11:46:09 am on
Tuesday 19 Mar 2024

Dark Psychic Forces
Bob Stark

"Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.”
Abbie Hoffman

I note Trump has started trumpeting for 2020 by claiming all Democrats are socialists that will destroy the country as rich people know it. Let’s face it, folks, giving health care to undocumented immigrants is likely to close the curtains on the Democrats faster than on a Samuel Beckett play on a rainy night in rural Georgia. Policy, smolicy, you can start by promising building a wall and end up putting children in cages.


The struggle rages on.

The struggle within the Democratic Party is more than over the vast divide, as perceived by many pundits, in health care policies. The struggle is between the so-called Moderates and those uppity crazy Progressives, such as Bernie (Sanders) and Lizzie (Warren). It regards who can beat Trump.

Although the Bern and the Native American have serious alternative policies, the question is this: can they fight on the battlefield against a warrior that cheats, lies, uses any means necessary to win. The answer is a timid maybe.

So far, the only candidate that seems capable of meeting crazy with crazy is Marianne Deborah Williamson (MW), with her Course In Miracles, and the mythical battle between Good and Evil or as she would have it between “love” and “dark psychic forces.” After the 30 July 2019 debate, the internet was a-buzz or better to say a-click marathon search regarding this gaunt pale looking woman, fresh from a Munsters fan reunion. Somewhere between New Age NutBar and Guru for a Crippled Consciousness, Marianne has everybody talking, with many traditional pundits applauding her stance on several issues, but as they did with Trump, careful to state that she will never be President. Okay, so that is probably truer this time around.

Although lightning may never strike twice in the same place, Crazyville has no such cosmic restriction. What MW is, in comparison to others, is heart-felt, honest and, well, different, very different. She’s the outsider with books to sell.

Rather than ghostwritten tombs of self-admiration, MW wants to heal and send love into the world. This reminds me, in a way, of the Peter Sellers movie where he is the new preacher in town and by movie’s end, after he tried to make the city live by the gospel of Jesus, he has everyone tar-and-feathering him. Crosses are under construction as we speak.

If this were the 1960s, MW would be Abbie Hoffman. She’d run on the Yippie platform, as vice-president with a pig for president. Ah, those were the good old days.


Is Marianne Williamson the light at the end of the tunnel?

Maybe MW will levitate the bedchamber of Melania to confirm her earthly powers or put acid in the water of Flint, Michigan. Flint is another issue MW hit dead on, while her opponents seemed dumbstruck by the almost back-to-the-living for a night, witch-like looking woman at the end of the stage, cooking and serving a Wiccan stew while perhaps praying to the Moon Goddess.

Facts are useless and irrelevant. No amount of science has silenced the climate change skeptics. In reality, then, what she may have right is how this coming election is a battle for the soul of America and that would be a cultural war, a revolution, as much as the one with the muskets in Boston Harbour. That Bernie or Liz fail to draw a direct comparison is beyond me.

The Donald and the Koch Brothers don’t live in England or in castles, but they do rule from above and there are tax issues, again. This time the Harbour isn’t full of British ships, but rising waters due to climate change. It is time for a new Paul Revere driving an electric car thru the countryside screaming, “The Brutish are coming.”

If America loses this new revolutionary battle, freedom of thought, the hallmark of any democracy, will be dead and buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

How long Williamson stays in the race is unknown. She could be old news by the weekend, but I, for one, hope she continues to be the wacky contrarian; wacky, only in the sense that her message is oh-so around the blessed bend. She helps me understand, a bit more, why apostles were stoned or went off into the desert caves and ate locusts and honey.

Trump loves a good television show. He is like Chauncey the Gardner, in Being There, a remarkable novel, by Jerzy Kosinski, and movie, by Hal Ashby that starred Peter Sellers. Chauncey, however, was an overly sheltered gardener that became a trusted advisor to the powerful because of his simple mindedness; was he wise or a fool. You can’t leave Trump alone near the backyard shed where they keep the nukes.


Send in the clowns.

Light the lights. Send in the clowns, with the tubas and trombones. America: love it or levitate it. Go Crazy or Go Ommm.

Bob Stark is a musician, poet, philosopher and couch potato. He spends his days, as did Jean-Paul Sarte and Albert Camus, pouring lattes and other adult beverages into a recycled mug, bearing a long and winding crack. He discusses, with much insight and passion, the existentialist and phenomenological ontology of the Vancouver 'Canucks,' a hockey team, "Archie" comic books and high school reunions. In other words, Bob Stark is a retired public servant living the good life on the wrong coast of Canada.

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