Actress, author, and radio talk show host Shirley MacLaine was a guest on the overnight talk show Coast to Coast AM with George Noory on November 14, 2007. Noory talked with her about her latest book, Sage-ing While Age-ing.
GN: “…you also know that this planet is being divided between the haves and the have-nots where the—those people in charge are getting greedier for power, greedier for more wealth and I don’t know how much wealth you have to have…. You said something pretty fascinating in your book in terms of, you know, the obsession people who have wealth, why they have to keep buying more--bigger houses, more cars. You know, why can’t they just be simple about what they have? And I see this divide, Shirley, is getting to the point where it’s got to stop and come back in or we’re going to have a planetary problem.”
SM: “Yah, I think we already do. But, I think everyone wants more because they’re frightened. And we’ve been so schooled on materialism. That is really basically our god, is materialism. That makes us feel better, or certainly equal to prayer, or to meditation. I would say that materialism is what we should be warning ourselves against. Now, the fact that we are divided between the haves and the have-nots—I think the real problem might be I the middle where people are not—the ones who are in the middle, who have just enough, but have to eke out their existence with hard work, and unhappiness and quiet lives of desperation. That might be the real problem. Because those who are very poor sometimes have a high, high level of spirituality. And those who are very wealth—if they can get past the greed—they can turn into top benefactors for the rest of humanity. I mean, look at Bill Gates and Warren Buffet and some of those people. The ones in the middle are the ones I’m worried about. And that’s my identification, because I’m a middle class person. Never with more than $300 in the bank in the family treasury, so to speak. So, I identify with them and that’s who I want to help.”
GN: “Good for you. Well, you understand them and you begin to appreciate the fact that the middle class has been eroding away….”
SM: [Yes.]
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It's too late . Too late for the middle class of the U.S.. Corporate anarchists have destroyed the world. They've sold us out to Red China and we in non-European nations are still thought of as serfs to the "old" royals and Nobility and the "new" royals and nobility put in place by the Roman Catholic Church over the last two millenia. That's what Globalism is all about: to consolidate the world's serfs, the more efficiently to use them. Most of the power and profit goes straight into the vatican coffers; secondly into Saudi money purses and hirdly into Red China's PLA military machine. The United States of America and Her Democratic Ideal is toast. :"(
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed."
- Herman Melville on the arrogance of the wealthy (such as Ms MacLaine about how the "poor are spiritual")
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