2024, This Is It Says Marianne Williamson

0:04Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

0:38Anyways, let's get to it.

0:47Election day is nearly upon us and 2024 is arguably our most important presidential race yet. With neither Trump nor Biden budging, Marianne Williamson joins me today to tell us why she decided to put her hat in the ring. I'm not a Democrat, but I am certainly a fan of Marianne and loved what she had to say on today's show.

1:14So I'm delighted to have on Open Book today, Marianne Williamson. She's a bestselling author, spiritual leader, and a 2024 presidential candidate. She's run for president before. And when I say bestselling author, you've written 15 books, Marianne, four of which have made number one on the New York Times list. The only way I could get one of my books on that list. I'd have to buy all of them, Marianne, but I think they're onto people that try to do that. So I've never done that either. Like someone else we know. Well, exactly. Well, it's great to have you here. And you ran for the presidency in 2020.

1:49I always looked at that and said, wow, that's got to be an incredibly tough thing to do. Let's start there. Why did you decide? I mean, I sort of know the answer to this, but I want our viewers and listeners who may not be as familiar with you. Why did you decide to run? And listen, I think it's one of the toughest things to do in America. It's run for president. You know, the travel, the scrubbing that you get from the media, the thrubbing, all that other stuff. So tell me why this brilliant, wonderful career you're transitioning into politics. I think certain things need to be said. And I think certain things need to be done.

2:22And I think our political establishment is dominated by a conversation in which the most important things are not usually said. and the most important things are certainly not being done. Rather, the political establishment, the corporatist elements in both major parties are enabling forces that are actually destroying our democracy. And I look around and I go, is anybody else going to run for president who's going to say this? And I didn't see anyone else coming across the hill. And I said, then I will. Okay. So I have this theory, having been close to it, been burnt by it, and came into it relatively naive, which is hard for me to admit.

2:57You like to think of yourself as street smart and seasoned, but the world of politics is so different, at least in my opinion, than the world of business. There are different incentives, different angles of attack. But I feel like the American leadership now has totally lost the plot. They're there in this sort of fever bed of capitalism and cronyism where lobbyists are paying them to do certain things. They only respond to you if you have bags of money. And if you have bags of money, you can get things done like put fertilizer into our food, overly process our food, add food dyes and different things to our food that you couldn't get done in a place like Europe, for example.

3:34Big Pharma has its way now with the FDA, the military industrial complex. We are running wars now, 50 years worth of wars. These wars are great for a very small group of people at the top, and they are very ungrate for the rest of the people, particularly the lower and middle class. And oh, by the way, if you're super wealthy and you get in trouble, it's no problem. We're going to lower interest rates and we're going to give you unlimited amounts of capital from our treasury so your bank can survive or you can stay rich. But we won't do that for the middle or lower income people. But what we do do for them though is we cripple them with inflation and devaluation of our money.

4:12So if you're getting paid with your time and energy is going towards work as opposed to you owning assets, the dollar that we put in your pocket is worth 92 cents a year later, and it makes it harder and harder for you to catch up. And so what have I missed, Marianne? Tell me what I've missed, or did I get that wrong? These are all public servants that are serving the American public, and the policies that they're coming up with are actually working for the average American. You were 100 % correct. And the only thing that I would modify was your first sentence. You said they've lost the plot. No, they haven't.

4:45They've changed the plot. They have changed the plot from democracy to oligarchy, Because everything that you just described is an oligarchic system. You described a system in which relatively few people with a lot of money get to govern according to their goal, which is short-term profit maximization for themselves. And that is at the expense of democracy. And you described that situation perfectly. I think it's letting them off the hook too easily to say they've lost the plot. They have intentionally changed the plot and they continue to do so. And they would have the American people think that qualified leadership is people qualified in maintaining and perpetuating what is essentially that scam.

5:23Okay, so I ask people about you all the time. I say, well, what if somebody like Marianne Williamson was to run the government? And invariably, people say that would be wonderful if we had somebody like Marianne Williamson, because you would be doing it to serve people. You would not be doing it to serve yourself. I mean, I've read your books. I understand where you're coming from, from a spiritual point of view, and where you're coming from, from a human welfare point of view, and from a place of kindness. So I don't want to be overly cynical, but I want to just point this out. why can't somebody like you crack through those atmospherics?

6:03Like, why are we choosing between demented and dementia? I mean, those are basically our choices for 2024, where if you asked 80 % of the American people, you know, I really don't want demented or dementia. I would like to have somebody that, you know, cares about where we're going and would be focused on right or wrong. Okay, so go ahead. What am I getting wrong? Why can't we get somebody like you to break through that haze, if you will? First of all, we can, but we're going to have to rise to the challenge. I think the majority of people, Anthony, are just processing all of this. I think a critical mass on both left and right are, as we speak, waking up to what you've said here, what I've agreed with about the depth of corruption that now infuses our political system and waking up to the fact that the institutional realities, namely public parties, which we were brought up to believe could be trusted to protect and expand our democratic pillars, are in fact the very problem in too many cases.

7:09So I think there has not been apathy. I think there's been confusion and an almost paralysis. But this is no different than our own personal lives. If you go through something really big, you don't immediately jump into solution. You often say, wait, I got to think this through. Wait a minute. I got to think about this. And I think that's where the American people have been. It's like, wait, we got to think about this. No, we can't have her. We can't have her because she doesn't have all the like, you know, she's not a political car mechanic. And then you realize, well, no, but the problem is that we're on the wrong road.

7:40So that doesn't have to do with a political car mechanic. Well, could she actually do that? And then we go there because we've been sold that it's almost like a Wizard of Oz quality. You have to be one of them, like a Wizard of Olives. But then you realize, no, the wizard was just this guy with a mask on. We've got to tear down the curtain. I'm reminded of a line from Franklin Roosevelt where he said that the primary responsibility of the presidency is not administrative, but moral vision, moral leadership. And even when you say, can she run the government? The most important aspect of running the government at this moment is aligning the values that dominate policy back to our original values, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln said was an eternal rebuke to forces of tyranny and oppression.

8:34Right now, we're living in a country which is dominated by a system of economic tyranny. That is what you described. It's economic tyranny except for a few people. So we don't need someone who's been for years involved in that system to continue to drive the car so much as we need to disrupt that system because the status quo will not disrupt itself. Okay. So how do we do that? You are a visionary. You're an entrepreneur. You're a writer. You rebuilt yourself, Marianne. I mean, maybe we should tell people about your personal story, which I find to be so American. Yeah, it is very American. You're the product of your own discipline and your own decision to restart, recreate yourself, which is very emblematic to what the country sort of needs in terms of this American renewal.

9:24So let's go to your personal story for a minute. to tell our viewers and listeners a little bit about yourself and this transformation that you made over the course of your life to where you are now and how it could be impactful as a political leader. Well, I think that the only, there's really nothing unique about my story, actually. I think my story, the only thing interesting about it is that it's not unique. But it has happened, it just so happens that my career and my life have taken me to so many different corners of our society. So many corners socioeconomically, so many corners geographically, and so many corners of human experience.

10:03There's nothing special about that. There's just something so varied about that. Now, I didn't so much transform myself. I just got very lucky, Anthony. I wrote a book and Oprah Winfrey liked it. And she opened the world for me. So what that meant is I had access. Now, once I had that access, yes, I've worked very hard. I have worked very hard. And I think just as you've worked very hard and everybody listening right now, I mean, we, you know, we understand that you have to, even if you're given opportunity, but you, you can't overstay what it means. And I think what I got from the Oprah experience, just as I got old enough to look back at my parents, old enough to look back at the fact that I went to decent public schools, old enough to look back and to realize what it means that there were good public libraries, old enough to look back and realize that when I was growing up, there was the minimum level of economic opportunity.

10:56I think what I've learned is that I got help. I've worked hard and I got help. I got help. And we don't give enough people. You know, Martin Luther King said, if they give it to the poor, they call it a handout. If they give it to the rich, they call it a subsidy. You mentioned earlier, you articulated beautifully, you're rich, we got a handle. But if there are too many people locked out who have just as much entrepreneurial spirit as I've had, who want to work as hard as I, but people are locked out and that's unsustainable. And that's what I've learned from my experience is that I got help and I worked hard, but you can't leave out that I got help.

11:30And I want a society in which enough people are given the minimum help, particularly as children, that then it's reasonable to talk about them being accountable for their own circumstances because they had a shot at it. And to me, that's the American dream. The American dream is not that you can make it or I can make it or Barbara can make it or anybody else we know can make it. It's that we are responsible for a sacred trust, this sacred trust that there would be a possibility within a society of a place where anybody, if they worked hard enough, had a shot at it. I mean, it's beautifully stated, and we are in a total agreement because even my very rich friends who seem either ignorant or knowingly ignorant, willfully ignorant, or just uninterested, there is a level of the starting blocks now are so ridiculously unequal.

12:18You know, the public school that I attended is still quite a good public school system, but frankly, it's in an affluent community. My dad was the crane operator out here on Long Island in a very affluent community. And so if you tell me the zip code of the kid, I can tell you whether or not they're getting a good public school education, right? Absolutely. But you and I both know that all of this is very uneven and very unfair, and we don't choose our parents. And so therefore, the country is rich enough where we could create a platform of equal opportunity for people where there could be a package of things we provide to our citizens, whether it's healthcare or quality education, K through 12, so that they can at least get to the starting line.

12:58Exactly. But why the callous indifference though? You know, you're a very empathic person. I've read several of your books, Return to Love, the book on miracles that you wrote, why have we grown callous? Why, if I make that a conversation piece with somebody at a hoi polloi cocktail party, they've grown and rolled their eyes and tell me, yeah, well, that's not going to happen. If we're not careful, Miriam, we're going to be living, the wealthy at least, are going to be living in these bob-wired security compounds like they do in South America. Bodyguards even to go to the grocery store. You're absolutely correct.

13:34Correct. So why don't we want to help our neighbor like we did 100 plus years ago, where Henry Ford, bad guy, I mean, you know, obviously a racist and so forth. But he was like, you know what, I'm going to pay these workers enough money so that they can afford the car they're making. And I'm going to put them in a house and they're going to have a good public school. This way they don't come after me with a tiki torch and a pitchfork while I'm trying to have my caviar in my mansion. How do we lose sight of that? You know? Okay, so what we lost sight of was the power of democracy. So let's talk about this for a minute.

14:05Jefferson said that the only safe repository for power in this country is in the hands of the people. I believe that the majority of American people would agree with what you and I were saying. So when you say, how did we, everything you described was the people at those fancy cocktail parties. I'm sorry. Not every rich person is a greedy bastard, but the group of people that you're talking about who have lost so much empathy, who are living in this bubble that emotionally buffers them from the suffering that is so endemic in this society today. They should not be in control to the extent to which they are in control.

14:41That is what an oligarchy is. I believe that the majority of American people would agree with everything you and I have said. The American people are not the problem. We are decent people. The majority of American people want our kids to go to decent schools where they're not worried about getting shot at school where there's not carcinogens in our food and forever chemicals in our water and pesticides in our food and all the things that you've described. The problem is we have a sclerotic political system that is sitting on top of the will of the people so that the will of the people is being suppressed.

15:15And instead, the will of the people at the cocktail parties you're talking about is holding sway because of the money that they're undue financial influence. how they lost the plot. Somebody told me the other day, there's this term, if you heard this term, ethical fading. I haven't, but explain it to me. Yeah, it's interesting. It's when people, either they get too powerful or they get too much money or there's too much concentration on stockholder value or whatever it is in somebody's life, and they start making an ethical compromise. And it's usually not a big ethical compromise. It's a little ethical compromise and it's just ethical fading until you've got a situation where nobody's just saying, hey, wait a minute, we can't do this.

15:57It could hurt a child. But I go back to what I said before, and I think this is so important. I think the majority of American people are in touch with human suffering and human empathy. The problem is the political system that does not now work to serve the will of the people. And the only way to override this, and I say this as a candidate because I've seen this so up close and personal, is with a revolution at the ballot box. Because otherwise the system is locked up by everything that you've described here. That's fascinating. Let's talk about Return to Love for a second, if you don't mind, because I love that book.

16:35And I think you are basically, as I look through your presidential platform and watch your interviews, you're basically applying that book to your presidential campaign. And what I love about your campaign, by the way, and the reason why I wanted to have you on, is if we can just get your message out there to more candidates. It doesn't just have to be candidates for the presidency, but candidates for town supervisor or candidates for the Senate or the House, it could have a transitional positive effect. It could reverse some of the trends that you're describing. So let's talk about return to love and applying those lessons and give our listeners and viewers a sense for what I mean.

17:16Before I do that, if I may, you said it could have a transitional positive effect. We don't have time for a transitional positive effect. I think part of the characterological shift that is necessary at this point is a recognition of the urgency of this moment. That's number one. Number two, so the bottom line is simply that we're here to love one another. You see a hungry child, you feed them. You see carcinogens in the food, you remove them. You see somebody who is rationing their insulin, you pass universal health care. You see people who are burdened in their 20s with tens of thousands of college loan debts that should never have even existed.

17:55You cancel the debt. You see people wanting an education to better their lives, to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You have tuition-free college and tech school like every other advanced democracy. You see people who are working at jobs that they hate because it's the only way that they can even imagine being able to pay for childcare. You have subsidized childcare. You have mothers crying, depressed and anxiety because millions of years of evolution have told it's too early to leave the baby after the birth of the child. You have paid family leave. You have people who are one third of your workforce living on less than$15 an hour and half of them unable to find a place to live.

18:35You have a guaranteed living wage. And I also want to point out, Anthony, that everything that I just described is considered in every advanced European democracy except ours, which is not European, obviously, a moderate position. People do not realize how far the Overton window has moved from that first principle, which is that the government's job is to broker a balance between individual liberty, which includes economic liberty, and the concern for the common good. We now have policy after policy that is passed in ways that you have mentioned to help those who have already accumulated capital accumulate more at the expense of the majority of Americans who are literally struggling just to make it at all.

19:21and the level of personal and societal dysfunction that inevitably arises from this and is arising. Our suicide rates, our lower life expectancy, people dying from lack of health care, deaths of despair, diseases of despair, people's lives are falling apart. And that system does not care in the same way that you described that cocktail party. They roll their eyes at what you and I are saying. That's fine. They shouldn't be in charge. They should have the same weight of influence that every other citizen. That's what democracy is supposed to be. That whether you're rich or you're poor, you get to weigh in and have the same influence.

19:59And that is what we've lost in this country. And that is why we are where we are. Okay. It's very, very well said. And when I listen to you, I'm like, okay, that's exactly the right message with the right vision. So how do we convert that into winning? Tell me how we're going to win the campaign. Well, I want to point out that I was just before I before I got on, I saw the latest poll that said I'm at 11 percent. The Emerson poll the other day said I'm at 10. In politics, I'm sure you know this. It's kind of like when you're in elementary school and you turn 10 years old and they said, oh, you're double digits now.

20:28But whatever reason, double digits really matters in politics. Right. When you consider the complete media blackout, so what Fox is to the GOP, CNN and MSNBC are to the Democratic Party. There's been a complete media blackout. They won't have me on CNN. They won't have me on MSNBC. So even though I'm higher in the polls than let's say Nikki Haley or even Vivek Ramaswamy, they are regularly on the Sunday news shows. They are regularly on MSN, CNN. So what I have to do is I have to override that with media. and independent media, such as things, you know, and I'm grateful to be on your show today.

21:05So I need a quick million, you know, if a thousand people will give a thousand dollars or 2000 people will give$500. I know that, you know, a lot of this is, it's not mystery. It's math. Do I have the money? I have the campaign. We just need to scale up. I'll have one staff member on something where I should have three. I'll have one office when we should have three. I'll have two people on a team that should have six. It's not mysterious, but wherever I go, you know, we get the entrance, we get the standing ovations, we get all that. My problem is that too many people don't even know that my campaign exists.

21:41So the answer to your question is it's happening. It's happening despite that, but obviously we don't have a lot of time and we need people to volunteer. We need people to go to Marianne2024.com, volunteer, spread the word, get on social media, and obviously give financial support where they can. And give us the website just so everybody has it. Marianne, that's M-A-R-I-A-N-N-E 2024.com. Okay. Again, I want to go back to this era, this age of cynicism that we're in. So you're not being put on. So that obviously is a material block, but that fits the oligarch narrative, right? And by the way, Vivek Ramoswamy, and no offense to Vivek, I've listened to him.

22:25I think he's inexperienced. He doesn't have like the, you have something that we're sorely needed. You have something called savoir faire, okay? You're going to do the right thing in any circumstance, or at least try to do the right thing in every circumstance. So Vivek, I'm going to give him the opportunity to come on the show as I've given all presidential candidates come on the show. But I would say this right to his face, he lacks experience and he lacks touch and empathy for people, but they put him on. They put him on because he's a person of color, okay? And they put him on because he's not at 20 % of the polls.

22:57If he was at 25 % of the polls, Marianne, they would knock him with a ray gun as hard as they possibly could. And so I guess what I'm wondering is this oligarchical system that we have now, has it made it impossible for a reformer? Absolutely. Because of the media conglomeratization, you know, when I was a child, The same company could not own the newspaper and the radio and the television because it was guaranteed, they codified it into law, that there would be a diversification of opinion. Today, we have a matrix of corporate overlords, and part of that matrix is major media empires. Now, I used to think that the political parties chopped wood and carried water for these multibillion-dollar industries, and I've come to realize, no, they are one of those multibillion-dollar industries.

23:46So you're right. There's a blockage. And everything that you and I have been talking about, I think this is important. The majority of Republicans as well as Democrats want universal health care. Poll after poll shows that. The majorities of Republicans as well as Democrats want tuition-free college and tech school, which we had until the 1970s. Polls show that. The majority of Republicans as well as Democrats and including the majority of gun owners want more common sense gun laws. The problem is they don't want anybody speaking a message like this because they know it could start a political wildfire and it overthrows their perch.

24:19This really is a second American revolution. It's a revolution consciousness. It's a revolution at the ballot box. But anybody who thinks we can just continue to vote for the status quo of either major party and make these incremental changes, then it's simply a matter of whether your democracy is in a nosedive or in a managed decline. Many issues right now. We have global issues. We have domestic issues. Take me through the top two or three domestically and the top two or three internationally that you would work on immediately. Domestically, we need an economic bill of rights. You know, Franklin Roosevelt said there are four freedoms and two of them are freedom from want.

24:58They're the freedoms of speech, religion, protest, et cetera. And then there's freedoms from. He said the freedoms from want and from fear. One in four Americans live with medical debt. 68 ,000 dying every year because they have no health care. 18 million Americans can't afford to pay the prescription drugs that their doctors give them. 85 million Americans underinsured or uninsured. So we need Medicare for all, universal health care, like in every other advanced democracy. We need a guaranteed living wage. Our minimum wage is$7.25 an hour. People talk about lifting it to$15, but we have in every major city in America, the living wage is at least$20 an hour.