Marianne Williamson's Remarks for Iowa Democratic Party Hall of Fame Dinner Sunday, June 9
(Cedar Rapids, IA) - "A goal that all of us have here today is that Democrats win the presidency in 2020.
Many people think we just need someone tough enough to defeat Donald Trump. But anyone who thinks we just need someone tough enough to take him on is naïve about the nature of the opponent. Something deeper, and more dangerous, is going on here than traditional political toughness knows how to handle.
Donald Trump has touched people in a very fearful place, and only love can cast out fear – not money, not strategy, not anger, not mobilization. And that in the final analysis, is the only thing that will defeat Donald Trump. Last time we won with hope; this time we’ll win with love. Ultimately, we will only win if we touch enough people’s hearts.
I know something about harnessing the emotions of large groups of people. Like everyone else, I am appalled by how the President has done that. But unlike many people here, I know something about how he has done it.
Donald Trump has built a career on harnessing fear, and I have built a career inspiring love.
Trump has spoken to a very dark, primal place within the human psyche, a place of fear that becomes like an emotional knot in people’s brains. And this knot cannot be unraveled by rationalistic thinking or intellectual argument. For I assure you: the part of the brain that rationally analyzes an issue is not the part of the brain that decides who to vote for.
That emotional knot can only be unraveled through the power of an equally primal place within the psyche. The only way to defeat a big lie is through the power of a big truth.
And the only big truth is the real truth – not the kind-of, sort-of truth that too often passes for truth among the political class. The real truth is not the truth of the moment but the truth of the ages, not a truth based on self-interest but a truth based on principle.
Republicans don’t walk their talk – we all know that -- but too often we don’t talk our walk. Over the last few decades, we have ceded words like morality and patriotism to those who were more than glad to take them out of our hands.
And boy have they. People who have passed policies destructive to everything family should stand for, have claimed to stand for “family values.” People who have passed policies that have created the largest income inequality since 1929, claim to have created a “good economy.” And people who have led us into unjustifiable wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people, still claim to be “stronger on security.”
Lies? Of course. But politically powerful? Yes. Why have they not been held accountable for their lies? Because too often Democrats have not held ourselves accountable to the truth. Too often we’ve been a party that stands for the right thing, but still cozies up to forces that do the wrong thing, thinking that if we do that it’s really okay because once we get into power then we will do the right thing. And we naively think that doesn’t smell to people, that the putrid stench of that more complicated corruption will not be wafting into the nostrils of the average voter.
In other words, too many Democrats are half-truth tellers. And Donald Trump will eat the half-truth tellers alive.
The real truth is how deeply corrupt our country has become, how we are no longer functioning as a “government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” but as a “government of a few of the people, by a few of the people, and for a few of the people.” We rejected such aristocratic nonsense in 1776, and we need to reject it again.
The political system has brought us to this point, and it’s time for the people to step in. The abolitionist movement led to the end of slavery when the people stepped in. The Women’s Suffrage movement gained women the right to vote when the people stepped in. The Civil Rights movement led to desegregation when the people stepped in. And now it’s our time. We the people need to step in now. We must step in and save millions of traumatized American children, whose despair has been simply normalized by the political system. We must step in and dismantle layers of systemic racism that has been tolerated by the political system. We must step in and stop supporting a national security agenda based more on defense contractor profits than plans for peace, that has been created by the political system.
That, to me, is brutally honest and deeply true. We need a nominee who is a radical truth-teller and an inspirer of hearts. To me, no less than that will win the White House in 2020. And that’s why I am here."
