Spell It Out (Because Few Can Willingly Say It)

I'm not sure, but in all my days of watching and participating in American politics - which started back around 1979 - I don't think I'd ever heard anyone mentioning anything about cult involvement before, had you? I mean, was anybody discussing "The Cult of Nixon" during the feverish days of Watergate? Yet check out today's quote from Gawker's sources about the followers of John Edwards:

"[Andrew] Young's devotion was typical of the 'cultish' fervor Edwards brought out in his staffers. This is why, says our source, who is close to [Rielle] Hunter, major media organizations could not stand up the affair story despite well-intentioned efforts. 'They [staffers] would do anything to stop it coming out — they lied, they bullied, they called reporters' editors and bad-mouthed them, they exchanged access.'"

Even further, take a look at another of today's quotes, this time from James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal:

"One can see why Obama might have been overly impressed with himself. Here's a guy who became president of the United States just four years out of the Illinois Senate, and along the way developed a cultlike following. It sounds as though Obama became a follower as well as figurehead of his own cult of personality."

In the same column, Taranto describes Barack Obama's reaction to a challenge as the same as Edwards' "cultish" staff: "Obama spoils for a 'fight' when self-reflection is in order." Is that knee-jerk behavior the result of cultish thinking? It's exactly the same reaction one gets when they go against the "church" of Scientology,...

Anyone who's been following this blog knows I've got lots of quotes regarding the president and cultism. What I don't have is a lot of quotes from folks attempting to get to the cultural heart of the matter. They're not even interested. Oh, they'll gladly describe all the signifiers of cultism and/or cultish thinking, but they can't be bothered to ask what's going on within our society to produce such large dollops of this phenomena. They'll gladly lay it out there, but there's been absolutely no follow-up - from anybody - as far as I can tell. Let's look at another interesting quote from today, this one from Bret Stephens and also from The Wall Street Journal:

"Stockholm Syndrome: 'A term used to describe the positive bond some kidnap victims develop with their captor.'

Copenhagen Syndrome: The peculiar psychology of Barack Obama's first year in office.

Let's expand on that a bit. In September, Mr. Obama paid a semi-impromptu visit to Copenhagen to make a personal appeal for Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid. It failed. The nice way to think about it: The president was trying to win one for Team America. Less nice: It was a feckless and unpresidential errand on behalf of the Chicago political machine to which he remains beholden.

And then there's the possibility that Mr. Obama really believed that he alone could pull the rabbit out of the hat. Not Dick Daley, not the First Lady. This one would require the full Barack abracadabra."

Hmmm. That third suggestion - an even worse one, coming totally out of the blue - clearly says The Wall Street Journal thinks the President of the United States might be engaging in magical thinking ("the full Barack abracadabra") but, still, no alarm bells go off in anyone's mind that magical thinking (or delusional thinking) is a key component of all this cultism everyone's mentioning in passing. They definitely aren't responding like they did when Tom Cruise was discovered on video saying that only a Scientology cultist, like Cruise, could really respond in a crisis. Same thinking as Obama's, totally different response from observers - even though everyone's aware Obama was assisted into office by Oprah Winfrey, a known NewAger, who not only specializes in selling magical thinking, but also famously brought us The Secret, the "spiritual" musings of the mentally disturbed Eckhart Tolle, and, of course, James Arthur Ray, the NewAge leader, now under investigation for multiple murders. Is this all a coincidence? Including the fact no one's talking about what it means, in light of the decline we see happening in our country? Considering what we know of Oprah's beliefs, why was her endorsement of Obama, as "The One", credible?

Last night, as I was driving home, I was listening to a conversation some radio personality was having with Ram Dass, and at one point, while discussing the effects of LSD, Dass started talking about how we're all capable of becoming one with everything - including trees. "Look, I'm a tree" he said, but the announcer he was discussing his drug use with never said that's crazytalk. No, they just went right on talking in this vein, like it's totally normal and logical for two adults to think Ram Dass is a plant that lives by the process of photosynthesis.

Think about how much of this nonsense our society is inundated with. Since the '60's - let's say, starting with The Beatles infatuation with the "teachings" of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, which, by the way, has led many to jump around on their behinds declaring they're "flying" - American society has been bombarded with this stuff: is it really that outlandish to think that now - as the Baby Boomers have finally attained power - all that muddled thinking has had an effect? That one of the "mantras" of Werner Erhard's est, "What's So is also So What?" (which was taught to many major corporations and government agencies throughout the western world, to motivate they're workers) could've reduced our current leader's minds to a state that would make their social contributions worthless? I mean, is it just me, or (beyond gobs of government control - with already-indoctrinated Boomers in charge) don't they seem to have run out of practical ideas? And the groupthink (now labeled as partisanship because such lunacy has received a negative reaction) is incredible. Again: is this just an accident - or is it the natural progression of a decades old ideology, known as NewAge, running amok on, and through, American society?

Senator Tom Harkin was led to think bee pollen cured his asthma - and he still can't be talked out of it. So he and Bill Clinton (another Boomer enamoured with NewAge ideas) have since saddled us with the $29 billion (but, based on their results, still almost worthless) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. [Kimball C. Atwood IV, M.D., via Wikipedia again:] "The NCCAM continues to fund and promote pseudoscience."

And, in case you don't know it already, pseudoscience plays a very big role in the world of NewAge cultism.

Even more startling than knowing our leaders are keeping this money-sucking House of Malarkey going, even during a recession, is the fact that so few saw anything wrong with it from the beginning. But why should they? Even Yale University has spoken of constructing a "more fluid concept of evidence" for the "magic water" known as Homeopathy. (Sold in fine NewAge-oriented stores, like Whole Foods, nation wide.) The New York Times writes credulously of NewAge "Pet Psychics". The entire culture is saturated with it. TIME Magazine (which has been known to promote more-than-a-bit of NewAge nonsense themselves) wondered if Jim Carrey had lost his mind by the time cultish thinking got him. Now he's acknowledged as one of the leaders - along with Jenny McCarthy, his porn star girlfriend - of the dangerous and wrong-headed movement to stop children from receiving vaccines.

"There was nothing legit,...about [Reille] Hunter’s behavior. It was freaky, wildly inappropriate, and all too visible. She flirted outlandishly with every man she met. She spouted New Age babble, rambled on about astrology and reincarnation, and announced to people she had just met, 'I’m a witch.'"

But for some reason - out of all the women in the world - this is the charmer John Edwards cheated on his wife with, while also sacrificing a first tier political career. The quote, above, is from John Heilemann and Mark Halperin's book, Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime . [Wikipedia:] "According to the book, Edwards angrily rejected requests by his advisers to distance himself from Hunter." Given the description, above, such devotion between two Boomers begs the question: why - exactly? Considering the many foolish precepts supporting NewAge beliefs, is it really too "out there" to suggest that astrology, reincarnation, and witches are '60's occult affectations that John Edwards - and many, many others - have grown so comfortable with, such foolishness can slip right by the critical faculties, just as easily as Ram Dass' imagining he's a tree?