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Jan 14, 2020 By Steve King Photography by Elisabeth Granli

It’s been a weird couple years. We all know that… Injustice has been raw-doggin’ reality so hard, no one could blame you for thinking we’ve all accidentally stepped onto another plane of existence. That’s why we need to have a quick chat about Marianne Williamson and her failed presidential campaign.

Are there more important things to talk about? Yeah. Like the Democratic primary, President* Trump’s Impeachment, WORLD WAR FUCKING III, how Biden has missed a step and he’s like Hillary in 2008/2016 but also he’s maybe the only person who can beat Trump, or how Elizabeth Warren has campaigned better than anyone and is watching Bernie Sanders overtake her just before Iowa. How my once favorite candidate and future Attorney General somehow just didn’t connect with voters.

Biden is shooting blood out of his eyeballs. Sanders straight up had a heart attack, and the president is king of the Jews and thinks we should nuke hurricanes, so you can’t blame me for dwelling on Williamson a bit longer. So she was a flash in the pan and people really read too much into the meaning of her candidacy. She gave us one perfect debate performance. What’s not to love about a crazy person talking about “dark psychic forces,” dead animals, how Trump pardoned Charlie Manson (he didn’t), and the power of positive thinking? She is my gonzo queen, my check up from the neck up, my weirdo supernatural goddess of multi-level, self-help scam artistry, who just so happened to be right half as much as she was wrong. She deserves a spiritual sympathy endorsement.

Marianne Williamson, like it or not, is the classic Democratic base voter. Her post-‘60s, monetized, hippie-dippie spirituality is exactly where the Democrats live. She perfectly got the razzle dazzle that animates the base of a political party. She’s like if Trump started believing in the healing power of crystals. She is all of the Democrats’ flaws, paranoia, and insecurities. But, god, do I love that New Age, witchy bullshit.

She may be sitting down with Gwenthyn Paltrow for fireside chats, but man… she is operating on a different level. When you’ve lived in near obscurity, and in Hollywood, with no one challenging your idiot views, you become even more convinced that you’re right. If it weren’t for just a couple issues and a few decades of hot nonsense, Marianne Williamson would be the total package. What if the ideological political battle of our time wasn’t Obama and Trump, but Trump and Williamson? At least it’s a fair fight and deserving of what has become of America.

Williamson was like a Democratic Toon Town poltergeist. If Jill Stein gave birth in that library she was haunting at the beginning of Ghostbusters and that ghost-baby grew up on the mean streets of Whole Foods, that would be Williamson. Choosing to not believe in science and anti-vaxxers confirm evolution is real. September 11th conspiracists can get thrown into that lot too. Democrats have their fair share of cranks, and Williamson understood that.

And she may have been the only Democrat who could be a worse president than Trump. A more dangerous president. How did we find ourselves here? Whoever is president next will need to burn the bed, light sage all over the place, and salt the earth behind them. Democrats haven’t nominated someone as grotesque and unqualified as Trump. But they will eventually. Human behavior is like weather; so is our history. It happens, it can be predicted. It happens again. It’s not that complex.

But what would you do if you had to choose between Williamson and Trump? Sure Marianne Williamson is a messy, powerful, boomer witch who lives for drama, but in 10 years, someone like her will be president. What would you do…? What the fuck would you do… if Marianne Williamson was the Democratic nominee running against Trump? What if Democrats lost their minds, Republican-style? It’s the world of the surreal. A 2020 loss will hasten the Democrats descent into madness and guarantee their next presidential nominee would be a nightmarish rubber chicken. Democrats will eventually nominate someone like Williamson. Then shit will really hit the fan.

Williamson is gone now. She was the 21st century witch doctor we deserve. But like seeing the same psychic or palm-reader over and over, if you don’t have a sense of humor about it, you’re fucked. It costs the same and you never get better. No matter how long you’ve been spending money, the hustle has just begun.

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