If You Don't Know Me By Now,...

"What's truly funny is that something momentous is happening, and it's so real that the media can't see it. Here it is, the biggest story of all time, and it goes unreported. If you're continually focused on this and that media event, the latest celebrity scandal, the scattered wars of duality, the deceitful maneuverings of selfish politicians, and the shifting state of a false world economy, you just might miss the greater story. And this greater story is why we are here and what gives our lives meaning."

- Solara, How to Live Large on a Small Planet, 1996

"Much of our often confusing (and confused) nation is best understood in the context of mystical movements in the U.S."

David M. Kinchen, in a review of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation"

Despite the fact that I know I can't write, or even type, it gets to be insulting after awhile:

The famous libertarian blogger, Glenn Reynolds, links to Dana Loesh, "uncut", and speaking about the nation's "Snake Oil Salesmen".

The great conservative thinker, Thomas Sowell, speaks of Obama and his minions, using words like "charlatan", "fraud", "cult", and "con men".

The brilliant history professor, Victor Davis Hanson, writes "Once upon a time the people deluded themselves,..."

Meanwhile, Japan's First Lady claims she was abducted by aliens, and knew Tom Cruise in a previous life.

After 20 years on the air, Newsweek finally notices that NewAge "Health Advice on 'Oprah' Could Make You Sick".

ABDPBT Personal Finance just wrote of - and even encouraged - the "cult marketing" of Trader Joe's and Lululemon Athletica.

And just yesterday, for some unknown reason, Google was running a graphic of crop circles.

So what's my point - and my problem? These are all topics of this blog - every one of them an example of a cultish and/or cult-inspired NewAge totem - but, somehow, not only am I, and my blog, unworthy of respect but so is this most important of topics.

While everyone else either merely mentions it, or talks vaguely about this phenomena around me - but rarely tries to draw the strands together into a cohesive narrative that could explain how and why all this is happening - TMR faces ridicule, dismissal, and even anger that I would dare posit the NewAge Movement as the major force that's pushing us into what, by all the evidence, appears to be a world increasingly going insane.

I'm one of the few people in America who gets upset at the idea of the NewAge "movement" - that there is a large segment of the population that's been operating without any checks or balances, while getting away with murder, holding enormous political influence over us, and has been for decades because most people think them too flakey to be of any threat. That assumption - that they're "harmless" - has always been the best cover these "believers" have received for the mayhem they cause in others lives. Why, I'd even go so far as to say that, if that's your attitude about NewAge "thinking" - that it's nothing to fret about - then you, too, can include yourself as a huge part of America's, and the Western World's, current problems.

Most of you who read this blog regularly know I started in this line of study because of my french ex-wife, Karine Anne Brunck. If you met her (and that's something you'd never want to do) you'd think she was the nicest, most charming human being you could ever know. She's a great cook, voices compassion for all people, and can be a lot of fun at parties (if you know what I mean,...) but she's also a NewAger who thinks she has magic "powers", the dead talk to her personally, and she can walk through walls.

Oh, and by the way, she killed her own mother.

Also, while acting as the accomplice to a french quack named "Dr." Robert Wohlfahrt, she went on to kill two other people. Of course, I tried to stop this madness after I discovered Karine killed her mother ("You're just saying that because you don't believe [in NewAge]" she told me) but since no one would take my word for it at the time (including our friends here and in France, the police here and in France, the medical authorities here and in France, lawyers, both, here and in France - no one) it took two years - and two more deaths - before the medical authorities, and a french publication called Tonic Magazine, decided these people were "dangerous".

You see, Karine Anne Brunck and "Dr." Robert Wohlfahrt were too nice, too giving, too NewAge to have committed a series of such heinous crimes. But, despite all those good surface qualities, the french medical authorities have since decided to strip the good "doctor" of his practice, and Tonic Magazine decided to embark on a series of covers featuring the "homeopathic" physician - including him in one issue on "Cultism In France" - and, from what I hear, the french police are (finally) involved.

In case you couldn't figure it out for yourself yet, it was my efforts to doggedly persist in exposing these murders - becoming the kind of person who didn't suffer fools gladly - that eventually garnered my "macho" reputation, and led to the title of this blog.

This experienced changed me. It made me keenly aware of these things called "beliefs" and not only who holds them, but where they can lead - which, once I got beyond the surface of the NewAger's claims, never seemed to be anywhere good - especially not in anything resembling the moral or ethical sense. I was plunged into a world where, from top-to-bottom, opposites abound to such an extent that I was forced to learn a new word:

Solipcism.

In this new solipsistic world, not only is plain water considered to be a new powerful medicine ("Homeopathy") but quacks of all stripes are celebrated as visionaries. People with no experience at anything are "believed" to be excellent candidates for "life coaches". Yoga, a 5,000 year old "spiritual practice" that's known to drive people in India mad, is now the new exercise of the West - and especially for women, who increasingly appear to be joining their insane Indian counterparts. Americans, who used to be known for their practicality, are spending up to 50 cents more for "organic" vegetables, though there's little evidence they receive any benefit beyond feeling good - about themselves - for doing so.

A Richmond, California SPCA worker locks her dog in an over-heated car and her fellow animal lovers say they respect her even more. "The Material Girl" is now a multi-divorced "spiritual" activist who insisted we put Kabbalah water in nuclear reactors, and whose most recent admission - to have abandoned a more talented friend, Michael Jackson, to an untimely death - was greeted with applause.

She also backed the most liberal senator in history, who is also greeted, not as a racially-motivated socialist crank with no real credentials for the job, but as an amazing centrist worthy of the presidency because he insists we Americans spend all of our money, and borrow even more, as we must go for broke to get rich quick. (Yea, that's the ticket!)

And, of course, there's Oprah.

The diva of daytime talk seemed to be leading America into every kooky idea my ex held and, just like with Karine, it's taken years for even a few ordinary Americans to start catching on to how full of shit she and her "ideas" are - but they understand that fact just enough to mention it, never to say shut up, or go away, no matter how much damage her "advice" has caused - including now, after we find ourselves saddled with her sorry choice for a leader, AKA "The One".

Really, anyone who suggests such a thing is an enemy of,...well, what exactly?

None of it adds up to a hill of beans - which is all we'll apparently be left with when this crew is done with us.

Most importantly, to me, few seem to see any connection between the NewAge "belief system" that's guiding all this, and the systematic deconstruction of what we used to "think". They have internalized the idea that this "non-judgemental" approach to NewAgers making America deliberately fall apart is what life in this country is all about - even what it should be - as though we never had the power to say no, it doesn't have to this way, we can stop celebrating those who obviously lack scruples, who make outrageous claims, and spread the most grievous misinformation.

But I say "Yes We Can" decide that NewAge rhymes with "sewage" and take our country back. As distasteful as it sounds to some, we CAN begin the ugly and arduous task of weeding these nut cases out of our media saturated society and demand they explain what they've been up to and why. We don't have to wait to see where this leads - we already know where it leads (it leads to everything we know and love dying) and we CAN make it stop.

The NewAgers don't think we have it in us. They don't think we can stand the idea of witch hunts - as more and more of them declare themselves witches, out to destroy what was the status quo - to wreck The American Dream. To wreck what worked.

They think we've internalized the "non-judgmental" ethos they claim to uphold, but - as the last 8 years of unwarranted political attacks prove - an ethos they've never lived by.

I've personally paid a terrible price for assigning myself the role of NewAge whistle-blower. I've lost everything, including my friends, my credibility, and my former life. To be so casually ignored, when I can see and know with 100% accuracy - just like with my wife's murders - that the source of all this trouble, including Barack Obama's presidency, is what's being so carelessly bandied about by the new media gatekeepers of the Left and Right (AKA my more genteel "bettors" like Reynolds) but, as it's occurring, there's so little real investigation it makes any mention of it by these learned men and women worthless, and consigns me to a "Groundhog Day" existence where the reality, and substance, of my wife's horrible crimes can repeat over and over, daily, but now on a much larger scale.

As self-serving as it may sound, I see myself as America's "Native Son" - a black citizen, patriot, and veteran for these United States who (even when I didn't understand it) has always tried to be "good" in the face of NewAge's ever-encroaching evil - and, if only for that reason alone, I think my blog and I finally deserve better, from Professor Reynolds and others, as do we all.

Work to expose the NewAge. Expose the whole damn ugly thing.