Among my lesser achievements, one I can now notch up on my resume is that I once had a lengthy Facebook argument with an American presidential candidate.
This was long before Trump started getting into Twitter fights, so I lay claim that my online barney with a presidential hopeful was something of a trend-setter. Sadly, though, Marianne Williamson is almost certainly never going to secure the Democrat nomination. Which is a pity, because she’s probably the most perfectly nutty Democrat in the current field, and the avatar of the voodoo weirdness of modern leftism.
Historians of the future should note that before Democrats gave up and attempted a coup to reinstall Barack Obama as president in 2020, they fielded about twenty profoundly eccentric candidates…the candidate whose name was searched online the most, according to Google, was 66-year-old author and New Age guru Marianne Williamson.
While not afforded many opportunities to speak during the debate, she went viral with a closing statement that addressed Trump directly and got metaphysical…As George W. Bush remarked about Trump’s inauguration speech, “That was some weird [stuff].” The co-creator of Twin Peaks tweeted a hilarious video of her remarks set to that famously surreal show’s theme music.
My personal encounter with Williamson came via an old school friend whose mid-life crisis took the form of moving to LA to become an actor, complete with the requisite suite of New Age, crunchy-granola-and-crystals beliefs. This fellow is also something of a Facebook “friend-whore”, so his Facebook page is a neverending cavalcade of “quantum” and conspiracies. It’s endless fodder for an argumentative bugger like me – and not unsurprising that I’d eventually cross paths with Williamson.
As much of an aberration as some tried to make her out to be, Williamson’s blending of utopian socialism and pagan mysticism has deep roots in the left…
Williamson is the perfect role model for the kind of person who describes themselves as “spiritual but not religious”…She’s a child of practically every spiritual fad of the hippie era, save for the Jesus-freak movement, Scientology, and the Manson family. Her spiritual manifesto is the “COEXIST” bumper sticker.
My personal, ahem, “debate” with Williamson covered the topic of WWII and the rise of Nazism, naturally, vis-a-vis Trump. Having actually studied 20th-century history at university, I kid myself that I at least know a thing or two about these topics. Despite Williamson’s repeated assertions that she was an “academic” and “a student of history”, it quickly became apparent that her grasp of the topic was, shall we say, limited.
But, hey, she does a good line in pseudo-mystical psychobabble.
Noticing that the Democrats have no obvious nominee for the first time in decades, and that Trump broke down the sense of predictability in politics, Williamson sees the door to the presidency as being open.
She has positioned herself as a spiritual antagonist to Trump…her argument is essentially that she could be the good witch to Trump’s bad witch…Like any witch, Williamson believes you can speak things into and out of existence.
Which is exactly where the modern left finds itself. Whenever their grand theories are proven wrong by obstreperous reality, the left just change the meanings of words, and, presto! Essentially, it’s a matter of getting the incantation right.
These beliefs square nicely with the public policies of the modern left. Social problems are often rooted in the troubling “perceptions” or “narratives” concerning the problem. Differences between people or groups are either chimeras or created by stereotypes, discrimination, and systemic bigotry. Everything you don’t like is a “social construct.” The only thing that needs to be changed is our attitude or the narrative. Put even shorter: It is all in our heads.
The deep popularity of this sort of Gnostic thinking needs to be understood. In 2019, even the American government says your “real body” can be something other than your physical body.
Williamson almost certainly will fade from the Democrat primary, but in the meantime, AOC is recruiting a personal astrologer and Ilhan Omar is gibbering about the evil mind-power of The Joos. Don’t be surprised to see Kamala Harris start brandishing voodoo dolls, any day.
In many ways, Williamson is the canary in the coal mine for the left. Stale, pale, male atheists and materialists are fading from power…Marianne Williamson is probably too old, too white, and not woke enough to make it to the White House. However, a future candidate who builds on her template might. Someone who looks like Kamala Harris but speaks like Marianne Williamson.
takimag.com/article/season-of-the-witch/