No taxation without representation 200 years of exploitation  in the capital of this nation No representation oh in the capital of this nation 200 years of exploitation  Give the people their right to vote  Good oh evening and welcome to Shadow Politics, an hour long grassroots top show that's trying to, that's on a mission actually to make America think again. I'm your host, Senator Michael Brown, and I'm here with Liberty Jones and our special guest tonight,  Marianne Williamson, who's a former presidential candidate, a bestselling author.  and a sage for the ages, in my opinion. So we're so happy to have her here. And we're gonna do it. So that's why we're making the introduction brief and we're gonna get it right on the show. Marianne, welcome. Thanks for being on again. It's great to be here with you guys. Thank you for having me.  Oh, it's so nice to have you. And you know, the voice of reason. oh I've read the two things that you sent me  and I'd like to, I found them so interesting. First of all, I know this is no news to you or anybody else listening, but you're an amazing writer. You're, you you really, you really are. ah You know, I wish I could write as well as you do. and I read the article you wrote and  about the prior to the civil war. So I have some questions for you about that.  It was a great article. It's  like you do so often.  It's, discussing things that nobody else would discuss. And I don't know why that is. But can you explain briefly that article to us about the timing for the Civil War and how I was just enamored at the fact that you pointed out that they talk about the Constitution, but they don't talk about the Declaration of Independence. So please explain that to our audience. Well, I was reading a book last year, no, a years ago, I think the Betz Laws book called There Was Light.  And  I'm fascinated by Lincoln. I think it's a really important time for all of us to become really educated,  really grounded in the truth of American history. I think that, you know, on the right, there's this  willingness to look at the things that America has done right, but an unwillingness to look at our shadows on all the terrible things we've done as well. Whereas on the left, I think there's such a willingness to talk about what America has done wrong, but and unwillingness to appreciate the things that we've done right. And I don't think you have the story right if you're not saying that the truth of American history is that we are both and.  And we've always been both and. From the beginning, you had 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence,  41 of them were slave owners. So  how ironic is that? These men who were risking their lives by signing that document in order to  embed within our founding this extraordinary uh commitment to universal possibility for all human beings who themselves didn't live anything close to it. So  that bipolar nature of American consciousness has always been there. It's not like some big surprise. Certain people act today like they just discovered this terrible hypocrisy. Well, hello. Nobody with any knowledge of American history doesn't realize that.  However, the arc of our history, even though it has been that we have been both the slave owner and the abolitionist, the institutional suppressor of women  and the women suffragists, the Gilded Age financial barons  and  the  union organizers in the beginning of the union movement. We've been the segregationist and the civil rights worker.  Not only have we always  inherently  embodied that struggle. But if you actually look at the arc of American history, so far  justice has won out in the end. And  the way I see it, Michael, is this is simply our turn. Now,  one of the things that I was reminded of reading that particular book about Lincoln that I had read before, but  it really struck me  for its relevance to this moment. First of all, so much of the conversation about the Civil War, the conversation between the left, between the south and the north at that time, did have to do with people's reading of the Bible. Some people in the south said, well, there's slavery in the Bible, so it's okay. Some people,  mainly in the north, said, no, no, no, no, no, if you really practice the precepts of uh the Bible, you cannot have slaves. Now,  the thing about Lincoln  is he said that if you are committed to the notion that all men are created equal, you cannot have slaves.  If you are committed to the notion  that governments are instituted to secure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all human beings, you cannot have  slaves.  And  one of the things that I don't really know, because I don't remember if I mentioned it in that article, but one of the things, Michael, that has moved me so much  is that Lincoln did not expect to be reelected. And the reason he didn't expect to be reelected was because people in both North and the South had assumed the Civil War was going to be six weeks. A skirmish. It turned into obviously this four year war. Six hundred thousand people died. So horrifying. In his reelection bid, there were so many people understandably on the North, in the North, who said, why should my husband, my son, my brother, my father have to die because those people want slaves.  I didn't have slaves. We didn't have slaves. Why do we have to fight?  If they want it, let them go. And that's  what his opponent was saying. Make a deal with the South, let them go. They're gonna be a slave empire. This has got to stop. But what Lincoln knew was that it would not stop there because they also wanted a massive slave empire.  in  Cuba, Latin America, and so forth, as well as the rest of the West and the North American continent.  So I find it very moving that  Lincoln said to, obviously the only people voting for him were going to be on the North, the South had already seceded, saying, we cannot do that. It is wrong.  It is wrong. It is not what the Declaration of Independence says. We have to make a stand for life, and pursuit of happiness for all men. And the fact that he was reelected I find that so moving that people were willing to vote for him  knowing that the war would continue. He would not accept anything less than total surrender.  And there was an opponent who said, let's make a deal and let's make a deal now. I assume that's the part of the article you wanted me to mention. Yeah. And I think it's so funny. before I  Liberty Jones come in here with a really brilliant question, let me ask you, is this,  is this endemic to  our form of government and is this cyclical and inevitable that in 1865 we have this terrible conflict resolved and then in 1965 we have such turmoil in the United States we had all these assassinations in the 60s Kennedy, King, know I could go on and on both Kennedy's, Megger Evers, you know it's just is this inevitable is this an inevitable part part of our system of government, I think Karl Marx would say that it is, but I don't know. Is it, in your opinion? I think it has to do with the way human life operates. It has to do with how both of your lives operate. We go, you take one step back, you take two step, you take one step forward, you take two steps back. And that's true in the life of a nation as well. Remember, after that horrific experience of the Civil War, they thought that they, the fact that abolition, the fact that there was the freeing of the slaves, that was so massive. Now, even at that time, there were these inherent problems in that how many were  then promised  a uh 40 acres and a  mule. Because you can no longer be owned by another human being, but how were you supposed to make a living yourself and so forth? Remember, I'm sure you're very aware that there were 12 years  during that whole reconstruction element. The Northern  troops were down in the South  to make sure that slavery would not reconstitute itself. During that time, you had all these Black senators, Black congressmen. I mean, it was amazing. There was a real moment of possibility for what America could be. If Lincoln hadn't died, remember Johnson was, he was a Confederate. He was one of them. So what the Southerners did, obviously,  after the Northern  troops left, they instituted the Black Code laws. which was basically segregation and laws that would um ensure subpar political, social and economic rights for black people. And as you said, that took another hundred years uh before uh Martin Luther King and then of course getting the Civil Rights Act, getting the Voting Rights Act. And what are we seeing in our time? People seeking to repeal the gains that were made.  know, history does not move in a straight line. And also I think part of what we're seeing is not only does it not move in a straight line, but don't... ever assume.  The American Revolution must be a permanent revolution. There must be permanent vigilance. And we thought we're cool. We can cruise. We had this post-World War II order. We had the 60s. We had the Civil Rights Movement. We sort of thought we were cool moving in a direction  of a somewhat more enlightened social order. And I think we've all woken up to the naivete  that was inherent in that. Well, Liberty Jones, ask a brilliant question and save me. You know, I really appreciate you calling this uh bipolar nature, right? Because I think that there is an inevitable sense of this innate desire to compete  with these ideologies. Everybody wants to survive at the end of the day, and it's different how we choose to go about it. I think it's beautiful to bring up Lincoln because I think his legacy  in the lens we're, you know, looking at it to my perception, teaches us that moral leadership requires risking power to confront injustice. Right. And I think a big struggle I have as a young person nowadays, and we talked a little bit about this before the show, but how with social media and with this online sphere at your fingertips, modern politics to me, sanitizes and flattens these stories of courage that we need to remember embedded in our history. And so my question to you  is, do you think that these  historical injustices have been sanitized and how do we move forward from that?  How do we look towards standing in power  with what Lincoln's legacy teaches us is moral leadership and how do we embed that? How do we start the ball rolling again in this  ideology that we're missing right now? You know, I do not disagree with your description of the issue. I think where I feel some difference is I don't think we should excuse ourselves. It's been sanitized. The answer to that is read a frickin book. It's been sanitized  on social media. It hasn't been sanitized. If you actually read books about what happened, if you actually read about the founders, if you read about Teddy uh Roosevelt, if you read about Lincoln and the Civil War, if you read about Franklin Roosevelt, if you read about Martin Luther King, If you read the autobiography of Malcolm X, if you actually read a whole book rather than,  you know, oh being satisfied with the, you know, the two minute,  whatever we see on social media, which sanitizes, as you said, then I think we go deeper. And I think that part of the problem,  which I think is very much a part of what you're saying, is that been sanitized in our educational system.  And we now have forces that don't even want the kids to know these things happened. This started years ago. They didn't want  kids to learn about Jefferson. They don't want kids to learn about slavery. They don't want kids to learn about segregation. So it's not just sanitizing it. These people would like to erase it. So I think that we have to take responsibility for this. I think one of the coolest, tippist, most radical things you can do right now is have a book club and really read about these things. That's  very much a part of nonviolent... oh political philosophy is educating yourself. And that goes back to what I was saying before on the right, there's so much imbalance and on the left there's so much imbalance. If you're really reading, you see it's a we're a big both and we've always been the best in the worst that humanity has to offer. The point is what do we choose to be in our time? I also think, and I can't remember, I saw this the other day and I can't remember who it was that said it, but I think the left in America has lost its moral imagination. This was the party of  Martin Luther King. He was a Baptist preacher. Bobby Kennedy was the one who said, is a contest for the soul of America.  During the Vietnam anti-war movement, as I'm sure Michael, you remember, uh the Berrigan brothers, the Catholic Berrigan brothers, Williams, Stone, Coffin, uh Liberty, there were major uh moral voices that were at the core.  of the anti-war movement during the 1960s and at the core of  the civil rights movement.  I'm not sure exactly what happened to so um de-spiritualize it, um the left over the last few decades, but I think that that's a serious problem. People having this very sophomoric notion of what separation of church and state means. The founders did not mean to suppress the religious conversation, they meant to protect it.  People who have a religious or faith position have every bit is right to share what they believe is does any other segment of Americans. So I think that when we reclaim our own moral core, then  it informs our politics as much as everything else. And then you're at a point of this is not just what I want to do.  This is not just what I stand for so that I'll make more money or this is not just what I stand for for my group, but this is what I stand for because it is morally. right and anything else means you are mistreating other human beings. Well, first of all, let me tell you, I think that that that liberty and you have given me a great idea. I think from now on, starting next week, we will suggest a book every every week. I have a wife that's a librarian and sure she could pick some some great literature, but that's a great idea. You know,  I had to study this stuff because I  have a master's degree in political science and this is what we read. We read political philosophy.  We read about King. We read oh John Locke  and  Rousseau  and  learned how  they came up with the concept of American government. And I think you're right. I think we absolutely lost that. But let me just go ahead. I'm sorry. I I wrote a couple of books about the intersection of spirituality and politics, one called  Healing the Soul of America, one called Politics of Love. And I put them out for free on um my Substack, MarianneWilliamson.Substack.com. And I'm going to do a book club, Michael,  on June, I think, third and fourth, um talking about them. Because I do think if you,  what happened for me, Michael, was that  when I started looking for that intersection between spirituality and politics, you land with Gandhi. know, Gandhi being the first person to articulate. how  spiritual principles, and he got so much from Thoreau, he got so much from the American Quakers, right? And global Quakers, obviously. um And then of course, Dr. King going to India, uh learning these principles and then bringing them back home to apply to civil rights movement in the  1960s.  Without that understanding of what has already gone before, we're sort of flailing around, flailing about, and obviously, uh  We need, Martin Luther King had a line, we need cosmic companionship. And that's what a moral core to our politics gives us, cosmic companionship. uh Liberty, you and I were talking about this before we came on, that we need an  we need an  extra layer of um fuel. And  that's what And let me also say,  since you brought them up, that this thing that gives me hope is what you said earlier.  I think King said the same thing when he said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. And I hope that's true. I hope it does bend towards justice. Listen,  we are now standing on such a precipice. We may or may not be the first generation of Americans to ultimately wimp out on doing what it takes to push back authoritarian forces. Yeah,  you know, that's a horrible thing to think of.  Unfortunately, I think that the second thing that I heard from you about the Democratic National Committee or the DNC, where I used to work and in the most dysfunctional organization I've ever been involved in, that is what worries me because I've seen the Democrats snatch defeat from the jaws of victory time and time again. So do you think we're... Well, let's talk about the dysfunction in the Democratic Party because I just had an argument with somebody the other day and I said, you know, what we don't understand is that there's people on the left that are just like people on the right that are pushing our party  in without any  sense  of the party structure, just their own  agenda. And we end up fighting with each other as much as, you know, that's the old saying, Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line and it gets us. So what are your predictions? What do you think might happen here? Well, I think- Okay, go ahead. Well, it's interesting. think talking about this is no different than the other things we were talking about. have to look forward to, I mean, you have to look backwards to know how to go forward. So I think we need to go back to the beginning. Political parties are not mentioned in the constitution. George Washington warned us about them in his farewell address. John Adams said he thought they were one of the greatest threats to democracy. um Washington said they could form factions of men  who  were more loyal to their party than to their country. So the  first thing we want to look at is that why do we give so much difference to political parties to begin with?  This is not the way the system was  built. It's just formed that way. Okay. Then you get to what's happening with the Democrats, and we all know the story, but we need to go back to this to understand. 2016, when the DNC admittedly later in court recognized, acknowledged that they had basically rigged the primary for Hillary. Now this gets into, Liberty, this is interesting stuff for you because this is the stuff that Michael and I have as historical memory. And I don't know how you feel, Michael, but when we're on with a younger person like this, I feel that part of our job is the keeper of the stories, just to make sure these stories don't get, they go from generation to generation.  So Liberty,  there was a presidential election where Richard Nixon  beat George McGovern. And George McGovern was this incredible guy who was very much against the Vietnam War. But Nixon totally crushed him. He only won one state. that time, the Democratic Party elders said, we need to make sure this never happens again.  And they instituted a system of quote unquote superdelegates. And the superdelegates were instituted so that  if the rabble ever does something crazy again,  the smart elders  paternalistically will make sure that it can't go too far. So that was the first real blow to the actual democratic process. In 2016, and Liberty, probably,  it wasn't that long ago,  I would think that that memory is sort of in the air. What happened with  the uh Bernie  race in the primary, and Michael and I certainly remember that,  is that Bernie was getting up there, Bernie was getting up there, and the powers that be, the political party is supposed to stand in the background until the voters have weighed in and then come in. to support the candidate that the voters have selected. Instead, they,  when they started, I think it was Nevada, right, Michael? When Bernie won Nevada, think, and everything like, oh my God, he could actually win. And all polls were showing that he had a better chance of beating Trump than Hillary did. All the show were already saying that, but the elders were saying, we're not gonna put a Jewish socialist out there, blah, blah, blah. Okay, later in court, After they did that, after they put their  hands on  the scale and made it basically  ensure that Hillary would win, many of the Bernie people took them to court  because they had obstructed democracy within that primary. Amazingly,  their position was not even that they disagreed with that. Their position was, hey, we're not a government agency. We don't owe democracy. We're a private corporation. We don't owe it to be fair. Now our position would be, but you have a quasi-governmental function. And astonishingly, they won that case. So after that, they didn't even pretend. So that by, for instance, in 24, they didn't even pretend. They said, it's going to be Biden. And I can personally attest to the vicious campaign. that they wait to make sure that anyone who is not Biden would be so smeared, character assassinated, peripheralized, invisibilized, et cetera, that nobody would even know that there was an alternative. So we have got to return to two principles as a party. Number one, a commitment to democracy within our own ranks. And number two, the principles that theoretically animate  the party, which is  advocacy for the working people of the United States. It's not just hating Trump. It's standing for things like universal healthcare, tuition free college and tech school, um a fair economy for the majority of the American people standing up to the oligarchs and so forth. Well, you know, I've been a super delegate the last four Democratic conventions. I've been to 13 Democratic conventions in a row.  And when I was at the DNC, they came up with this idea. They were scared by people like Ross Perot and all these outsiders. And so  when they first did it, A lot of the staff, including myself, thought it was a horrible idea, you know, because you're exactly right. It's a safeguard to make sure some candidate like Bernie shows up, that you can knock them down. There are over 1200 super delegates out of 4,000. You get 25 % of the vote right away. And they're not just party elders. They're party elders that are connected for the most part. I some of them are just party elders, but every elected official, that's how I got to be a super delegate. every little Democratic elected official becomes a superdelegate, which means you're not you're not obligated to vote for anybody in particular. If you win a primary in a state and you're Biden delegate, you have to vote for Biden on the first on the first ballot. But superdelegates can vote for whoever the hell they want. And we thought it was a crazy idea. But then it wasn't used. wasn't. We said, OK, so it was stupid. Nobody said we're going to use it until.  2016 where it reared its ugly head. And I can tell you at the convention for the first two days, the California delegation chanted, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, Bernie, because they were so pissed about the whole process. But still, it went through that way.  my colleague and I were the last two people to give our votes to Hillary Clinton to put her over the top in the California primary. because they came to us and they sat down and they said, it's inevitable. It's inevitable. You need to do this because there's no chance anybody else can win. And so we did it. But I got to tell you, my interview with Bernie Sanders was so much better than my interview with Hillary Clinton. The Hillary people said, when are we going to get your vote? Bernie said, I'd like you to consider me. And that really tells you the great difference between the two candidates. And unfortunately, I he's kind of- Yeah. were two people in 2016 and  this is important also Liberty. feel like, you know, we got to make sure the young ones who  we may, you might not remember, you got to believe me. absorbed everything. Two people told the American people, your,  your anger is legitimate. Your rage is valid. The system screws you. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.  Bernie meant it. And Hillary thinking she needed to be loyal to Obama said, let's just continue with the success of the last eight years. Millions of people saying, what's success lady? I'm drowning here.  But all the polls showed Bernie would have beaten Trump. Yeah. Liberty. You got another brilliant question. This is a lot to think about. It's hard with Mary Ann because I want to talk to her all day. But go ahead. Okay, so. I'm  never taken aback like this, but this is very upsetting to me. I don't know if I want to cry or if I want to walk into the DNC right now and lead a march, you know, because I think that this is just a small example of a big battle that I think the United States and other countries have been fighting for a long time to my young perception of the world.  And my question to you guys who have had a lot of time in this.  is  what does resistance even look like in a situation like this? It's a simple question, but  I don't know.  You guys are from the 60s, you led these movements. We tried to keep history alive, so we won't mistake the same decisions we made in the past, but I feel like right now we're caring more about fidelity instead of patriotism and there's a very skewed perception of the United States, especially internally.  Democrats, liberals, my age don't want to believe in this country anymore. They don't want to feel patriotic. I think that this crisis runs deeper than policy. And I want to understand what does resistance look like when obstruction isn't just corrupt, but it's officialized as corrupt. How are we supposed to go up against that younger generations who will lead the future? Michael, do you want to take that on or do you want me to? Well, I want you to, but I have a few things to say, but you're the most brilliant, so you answer. First of all, it is the most essential question that you're asking, and I'm glad that you are. When Michael and I were younger, we were standing up to the war machine, we were standing up to segregation and so forth. But in looking back, we did have some hope we could make a difference. I understand your fury and I understand how depressed people feel  in your generation because you don't have a historical memory of a time when you could make a difference. uh We lived at a time when we had heroes  standing for the larger possibility of liberty and justice who were literally shot and killed in front of our eyes. Now the answer to your question  is asymmetrical guerrilla warfare. Okay.  In another time we had individuals who,  who made all the difference, whether it was Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy senior or what the system knows what to do with that. just kills them. Right. This has got to be guerrilla warfare jumping out from behind trees because  as you well know, your podcast being an example, we have millions of people in this country who are having the resistance conversation.  The zeitgeist of this moment is not one or a hundred or even a thousand people. It's flooding the field with the conversation we need to be having. And that's exactly what you're doing. They want to make us go to sleep. They want  to overwhelm our defense mechanisms, our  response mechanisms. Every time you have a conversation like what we're having here, knowing somebody's listening, somebody's having an aha moment. That's what we have to do. It's asymmetrical warfare. This is how the Viet Cong won in Vietnam. This is how the American colonists won in the American Revolution. The Brits came over here and men in bright red jackets standing in line waiting for someone to yell fire. And the American colonists had learned from Native Americans just jump out from behind trees. And that's what every podcast is. You're jumping out from behind a tree. Have the deeper conversation. Now, in terms of the metaphysical aspect of all this liberty, traditional politics, which on the level of traditional politics have already cornered us.  We're already checkmated on the level of traditional politics because they're criminals.  So they've purged the government of anybody who would hold them accountable. We're dealing with a mafia here, basically, a criminal syndicate. Okay, so the issue at this point is if you only are trying to deal with it on a horizontal level, you're always tempted to compromise your message to get more people to agree with you. This is not going to be on the horizontal level. It's going to be on a vertical level. It's getting, having the real conversation,  radical truth telling. This is what happened to the Democratic Party. It compromised its own principles.  It compromised its own  methods. It compromised its own  values. Go deep, go real, have the real conversation,  read, and enough people, a critical mass of people  getting real.  You know not like America's all good or America's all bad and I understand young people not wanting to feel patriotic in that once again They don't have the historical memory Michael and I have when things were basically okay And you could fight the good fight and get somewhere, but they also are looking and saying what is global capitalism ever done for me? I totally understand that but at the same time you can't just Say, okay. Well, they fucked up in the past. No get in there You make it right for your kids and your great grandkids. So I think every time you read a book, every time you have an aha moment, every time you share a post, every time you do a podcast, just remember there are millions of people who feel the same way you do. in the middle of a storm, we're in the middle of a cataclysm. But I always think of myself as tied by a little silver filament to millions of other people who are looking at those ice raids and going, oh my God, that's concentration camps. Looking at that slush fund and saying, oh God, he is just stealing money to... You know, but you're not the only one, not the only one. Build the connections, flood the field, make a post, share an article, do your podcast. This is it. And that will form the trim tab, right? The critical mass and things will flip over because when you embrace the light enough, darkness will fall on it of its own dead weight. And light is an anti-gravitational force field. Well, and you know, just to add to that, the Vietnam War, you know, And young people were against it pretty much all the time. But the critical mass that did, you know, we reached critical mass when what Marianna's talking about happened. Mothers got tired of seeing their sons come home with plastic bags. The, you know, just like the Civil Rights movement. How long had that gone on before we saw kids being knocked down with fire hoses, hanging in the south? You know, things that built the critical mass. from inside the middle class and the working class, as opposed to just young people who had a vested interest in not going to war. But Michael, I want to take on something that you just said so that Liberty really understands the internal dimensions of that. First of all, about the people coming home  in body bags, Liberty, that's a very important part of what Michael just said, that  a critical mass of Americans saw those soldiers coming home in body bags. You know what they did after that? They took away  they would no longer do that. They will no longer show the body facts coming.  Also, ah we had someone named Walter Cronkite, who was the moral voice like an Edward R. Murrow, these really major speakers of truth in journalism. ah They get rid of those types today, just like they get rid of  the comedians, know, it's a full assault. So you don't have these moral journalistic voices. The other thing that Michael, so we have to do that for ourselves, which we  have on podcasts and so forth. The other thing Michael mentioned that I think is extremely important was when he talked about those fire hoses. Martin Luther King's commitment to nonviolence made  all the difference in the world. Because when America, critical mass of Americans saw unarmed people,  nonviolent, people being hit with dogs and fire hoses. That was when the conscience of America was aroused and people went, okay, this is wrong. So  really knowing the  internal dimensions of all those things. And then one other thing I'd add to that, Michael, during the Vietnam War, they had real uh journalists who were on the battlefield. After that, you know, the bad guys learn from all that. So now they will only let the journalists be embedded,  meaning they can only see what the system wants them to see. The Pentagon doesn't let the journalists see anything that isn't sanitized through the Pentagon. Plus you had these brave souls like Daniel Ellsberg who were challenging the system. And now you have journalists who are basically sonographers for whatever the press conference at the Pentagon wants you to believe. Am I right, I guess I think Carolyn Levitt sees her job as a salesperson. I don't think she sees her job as telling the truth to anybody. She's just there just like when I sold clothes. I didn't want to tell you what Ralph Lauren had. I just wanted to tell you what Brooks Brothers had. I'm not interested in what the best is. I'm just interested in what we're trying to sell. And I would just say, let me make my first reading suggestion based on what Marianne said. Read a letter from a Birmingham jail and then you will see that King really had, you know, there were people that put pressure on him to do something. And he said, I'm going to do what God wants me to do. And this is what God wants me to do. And I really think that made a big difference. Liberty, everything that we're talking about there. You know, in the Talmud, it says every generation has its own wisdom. The  older you are, the more you know certain things as in historical memory. The younger you are,  the more you know certain other things. We know the eternal patterns. You know what's happening now. And it's a very intergenerational moment that we're learning from each other. If you um really read about the 60s, about the anti-war movement, about King, about the civil rights movement, it will It will be everything. There's no sanitization there. You know, it's like, oh my God, it will so blow your mind, including in ways that you realize in your time, in your generation, we've got to compensate for that. We've got to fix that. Well, you know what? It was the same with King, right? That the same things you're talking about with this administration and that that Liberty's talking about. The FBI went after King. ah know, head of the FBI had a thing for him.  You know, they persecuted him. They said people to, you know, they're using the same tactics that they they use today, but he was able to rise above it. And I'm not exactly sure why we don't rise above it. Well, Michael, mean, yeah, J. Edgar Hoover, et cetera. in the end, both King and with  Bobby Senior, oh they, whoever they were, they killed him. Killed him. So, Yeah, absolutely. the system, that's why it can't just be one or two people. The system knows what to do with that. It's got to be all of us all the time. Post it, spread it, talk about it. Just refuse to go to sleep. It's kind of like when someone When there's been an avalanche and people are freezing to death,  when you die from being freezing to you just want to close your eyes and go to sleep. And so when people are together who are in freezing conditions waiting to be rescued, you know, they just won't let each other go to sleep. And that's how we have to be with each other right now. Don't go to sleep. Don't go to sleep. Read this. Watch this video.  So,  and that's the thing we don't understand, I think, is that the young people that when we were young, The hypocrisy was so obvious  and we stood up to it. Now it seems that that doesn't happen as much anymore. And I don't know what that's about. Maybe that's a question for you, Liberty.  Is it because young people have more of a life, they have more interesting things to do than to worry about politics?  mean, do people your age, are they really engaged? Do they really want change? I think they do. You know, I graduated from GW a couple of weeks ago, political science major. have a lot of friends that study history. Thank you. And that's why this is so concerning to me because I think there's so many people around me my age who are so intelligent, who are so studied, who know so much about these issues. And still, you you read and you come back home and you open your phone and it's like you're fighting a force that is so much greater than you. We talked about this on a podcast ago, but what was it? Meme, memetic warfare, which is now  what they're doing is they're creating these memes that appeal to the youth, just like the little red book, but online. And it's so hard nowadays to differentiate what really is the truth versus what is manipulation, right? And that's why these conversations are so important and why. I'm gonna start a new Instagram page coming soon guys, Liberty Jones.  I tried a TikTok, I had too many haters, I'm gonna move to Instagram. But you know, I think people know, I think they want to create change,  but it's like every time you get on this highly addictive advice that's constantly hooking you more into it, you're silenced, which is what they've tried to do, you know, in many cycles of history. And so  I think right now that we're rising to the occasion, we're trying to really understand how it is  to actually create movement, you know, and to fight these forces who are so good at what they do. They're really good at silencing, I must say. think everything you said was totally 100 % correct. I would just add to that. This is not from a place of buts, but just from a place of and. abolitionists would have had some really bad days.  Women suffragists would have had some really desperate times. Civil rights, you know,  look at the early labor organizers and civil rights. I think that they were also dealing with the fact that we're generations of Americans for whom everything has been way too easy.  We never expected to have these kinds of problems. So there is a little bit of, think, with a message to each other, oh, toughen  up. This is not easy. The storm is here. It's horrifying. It's all the things that you just said.  And we will,  this commitment that just this rock inside us, we will become the people we need to be to take this on. And the cracks are already showing. Remember, I mean, you can look at so many times in history,  you look at,  take something  liberty like what you were just saying, everything you said was absolutely true. But think how the abolitionists must have seen the slave-owning empire. I mean,  or think how women suffragists would have seen the institution of,  you know, the misogynistic institutions of oppression against women. I mean, there was no reason to believe that they could prevail, that justice could prevail. And yet,  and this, think, is where the spiritual and the religious comes in. If you were serving the ages and you were serving that moral arc of history, you're just keeping your eye on that and you are You know, to me,  the issue here is to know the quality of our personhood is as important as the quantity of our actions.  And there are three elements that I think are most important. Number one, humility. Number two, receptivity. And number three, availability.  Nature is organizing something here. Seeing every single encounter as an opportunity for how maybe we could exponentially move the needle with your talent cooperating with mine, et cetera. Also, Gandhi said self purification must precede political action. We have to look at the hate in our own hearts. There's so much hate on the left today. It's almost as bad as the hate on the right. So we all have things to look at uh in terms of inwardly preparing ourselves in order to attract that added dimension of cosmic companionship. Otherwise, There's every reason to be depressed because if you look at it only on the material level, it's done. Yeah. I, you know, again, I mean, I hate to keep on referring to my old  philosophy from Karl Marx, but he said, you know, that was inevitable in democracy or capitalism was that, you know, people would fall. Everybody following their own self-interest won't promote the general good. I always felt that America got around that somehow by uh things like the constitution and including minority rights and things like that. But  it is a real struggle, right? Even that, Michael, know, Elon Musk, I keep seeing this, Elon Musk is absolutely enamored with Milton Friedman, And Milton Friedman, you know,  but even Milton Friedman said none of this free market capitalism fundamentalist perspective will work if you don't have an uh UBI. Even Milton Friedman said that. They just take the work, even like um Adam Smith, the main articulator of free market capitalism said none of this will work outside an ethical context. So starting back, particularly with Reagan, the complete morally hollowing out of any capitalism, just the most craven, unfettered version of it uh really brought  much sooner to us this late stage. capitalist phase that we're in now. Yeah. Friedman also said, uh in the long run, we're all dead. So, and that really was a mantra of small business, right? So again, it's hard to look and, you know, right? It's hard to look at the long term, but that's really what has to be done, right? Where are we going with all this? And that's the thing that scares me. Look, I have money, Marianne has money. I don't think we're going to suffer. I worry about my children. oh I worry about you, Liberty. I worry about my children. I'm sure Mary Ann worries about her children and grandchildren because they're the people that are going to have to pay for this whole mess that these guys were making. it's just, just horrible. But Mary Ann, let me tell you, because we're running out time here. What do you want to say that we haven't asked you? I personally think we got down and got real. Yeah, we did. And that's why we love having you on the show, because you get down and get real. And  it was one of your problems with the Democratic Party is that they don't want to hear that. They want to hear, you know, we all took Joe Biden.  You know, the one thing I disagree with, with you and some other people is trying to find a new candidate at the convention. I don't think that would work.  What would you just say? Trying to find a what? a new candidate at the convention, like, show me not the convention. it okay if they just gave it to Kamala?  No, I didn't think it was okay. I thought we had no other choice. I thought with 90 days left, the way the Democratic Party works inside, we would have just been in fighting and in fighting and in fighting. We wouldn't have come up with a candidate. We would just come out  wounded from the convention. That's what I feel, but But I never thought you'd be Canada. Yeah, you and I see that one differently. think that would would have been exciting. Well, would have been exciting. People would say, California says, New York says. I that would have compensated. It wasn't about time. It was about energy. Well, 13 consecutive conventions have all been a part. Not one of them has been a contesting. The first convention I went to was Jimmy Carter and the only person I worked for Carter, the only person that contested was Kennedy and Ted Kennedy. we arranged it at the DNC. We took all the Kennedy delegates and we put them as far away from the microphones as we could get them. We lobbied them to vote for Carter. And they shut it down on the first vote. But that was the last contested convention. And that was... 10 years before you were born. That's how long ago it was. But that's the point. I think what you're saying, it was real. was dirty. Messy. Politics and Democratic Party Day, no. Everybody will only go listen to Biden. We're going to listen to the come-along. We'll all get together and we'll all get to line up. No. How did that work out? No, it should be. It's messy. It's people screaming, yes, no, yes. That's the excitement of politics. And then at the end, you vote. Yeah. No, I agree with that. And you know, I see my problem. with the Democratic Party, I have a lot of problems with the Democratic Party, but I see this exodus to people who are becoming independents. So they're not involved in the primary process. We elect primary candidates that are not acceptable to the general public. And then the people that are independents very often in national elections make the decision on who the winner is gonna be. and they're not, and they're totally disassociated. So the Democratic party may be going out of style, you know,  and that would be a horrible thing to say. Well, I don't know if you look at American history, two main parties last, have already lasted longer than any other combination in American history. So both parties, ah there's something crumbling from within. On the other hand is, My friend Sylvia Hayes likes to point out this is what's called a chaotic  moment,  that out of the chaos, a higher order can emerge. And that's what we all have to stand for. Well, let me also ask for our potential book club selections. How do people find your books, Marianne? Oh, thank you. they're must-reads. Thank you. If you go to MarianneWilliamson.substack.com, And if you subscribe, it's for free. And you'll see that I am downloading every night a chapter from my book, Politics of Love. And that in the weeks before we were downloading the chapters for Healing the Soul of America. So it's all on there. And then on, I think the third and the fourth for paid subscribers, will be, that's like $5 or $7, whichever it is. to have a book club talking about both of those books. And you know, I just have to add this,  one scary thing that I saw in your recent testimony before the United States Senate by the Secretary of Defense, Secretary of War, was that they never talked about peace, Marion. They never, they talked about being prepared to confront the Chinese.  They talked about,  you know, what we had to do to confront the,  Iranians and make sure they didn't have nuclear power. But nobody ever used the word peace. Nobody ever talked about any diplomatic solutions. They only talked about a billion dollars more for our military so that we'd be prepared for the inevitable conflict. And when peace isn't even in the discussion, it's just horrible. So God bless you,  Mary Ann. They are the quintessential warmongers. Yeah, they are. and they are serving a military industrial technological  complex at this point, uh which makes trillions of dollars. I mean, they're going now for the $1.5 trillion military budget. um Peace, there's no money to be made  by that crowd.  And that's what makes them so dangerous. Meanwhile, he makes it the Donald J. Trump  Institute of Peace.   You solved 132 wars, and know,  what can we do?  You want to ask the last question before we start off? um I don't have a question, but I think this is really beautiful. In Greek mythology, the god of chaos birthed Gaia Mother Earth. So  on this topic.  On that note, we'll leave it in. We always leave with a song that we  close out with a song dedicated to our guests. So  here's one for my hometown boys from Patterson in North New Jersey. Here's the four seasons with Mary Ann. Thank you so much for being on the show, Mary Ann Williamson. And we'll see you again soon, I hope. Thank you. that sub stat. It's so nice to meet you. It's so nice to meet you as well. It was a pleasure having you today. I feel inspired. Oh, good. Yes.  All right. Then our work here is done. Thank you, Mary Ann Williamson. Thank you, Liberty Jones. All right. We'll see you next week, folks. Thanks. Give the people their right to vote.