until, I mean, they even have like little gun holsters in pink for our little girls. I know. So how do you maintain hope amidst all of this?

Because I believe that love prevails. You know, the crucifixion was followed by the resurrection. The slavery in Egypt was followed by the resurrection the slavery in egypt was followed by deliverance to the promised land the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice even if god forbid there is a nuclear holocaust on this planet and only five people are left those five will look at each other and go, let's do it different this time. It's going to happen. You know, it's that symbolic three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection, the symbolic 40 years between slavery in Egypt and deliverance of

the promised land. That is a sign. There is a limited period of time. What is up to free will is, will that be three years, three decades, 3,000 years, 30,000 years, lifetimes? That is in our hands. And I believe in people. It's economic systems and political systems that are holding all this back right now. But I believe that love will prevail because I believe that it always has, it always will. That's not only my religious and spiritual conviction,

it's my experience. I think that's a beautiful place to end it. Thank you. You are a powerful and magnificent human being. I appreciate the work that you do, the message and the vibration that you share with the world. It's really, it is very powerful. And I guess the only thing left to ask you is like,

where are you taking this? Like what is next for you or where are you placing your focus? I think that there are these impulses that are collective in the zeitgeist. And I'm where everybody else I know is. Where I bet to some extent you are, everybody in this room is, asking that question.

I think that's the question of the conscious person right now. How can I best serve? And we're living the question, living the inquiry. Me no less than everybody else I know. But new connections are being made. It's like an immune system, right? The body survives because there's an amazing amount of assault and injury

and illness that the body can take as long as there's a healthy immune system. I believe the psyche has an immune system. It's amazing how much heartbreak and trauma we can take. There's a healthy immune system. I believe the psyche has an immune system. It's amazing how much heartbreak and trauma we can take. There's a psychic immune system. And I believe there's an immune system in civilization and the immune cells are awakening. And when the immune cell, I remember I once fell down, cut my hands.

I was running and I fell. These huge gashes on my hands. It was so fascinating to watch the wound because it was right here. And I remember a doctor friend of mine saying, you realize the red is good news. It means all the white blood cells are rushing to the wound. And that's what I feel is happening right now. Everybody's rushing to the wound and cells in the body are assigned. You go to the lungs, you go to the heart, you go to the bones. And right now we're all being assigned to the area of the wound

where we can best make a difference. And I know for myself and for most people, I know we're not quite sure where the assignment is right now, but we can wake up every day and do what we can to be the awakened. Yeah, find the wound that works for, that speaks to you, right?

I feel like so many forms of new media, like podcasting, et cetera, play such a vital role in this. Like it's providing so many people with different avenues for learning and exploring media that just weren't available not that long ago. And I feel like that's a big piece in this, in the construction of this strong immune system.

Absolutely, because traditional media, it's so corporatized and bought and sold. It's that predetermined agenda. And this is independent media. People having a deeper conversation. You know, it was Werner Erhard who said, you can live your life from circumstances or you can live your life from a vision.

And things such as you're doing allow us to have a vision of what's possible. Yeah. And from that, anything is possible. Beautiful. Well, you can learn more about Marianne and all of her wisdom by subscribing to her sub stack, which is pretty new, right?

Transform, you just started getting into this and you also have a podcast, the Transform podcast. Well. Is there anywhere else that you wanna direct people towards that wanna learn more about you, just started getting into this and you also have a podcast, Transform podcast. Well. Is there anywhere else that you wanna direct people towards that wanna learn more about you aside from your over a dozen books that you've written?

Yeah, well, people can go to marianne.com and sign up on my mailing list for the various things I do or Substack and the Marianne Williamson podcast is on that Substack. Yeah, if you go to marianne.com, you can go get to the Subst stack from there as well, right? All right, well, come back and talk to me again. Thank you, thank you for everything you do.

Appreciate it. Thanks, peace. Bye. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do

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See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.