Marianne Williamson, New Agey author, guru, and peddler of "A Course in Miracles" is certainly the most interesting announced Dem candidate overall. And, she does "walk the walk" on the woo. Her campaign contributions do NOT include the Green Party, but do include the Natural Law Party. Nuff ced. (Would be fun to see her and Tulsi Gabbard land in Fairfield, Iowa at the same time on the campaign trail. Tulsi's already been there on a recent trip.)
Sadly, and surprisingly, some Green-leaners seem to like her. Williamson does have some good principles on political issues. And, despite her campaign contributions to ConservaDems in the past, yeah, she would make a good Green Party candidate in many ways.
(Update, June 20, 2024: I appear to have ensnared a true believer who says that Williamson doesn't believe in "manifesting." Sure she does, for both good and bad, as "A Return to Love," her Talmud of "A Course in Miracles," makes clear, per Wiki bullet points:
• "A friend of mine told me that we're not punished for our sins, but by our sins. Sickness is not a sign of God’s judgment on us, but of our judgment on ourselves. If we were to think that God created our sickness, how could we turn to Him for healing? As we’ve already established, God is all that is good. He creates only love, therefore he did not create sickness. Sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist. It is part of our worldly dream, our self-created nightmare. Our prayer to God is that He awaken us from the dream."
• “Healing results from transformed perception of our relationships to illness, one in which we respond to the problem with love instead of fear. When a child presents a cut finger to his or her mother, the woman doesn’t say, 'Bad cut.' Rather, she kisses the finger, showers it with love in an unconscious, instinctive activation of the healing process. Why should we think differently about critical illness? Cancer and AIDS and other serious illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream and their message is not 'hate me, but 'Love me.'"
• “In the traditional Western medical model, a healer’s job is to attack disease. But if the consciousness of attack is the ultimate problem, how could it be the ultimate answer? A miracle worker’s job is not to attack illness, but rather to stimulate the natural forces of healing. We turn our eyes away from sickness to the love that lies beyond it. No sickness can diminish our capacity to love. Does that mean that it is a mistake to take medicine? Absolutely not."
• "When the cure for AIDS is finally found, we will give prizes to a few scientists, but many of us will know that millions and millions of prayers helped it happen."
There you go. As I told said Twit, this is everything that Barbara Ehrenreich ever called out about "positivity" based psychic healing. And with that, I'm doing an updated and rearranged post for 2024.)
Or, she would make a "good" GP candidate in many ways, too. In the ways that lead me to continue to eye the SPUSA. Even more so since a new teh Google says, per Orac, that, to use something I've used as a term before, she's an antivaxxer-lite. Or, to rephrase, per an issue where Greens, and lowercase greens, say "Follow the science"? She's a vaccines "skeptic," which is parallel to being a climate change "skeptic," as I see it. That said, contra one Orac commenter, I can be skeptical about the pharmaceutical industry in some areas, yet, unlike Williamson, have no problem with accepting the current vaccine schedule.
Update, Dec. 19, 2020: After a brief Twitter spat, I'll note she remained antivaxxer, per Science Based Medicine, even after allegedly (with loopholes!) apologizing for old antivaxxer statements. (Sadly, but, not surprisingly, given its hit and miss record on current affairs, Wikipedia semi-whitewashes her.) Also per the big picture, she's never apologized for the New Ageism that's led her down these and other rabbit holes, in part.
Per another Orac, she's also apparently anti-GMOs. (That said, many libertarians are antivaxxer, too, and anti-GMOism also runs a spectrum, but Greens, as opposed to the duopoly, are officially anti-GMO.)
On the ground? She, like most Gang Green environmental orgs, has a record of not being friendly to unionization — in her case, at the Angel Food Project she founded in the late 1980s. (As for how beneficial it may have been to the homeless? What, you can't help the homeless and still be OK with a unionization effort? Whataboutism. As well as ignoring the whataboutism in the cult of Marianne that was happening at that time.)
She has also been very tight about her personal net wealth information. That said, I'd guesstimate she's on the high side of $10 million, if not $20 million. Turns out I'm wrong there by a factor of 10.
On foreign policy, her woo extends to the Middle East, calling for "love" and the "heart" on Israel-Palestine and warning about karma in selling arms to the Saudis for Yemen's civil war.
People who read here regularly know I'm an anti-antivaxxer, and a skeptic in general.
That said, at one point in life, I actually owned a copy of "A Course in Miracles." I tried actually getting into it. But, I couldn't ... not in it in specific, and I eventually dropped both it and the attempt to be spiritual but not religious.
In specific, as I've said elsewhere, I find the concept of karma, whether in its New Agey sweetness and light lies (and yes, lies, compared to its origin in full fury) or its Hindu-Buddhist roots to be even more offensive than the traditional (post-Augustine Catholic and Protestant "traditional," that is — it ain't in the Bible) Christian doctrine of original sin.
Per the header? I'm still waiting for "Healing the Soul of America." Didn't the New Agey flow or whatever have enough power to already start making this happen?
My snark aside, it's too bad, because, when she doesn't go down the woo road, she talks a lot about problems with capitalism and income inequality. But ... why doesn't she, like many fellow woo masters, talk about how people need to "manifest" more? After all, that's a core principle of "A Course in Miracles."
And, while I'm being snarky, I'm also being serious. Just as serious as if a GOP presidential candidate belonged to a church that officially preached the "success gospel." Even more, if a GOP presidential candidate, for a more exact parallel, were a minister of such a church.
Let's not forget that, as part of this (and surely part of getting to be worth $10-$20 million) that she became one of Oprah's gurus, and that Oprah sucks shit on choosing New Age gurus to profile, like James Arthur Ray.
And, for an initial take on actual announced or possible Green Party candidates, go here.
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