Among the most unpredictable challenges Americans will face next decade is how we heal after Trump. There will be widespread repercussions for the Republican Party after he leaves office. The extent will be determined by the circumstances of #Trexit: impeachment, resignation, “medical issues,” or loss of the 2020 election.
Every one of those scenarios will require healing among the American people. And I think Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson is the perfect person to lead that process. And rather than feeding into the left vs. right loggerheads, her foundation is in exposing how American democracy was twisted into what she describes as a “sociopathic economic system” where all but the elites are compromised needlessly.
In an article in The New York Times Magazine, Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes about life with Williamson on the campaign trail, and how her brand of outsider perspective is making voters rethink how politics should be done.
Everyone talked about the issues. She wanted to talk about how we could have prevented these issues — how we could undo them if we got to the root of all these problems. “People who are so depressed because they don’t know how they’re going to ever get out of this college loan. People who were so depressed because they don’t know what’s going to happen if they get sick. People who are so depressed because they don’t know how they’re going to send their kids to college. People who are so depressed because they’re so afraid that their child is going to get picked up by the policemen and there’s absolutely nothing they can do no matter how much they try to raise a good kid and even have a good kid. People working with refugees, people working with immigrants, veterans, traumatized children, drug addicts. Everything I just mentioned has the fingerprints of public policy — irresponsible, reckless public policy.
Williamson sees this violation of the public trust as one side of a tarnished coin. The flip side, a vibrant, compassionate government, is what she already is pointing towards. She’s daring us to think about what a government with a conscience and a heart could be like. With her focus on the plight of children in poverty, a call for some form of reparations for ancestors of slaves, and the creation of a Department of Peace, we’ve already had a glimpse of these possibilities.
And coming from a self-help background, she can go deeper on the methods used to take us down this dark path in the first place. One of the memes of her campaign is #BigTruth, even venturing onto the psychological level and getting at the nuances of manipulation that the GOP has used for decades.
They lie brazenly, as if sheer self-righteousness were enough to override truth. They blame non-whites, offering scapegoats for the jobs they themselves encouraged to go overseas. They craft talking points with false equivalencies, clever deflection, and unjustified dismay. And to make all that plausible, they posture as Christians despite practicing what Peace Party Populists calls a Swiss-cheese version of Christianity with holes where the Golden Rule and “Judge not, lest ye be judged” used to be.
While Williamson will call out these tactics, she has the skillset to do this without a hint of judgement on those that have been played. They are victims not perpetrators. To these folks she will present the tools to deconstruct the facade they unwittingly accepted.
Part of healing is finding common ground. If Williamson were to use the Peace Party Populists strategy, she could point out that these newly disgruntled Republicans and progressives share the same foe: the #CORPservatives who commandeered the GOP and prioritized their servitude to corporate and billionaire donors. Maybe the 99% vs. 1% concept could make a comeback.
The goal here is not to make the former believers feel bad, it’s to make them feel they are one of US. But they are not the only ones who will need convincing of that dynamic.
Williamson also is best suited to temper the urge for retribution among those on the left. Most progressive activists have been trolled, fending off pre-packaged venom in the form of right-wing talking points. But progressives need to be reminded that there are tens of millions of folks soon to turn away from the GOP that don’t foam at the mouth. And for them, each Democrat needs to #GetYerGandhiOn and look beyond the past vitriol they’ve faced in others and say welcome aboard, even if it’s just for long enough to reclaim their party.
Williamson knows that the ego wants a good fight, and that another part of the brain has to be ready to step in to weigh the consequences. This allows her to be able to diffuse the addictive nature of rabid partisanship on either side as she proves in this quote from the same NYTM article:
And she has even less time for people who think that anger is a productive emotion. Anger, she has said, is the white sugar of activism. It’s a good rush, but it doesn’t provide nourishment.
Peace Party Populists, supporters of Williamson but not directly affiliated, encourages woke Republicans soon to be in the #SilentCenter to vote blue for the next couple of election cycles to purge the CORPservatives and allow Democrats to pass election and campaign finance reforms. Without changes like ending Citizens United and mandating public not private funding for campaigns, billionaire-backed GOP incumbents will never be defeated in the primaries.
And by 2022 these former Republicans, called #TrueCons by PPP, will be wise to the GOP lies and what they were used for. In the primaries they’ll make headway into taking over the thoroughly corrupt GOP and ushering in a more compassionate incarnation of the party of their birth.
All of this may seem like a heavy lift. But if Trump is impeached or resigns, perhaps a quarter of the country will have to reinvent their world view knowing that, for all their heartfelt delirium, they were just pawns whose opportunity to thrive was willingly sacrificed for the chance to cling to undeserved power. They were cannon fodder.
With her moral perspective that rings true with every word, Williamson can soothe those open wounds and draw America together.
It’s important to note that she doesn’t have to become President to do this. As a signatory to the Indivisible Pledge, she has committed to campaign on behalf of the eventual Democratic ticket.
But with her message and passion, her place in the political landscape can last long beyond that. Her truths are fundamental in what’s needed for facing America’s coming challenges. To again quote the NYTM article:
A thing she loves to say is: “I’m not saying anything you don’t already know.” This is the self-help magic ne plus ultra, a spoken thing that rings inside your blood like the truth, a thing you knew all along, like ruby slippers you were wearing the whole time.
And with her help, and her vision permeating the next decade of American politics, there will really be no place like home.
Go to http://marianne2020.com to see more about the Williamson campaign, and visit her Issues pages to see her solutions for the complex challenges ahead.
And Williamson will be live streaming on that site right after tonight’s debate, sharing her responses to questions asked.