Originally published at: We need to talk about Marianne Williamson | Boing Boing
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Campaigns often use NDAs to protect proprietary information from spilling out into the public. But former aides say Williamson’s use of NDAs went beyond just her full-time campaign staff. Those aides said that Williamson’s personal assistant traveled with NDAs readily available and would ask taxi drivers and other service industry workers to sign them if Williamson lost her temper in front of them. Williamson denied this charge too. However, two former staffers said they witnessed this happen on separate occasions after Williamson started berating staff in cabs to and from fundraising and media events in New York.
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Her popularity is easily explained by the vacuous centrism of the current Democratic leadership and their gleeful punching left at every opportunity while getting dragged rightward by blind Third Way-ism. She’s woo-woo as shit but at least someone’s discussing the real problems out loud, if accidentally.
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Yeah, unfortunately in her case, it’s going to be even easier than it was with Bernie Sanders for centrist/corporate Dems to seize on her weirdness as a way to shove such topics back under the carpet.
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So… she uses people’s socio-religious concepts and identities to build familiarity with a base and espouses broadly popular political ideas that are shunned by current US political parties, and that has made her… popular with young people!? Let’s burn her!
But first anyone want to buy a tarot reading from me about her presidential run?
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And there is the point. These policy stances are highly popular, and the reason people are following Williamson is because the mainstream of the party isn’t delivering on these material concerns. Offer real improvement in the lives of the majority, rather than pandering and learned helplessness, and fringe candidates won’t get a look-in.
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Does anyone believe TikTok view counts? They’re consistently so much higher than those on any other platform.
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Yep medical woo is popular with people who have been ignored and/or mistreated by the medical community. Metaphysical woo tends to appeal to those who have been shunned or shut out from dominant spiritual hegemonies and people who have been shut out of scientific hegemonies both. Young people are largely disenfranchised and often failed by many communities who don’t take their concerns at all seriously.
…Perhaps the answer isn’t to keep shunning people who are negatively affected by the status quo?
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The problem here is similar to that surrounding Tulsi Gabbard: there are a lot of people out there, especially young people, who lack critical thinking skills but who also correctly understand that the Dem establishment doesn’t serve them. Then someone shows up who takes some superficially progressive positions (usually ones that can swing from left-wing populism to the right-wing variety*) but also has a history of promoting victim-blaming woo**. TikTok is the perfect channel for these charlatans.
What’s needed, of course, are more reality-based progressives like Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Porter, etc.
[* e.g Gabbard’s anti-war stance that’s really isolationism that serves Putin; Williamson’s call for universal health insurance that will no doubt also cover quack cures]
[** Gabbard’s continued support of the cult she grew up in; Williamson’s New-Age nonsense]
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This paints her as the leftist equivalent of Trump-- she pushes all the right progressive buttons, says all the things we want to hear, but she’s also a con artist who basically believes in herself above all else, and uses nice sounding BS to make a living.
I don’t know enough about her to judge, but I suspect as president she won’t be able to get anything done anyway, simply because of how our system works. Unless 2024 brings a progressive blue wave that upends the current divisions it’ll be worse than 8 years of Obama being hamstrung.
I am curious how her new age woo plays with the MAGA crowd-- I could envision some of them buying into it (the “QAnon Shaman” for example), easy marks that they are.
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The stupid just keeps getting more stupid in this country. Has anyone thought about asking the Sham-Wow guy what his political views are and if he’d be interested in running? Or did he die?
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He and Owen Wilson need to run together and start the Wow Party.
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I had to look it it up to see if this was the same kooky woo peddler from the 2016 train wreck of candidates, and sure enough it is.
Hard fucking pass; it’s not enough for a candidate to just not be an old rich White dude - there has to be some substance, some viable progressive policy that could actually be implemented to better serve society.
Pipe dreams and ‘feel good’ sound bites are NOT gonna get it.
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The Woo-Force can have a powerful effect on the weak-minded
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IMO, it doesn’t serve some young progressives enough for their liking. So they need to work harder to increase their influence and push the establishment in that direction to see the changes they want. 
In the meantime, I believe the establishment does serve them, but does not have the majority where it counts right now - the House and SCOTUS. Despite being repeatedly warned what happens when we lose the court, some voters put their own interests over the good of the many, and here we are struggling to recover. Student debt relief and forgiveness challenges are just one example.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3978808-progressives-biden-2024-primary-trump/
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Vince Offer aka Vince Shlomi.
Oh, and ex-Scientologist.
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Never heard of her until now. Just because she has some TikTok followers doesn’t mean she has any of the pull you ascribe to her, most certainly not on the level of Ralph Fucking Nader or Jill Fucking Stein.
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Can we mention that she taught a course for HIV-positive folks structured around faith healing? That same course encouraged them to stop treatment. She’s got a body count and is genuinely dangerous.
It’s like folks who tolerate absolute wingnut regressives because “Tax breaks”. The policy doesn’t really cover over the person.
Yes, the Dems need to push hard into their progressive role, but that doesn’t make her anything like a good idea.
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Gabbard is, like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson and many others, a Russian trolley.
(LOL this is the second time BB changed one of my posts using the word that describes miscreants that live under bridges into the word “trolley”. What a silly weird thing to do…)
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