This is among the most profound messages you have ever written and so necessary at this time in our History! We all need to SHARE this! Thanks Marrianne.
Marianne! How refreshingly true your words are. These words irrigate my heart and mind filling it with waters of strength and courage. I am on the list for the scheduled book review. 🕊️
Knowing you in Michigan since the late 90’s, your work has inspired me. Look forward to joining you reviewing Healing the Soul of America. Ironically I brought original book for your signature to the Detroit debate.
And Lincoln's Gettysburg address - "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ... a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
This is profound and a great continuation of the conversation you had with Brooke. It IS a great responsibility and privilege to stand for democracy and Love.
Marianne. I'm a huge fan and agree wholeheartedly about the crisis that is Trump. But our country was created on the idea "all men are created equal"?? Our country was built on the genocide of the native Americans and slavery. And we call ourselves the land of the free. It's almost funny if it weren't so tragic. There are alot of great things about America but let's not sugarcoat our history - and what this country was built on. At the same time I hope (and think) the country is waking up to the disaster having Trump as our president is. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican so i hope I can see this with some neutrality. But I still can't comprehend how there are still people who support Trump. Sure the tech companies and billionaires purely out of financial self interest. But can any average person stand behind him ideologically? It seems hard to fathom. His interest is so clearly and blatantly about enriching himself.
We can talk about this without sugarcoating this country's history.
I like Marianne because she has a 'Very Big Heart '. She loves all the Founding Fathers and admires Abraham Lincoln. But like Gregory, I see them all without Rose- colored glasses.
The race of people that were lower than the Blacks to Lincoln was the Indian's. Just 5 days prior to Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation on 1/1/1863, Lincoln hanged 38 Dakoda Indians on a Minnesota reservation because of an uprising over delinquent rations by the U.S. government.
And just for the record... the Emancipation Proclamation cleverly only freed the slaves in the southern Confederate states to induce chaos upon the Slavocracy regime. Regular southerners, hatred the slave owners and were only fighting to protect their own homes and families.
The Blacks were only used as prawns as Lincoln always wanted to deport them all to Jamaica.
When the Northern armies brought all the free slaves up North... they were only used to provide a wedge to break the union factories with cheap labor.. In the 1865 Election between George McCllenan & Lincoln... Lincoln had all his Republican Generals hold all their soldiers on base where they could not get to a polling spot to vote for McCllenan, whom they loved to serve under .
Under, the effects of opium.. that Grant took for his eminent throat cancer... he admitted that Lincoln promised to replace all the lives lost to whom his wife referred to as'the Butcherl Grant' as long as the General would March on to Richmond without stopping.. no matter the toll on human carnage. In just a few short months, Grant 's casualty rate was more than Lee's entire 47K maned Army.
But the kicker for ' Every man is created Equal' was during the Reconstruction Period.. Lincoln took away all the rights to vote from anyone who served in the CSA and only allowed the Slave holders and the Blacks to vote. Women were not yet allowed. This is what brought on the all the Civil Rights disparity that lasted up until this very day.
The Civil War was never about freeing the Slaves. It was about ushering in the Industrial Revolution for the Elites.
Just as the U S A is not at all interested in the emigrants.
Now, we are all slaves to the abomination of this government.
And I personally believe it will be the Immigrants who save us... as they understand that we are the people of this country being sanctioned by those in Power.
Maybe... I'll take that as an affirmation that you could at least consider the possibility of that scenario occurring.
I must tell you... looking at your profile and reading your words ... you strike me as what I can only describe as this... very articulate, well educated and highly successful woman who entertains herself along the fringes of
of high society. Somewhere akin to the character of a 'Annie Hall' in the Woody Allan movie. Your very appealing! I refrained from saying 'mysterious' as you seemed to be taken back by that word last time I used that to describe you.
The difference in the way Marianne and yourself view men stems possible from the kind you grew up with. As a Blue Collar outside worker for Ma Bell in New Jersey ..I came to see the lower echelon of society's work force as what I can describe as regular guys and true working class heroes. It was the 'higher up's' I was always skeptical of. Which led to the way I viewed the World and it's chosen authoritative figures.
During that time... Annie Hall types frowned upon guys who had dirt under their fingernails so I never really crossed paths with them.
"Man is by nature a political animal" (or "social animal")."Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good"."We must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions"."Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to... is either a beast or a god"."The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity"."Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism". -here few more Aristotle on politics may be illuminating. These days it’s hard to say anything helpful, but I’m still trying!
I think it’s that ‘egotism’ that works out of separateness drives tyrants. Those needing the simple things in life and work wish live the common good and ethical community don’t become tyrants.
Perhaps it’s a statement like Jesus’s “Man does not live by bread alone.” These days we may say ‘Man does not live by money alone!’ An inner life of ethical world imagination and healthy community needed too.
Look at the polls... a lot of people are leaving the Red Team. Things have gotten so bad, that more people are starting to wake up to this new reality. And the Blue Team is also having an awakening, many are fed up with the Corporate Dems. The days of the billionaires and the corporations buying and owning our politicians (Red and Blue) is coming to an end. So many bad things are happening at once, that this may finally be the time when American politics can change and pull out from the democracy death spiral that has been happening for decades. Just maybe, finally We the People will stand up and unite against the greed and corruption that has been taking this country down a dead-end highway to nowhere for far too long. United we stand, divided we fall. The oligarchs ploy of dividing us is wearing very thin! This could be the time when... We the People finally say in unison... enough is enough! We will see. Look at what happened in Hungary. They voted out their autocrat of 16 years. Imagine a UNITED States of America. That would change everything. The Buddha talked about the middle path. Jesus said "Love your neighbor". Plato argued that government should work for the people by fostering virtue and serving the common good rather than selfish interests. The Tao Te Ching emphasizes working together through harmony, balance, and "non-contention". Confucius emphasized that everyone working together is achieved through mutual respect, reciprocal kindness (the Golden Rule). He taught that individuals should cultivate personal virtue to create social harmony, fostering a community where people support each other's growth, study together, and act with loyalty. The Founding Fathers gave us the unique and wonderful gift of democracy. That gift has never been perfect, many founders owned slaves, and slaves were not freed until 1863, women could not vote until 1920, and blacks did not have Civil Rights until 1964 and voting rights until 1965. Our democracy is a "work in progress". The Citizens United ruling of 2010, by the Conservative Supreme Court allowed UNLIMITED money in politics, and since that time a tsunami of money has flooded our political system by large corporations and billionaires, thus letting this avalanche of money buy "our" politicians to do "their" bidding. We the People must WAKE UP and take back "our" democracy from the rich and powerful "few" that want to rule over the "many". Democracy is not a noun, it is a verb. A verb describes "action"... doing something, working toward the goal of finally realizing the true spirit and blessings that only a liberated and living democracy can achieve! Therefore we must vote WISELY by picking candidates that will work for the people and not for the wealthy few and the large corporations, and then get involved in whatever way we can to work toward making democracy work for ALL, not just the few. And one last thing... we must stop letting the oligarchs , the rich elites, divide us any longer. We the People must UNITE and at last become the UNITED States of America. And then we will have health-care for all, education for all, affordability for all, good jobs for all, etc... in short a country that works for us ALL! Let this 250th year of America be the year that we FINALLY grasp the golden promise of democracy!! And as Dr King said... "Let freedom ring, let freedom ring."
Thank you. Have you ever read Howard Thurman's DEMOCRACY and the SOUL OF AMERICA? It was published from a collection of his sermons written many years ago. I think you'll find it offers a lot in alignment with your thoughts offered here.
I believe that you are in denial. How can men write and sign such magnificent documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and simultaneously own a group based on their color and rape enslaved women? Those people who held on to that evil practice then are the ancestors of those who want to go back to it today. We are where we are because a large majority of white people won't make reckoning with that fact their moral priority.
If you've read my books or followed my career at all, you'll hardly think I"m in denial. 41 Signers of the Declaration were slaveowners, yet even they risked their lives to sign that document. I can't imagine anyone at the time not realizing the gap between the iives they lived - not all of them, mind you - and what they sacrificed for the country. We were born as a country out of a strange and ironic dichotomy; that bipolar consciousness has always been with us. It's baked into the cake. We've been slaveowner and Abolitionist, institutional oppressor of women and the Women's Suffragist, segregationist and Civil Rights activist. We have always displayed both the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer. The question is, what will we be in our time? And do you think our descendants will look back on us very charitably given what we've done to the earth, our militarism, and how we elected Donald Trump twice? As far as the white nationalists who are back - and you're right that they're the same crowd - it's certainly worth mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War so that slavery as an institution could be abolished. Again, it's our turn to do what WE need to do. And many of us have called for that reckoning. I know I have.
That’s a powerful reflection, but it leans on sweeping moral certainty and unified intent. Discernment matters. The concern about eroding principles and complacency is valid, but framing it as a single collapse driven by “barbarians” turns a complex, contested landscape into a fixed moral story. That risks replacing analysis with narrative. If the goal is to defend founding principles, the case is stronger when it distinguishes clearly, shows specifics, and avoids collapsing all disagreement into one category.
Great essay. One question is how technology and marketing can distort values you describe. If machines make or give advice is there loss of appreciation of the principles you describe. Just asking.
I think a marketing mentality has poisoned areas of life where marketing should have no place. And social media has only made things worse. We're so easily manipulated by technology, by things we see on the Internet. Having been the victim of marketing campaigns intent on making me appear to be other than the person I am, I'm deeply aware of how such a thing can create a kind of alternative universe in people's minds. Truth becomes secondary. Only an ethical revolution can begin to fix this.
This is among the most profound messages you have ever written and so necessary at this time in our History! We all need to SHARE this! Thanks Marrianne.
Thank you
Marianne! How refreshingly true your words are. These words irrigate my heart and mind filling it with waters of strength and courage. I am on the list for the scheduled book review. 🕊️
~ from a gurl living in the city of angels
Knowing you in Michigan since the late 90’s, your work has inspired me. Look forward to joining you reviewing Healing the Soul of America. Ironically I brought original book for your signature to the Detroit debate.
HI, Cynthia...yes we do go way back! Sending much love.
Marianne-what a brilliant articulation of truth. Your words brilliantly captured the pulse of America.
You provide a voice of saneness in an insane world. Thank you for being here :)
And Lincoln's Gettysburg address - "a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. ... a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Let's hope the midterms will be our Gettysburg. It turned things around.
Yeah. Let's hope and trust that we are ready to stand like the heroes at Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top that Lincoln honored.
This is profound and a great continuation of the conversation you had with Brooke. It IS a great responsibility and privilege to stand for democracy and Love.
Bravo, very well-articulated.
This is a great discussion. Thanks for getting it started, Marianne.
I am excited that barring unforseen circumstance I will be able to participate in the book club zoom. I am looking forward to that!
Marianne. I'm a huge fan and agree wholeheartedly about the crisis that is Trump. But our country was created on the idea "all men are created equal"?? Our country was built on the genocide of the native Americans and slavery. And we call ourselves the land of the free. It's almost funny if it weren't so tragic. There are alot of great things about America but let's not sugarcoat our history - and what this country was built on. At the same time I hope (and think) the country is waking up to the disaster having Trump as our president is. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican so i hope I can see this with some neutrality. But I still can't comprehend how there are still people who support Trump. Sure the tech companies and billionaires purely out of financial self interest. But can any average person stand behind him ideologically? It seems hard to fathom. His interest is so clearly and blatantly about enriching himself.
We can talk about this without sugarcoating this country's history.
The last thing I've ever done is sugar-coated our history.
Bless you.
I like Marianne because she has a 'Very Big Heart '. She loves all the Founding Fathers and admires Abraham Lincoln. But like Gregory, I see them all without Rose- colored glasses.
The race of people that were lower than the Blacks to Lincoln was the Indian's. Just 5 days prior to Lincoln's famous Emancipation Proclamation on 1/1/1863, Lincoln hanged 38 Dakoda Indians on a Minnesota reservation because of an uprising over delinquent rations by the U.S. government.
And just for the record... the Emancipation Proclamation cleverly only freed the slaves in the southern Confederate states to induce chaos upon the Slavocracy regime. Regular southerners, hatred the slave owners and were only fighting to protect their own homes and families.
The Blacks were only used as prawns as Lincoln always wanted to deport them all to Jamaica.
When the Northern armies brought all the free slaves up North... they were only used to provide a wedge to break the union factories with cheap labor.. In the 1865 Election between George McCllenan & Lincoln... Lincoln had all his Republican Generals hold all their soldiers on base where they could not get to a polling spot to vote for McCllenan, whom they loved to serve under .
Under, the effects of opium.. that Grant took for his eminent throat cancer... he admitted that Lincoln promised to replace all the lives lost to whom his wife referred to as'the Butcherl Grant' as long as the General would March on to Richmond without stopping.. no matter the toll on human carnage. In just a few short months, Grant 's casualty rate was more than Lee's entire 47K maned Army.
But the kicker for ' Every man is created Equal' was during the Reconstruction Period.. Lincoln took away all the rights to vote from anyone who served in the CSA and only allowed the Slave holders and the Blacks to vote. Women were not yet allowed. This is what brought on the all the Civil Rights disparity that lasted up until this very day.
The Civil War was never about freeing the Slaves. It was about ushering in the Industrial Revolution for the Elites.
Just as the U S A is not at all interested in the emigrants.
Now, we are all slaves to the abomination of this government.
And I personally believe it will be the Immigrants who save us... as they understand that we are the people of this country being sanctioned by those in Power.
Just saying.......
Maybe...
Maybe... I'll take that as an affirmation that you could at least consider the possibility of that scenario occurring.
I must tell you... looking at your profile and reading your words ... you strike me as what I can only describe as this... very articulate, well educated and highly successful woman who entertains herself along the fringes of
of high society. Somewhere akin to the character of a 'Annie Hall' in the Woody Allan movie. Your very appealing! I refrained from saying 'mysterious' as you seemed to be taken back by that word last time I used that to describe you.
The difference in the way Marianne and yourself view men stems possible from the kind you grew up with. As a Blue Collar outside worker for Ma Bell in New Jersey ..I came to see the lower echelon of society's work force as what I can describe as regular guys and true working class heroes. It was the 'higher up's' I was always skeptical of. Which led to the way I viewed the World and it's chosen authoritative figures.
During that time... Annie Hall types frowned upon guys who had dirt under their fingernails so I never really crossed paths with them.
But I would like to know more about you Joan...
So maybe?
Thanks again!
Men do not become tyrants in order that they may not suffer cold.
Aristotle, Politics
I don't understand that quote?
"Man is by nature a political animal" (or "social animal")."Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good"."We must lay it down that the association which is a state exists not for the purpose of living together but for the sake of noble actions"."Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to... is either a beast or a god"."The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity"."Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism". -here few more Aristotle on politics may be illuminating. These days it’s hard to say anything helpful, but I’m still trying!
I think it’s that ‘egotism’ that works out of separateness drives tyrants. Those needing the simple things in life and work wish live the common good and ethical community don’t become tyrants.
Perhaps it’s a statement like Jesus’s “Man does not live by bread alone.” These days we may say ‘Man does not live by money alone!’ An inner life of ethical world imagination and healthy community needed too.
Look at the polls... a lot of people are leaving the Red Team. Things have gotten so bad, that more people are starting to wake up to this new reality. And the Blue Team is also having an awakening, many are fed up with the Corporate Dems. The days of the billionaires and the corporations buying and owning our politicians (Red and Blue) is coming to an end. So many bad things are happening at once, that this may finally be the time when American politics can change and pull out from the democracy death spiral that has been happening for decades. Just maybe, finally We the People will stand up and unite against the greed and corruption that has been taking this country down a dead-end highway to nowhere for far too long. United we stand, divided we fall. The oligarchs ploy of dividing us is wearing very thin! This could be the time when... We the People finally say in unison... enough is enough! We will see. Look at what happened in Hungary. They voted out their autocrat of 16 years. Imagine a UNITED States of America. That would change everything. The Buddha talked about the middle path. Jesus said "Love your neighbor". Plato argued that government should work for the people by fostering virtue and serving the common good rather than selfish interests. The Tao Te Ching emphasizes working together through harmony, balance, and "non-contention". Confucius emphasized that everyone working together is achieved through mutual respect, reciprocal kindness (the Golden Rule). He taught that individuals should cultivate personal virtue to create social harmony, fostering a community where people support each other's growth, study together, and act with loyalty. The Founding Fathers gave us the unique and wonderful gift of democracy. That gift has never been perfect, many founders owned slaves, and slaves were not freed until 1863, women could not vote until 1920, and blacks did not have Civil Rights until 1964 and voting rights until 1965. Our democracy is a "work in progress". The Citizens United ruling of 2010, by the Conservative Supreme Court allowed UNLIMITED money in politics, and since that time a tsunami of money has flooded our political system by large corporations and billionaires, thus letting this avalanche of money buy "our" politicians to do "their" bidding. We the People must WAKE UP and take back "our" democracy from the rich and powerful "few" that want to rule over the "many". Democracy is not a noun, it is a verb. A verb describes "action"... doing something, working toward the goal of finally realizing the true spirit and blessings that only a liberated and living democracy can achieve! Therefore we must vote WISELY by picking candidates that will work for the people and not for the wealthy few and the large corporations, and then get involved in whatever way we can to work toward making democracy work for ALL, not just the few. And one last thing... we must stop letting the oligarchs , the rich elites, divide us any longer. We the People must UNITE and at last become the UNITED States of America. And then we will have health-care for all, education for all, affordability for all, good jobs for all, etc... in short a country that works for us ALL! Let this 250th year of America be the year that we FINALLY grasp the golden promise of democracy!! And as Dr King said... "Let freedom ring, let freedom ring."
Thank you. Have you ever read Howard Thurman's DEMOCRACY and the SOUL OF AMERICA? It was published from a collection of his sermons written many years ago. I think you'll find it offers a lot in alignment with your thoughts offered here.
I believe that you are in denial. How can men write and sign such magnificent documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and simultaneously own a group based on their color and rape enslaved women? Those people who held on to that evil practice then are the ancestors of those who want to go back to it today. We are where we are because a large majority of white people won't make reckoning with that fact their moral priority.
If you've read my books or followed my career at all, you'll hardly think I"m in denial. 41 Signers of the Declaration were slaveowners, yet even they risked their lives to sign that document. I can't imagine anyone at the time not realizing the gap between the iives they lived - not all of them, mind you - and what they sacrificed for the country. We were born as a country out of a strange and ironic dichotomy; that bipolar consciousness has always been with us. It's baked into the cake. We've been slaveowner and Abolitionist, institutional oppressor of women and the Women's Suffragist, segregationist and Civil Rights activist. We have always displayed both the best and the worst of what humanity has to offer. The question is, what will we be in our time? And do you think our descendants will look back on us very charitably given what we've done to the earth, our militarism, and how we elected Donald Trump twice? As far as the white nationalists who are back - and you're right that they're the same crowd - it's certainly worth mentioning the hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War so that slavery as an institution could be abolished. Again, it's our turn to do what WE need to do. And many of us have called for that reckoning. I know I have.
That’s a powerful reflection, but it leans on sweeping moral certainty and unified intent. Discernment matters. The concern about eroding principles and complacency is valid, but framing it as a single collapse driven by “barbarians” turns a complex, contested landscape into a fixed moral story. That risks replacing analysis with narrative. If the goal is to defend founding principles, the case is stronger when it distinguishes clearly, shows specifics, and avoids collapsing all disagreement into one category.
I've written books on the subject, if you're interested: HEALING THE SOUL OF AMERICA and THE POLITICS OF LOVE. This is a substack article!:)
Great essay. One question is how technology and marketing can distort values you describe. If machines make or give advice is there loss of appreciation of the principles you describe. Just asking.
I think a marketing mentality has poisoned areas of life where marketing should have no place. And social media has only made things worse. We're so easily manipulated by technology, by things we see on the Internet. Having been the victim of marketing campaigns intent on making me appear to be other than the person I am, I'm deeply aware of how such a thing can create a kind of alternative universe in people's minds. Truth becomes secondary. Only an ethical revolution can begin to fix this.
Thank you for replying and you're, as always, thoughtful comments!
Very good question!