Marianne Williamson was last night's clear winner, and the left immediately goes to DEFCON 1: NBC attacks saying her real name is Marianne Individualism
The
self-help guru’s supposedly empowering rhetoric masks a mean-spirited
individualism that would lead to harmful policies if she were somehow
elected. ... Williamson is a good illustration of how a creeping hippie Reaganism can actually hurt progressive ideals. ... Williamson's approach is not an accident or an
aberration. It's the natural outgrowth of an individualistic,
reactionary ideology which calls first for internal spiritual renewal
rather than for systemic cultural and political change. There's a direct
line from such thinking to blaming poor people for their poverty or
insisting that welfare payments corrupt recipients. Neoliberalism,
whether of the left or the right, ends up blaming marginalized people
for their own oppression. And once you've blamed them for their own
suffering, you shuffle off any obligation to change things to help them,
or to make the world more just.
