Usually Christians compare me to John The Baptist, but now the cow's done it, and that illustrious endorsement makes me wonder if (as the NewAgers say) "I'm living up to my true potential." (Where's Jesus, looking for that head-bath, when I need him?)
On the other hand, there's this. Golly (as the Mormons say).
Can't I just be Joseph Smith, with his "seer stone," and fleece everybody in sight?
Naw, not my style. Mr. Straight-Up Viking Death March, that's me, and - like Big Bad John - I'll probably be the one made to pay for it, so, like, whatever. (That fucking cow knows me too well - great music in that clip!) Let's change the subject - what's in The Crack Emcee's NewAge Grab Bag today?
So, looking at the news, if anyone else wants to try and suggest I'm wrong in seeing what I see out there, I say they're welcome to come hang around awhile and it'll be they who will be proven wrong:
Somewhere in the recent past (say, about the time "Dreams From My Father" was published), liberals decided reality wasn't really their thing."
No, what's been happening may not be immediately apparent to the multitudes of less observant types, but eventually, everybody's going to catch up with the Crackster - it just takes 'em a while:
In ‘The Amateur’ Mr Klein claims that relations between Miss Winfrey and Mrs Obama took a nosedive over the chat show host’s close relationship with Mr Obama.
The book claims that in the weeks after the 2008 U.S. election victory Mr Obama gave Miss Winfrey’s advice ‘priority over Michelle’s’
Mr Klein writes: ‘When she (Winfrey) phoned, he dropped everything and took her call. They huddled over strategy. Of all of Obama’s unofficial White House advisers, Oprah had unparalleled access, input, influence, and power.’
Mr Klein quotes a White House insider who says that Mrs Obama was ‘furious’ about her husband’s late night phone calls to Miss Winfrey and that he should be turning to her for advice instead.
What can bother me is how they also miss the connections - the all-important connections - so I usually have to go through a few years of Hell, of being denounced, of being called obsessed, merely because I see patterns around us that are pretty obvious if more people would bother to really look:
The centre began to crumble as the sexual revolution, globalization and increased wealth led to the decline of the mainstream churches. In its place emerged a nation that turned to the extremes: from Glenn Beck to Oprah Winfrey. Yes, that Oprah. The queen of self-actualization, says Mr. Douthat, preaches a brand of spirituality that is self-centred, destructive and parasitic.
Mind you - I get it - it's hard to see the machinations of the "spirit" world. It's like trying to catch smoke in a jar because, let's face it, "occult" means "hidden" and these occultists don't want you to see any more than they allow. But when someone is as focussed as I am, I can't help but wonder why anyone doubts me. I'm on our side, and how NewAge works is going to come out anyway:
[Rielle] Hunter went on the run with [John Edwards' aide, Andrew Young] and his wife. Edwards' campaign finance chairman let them stay at his vacation mansion in Aspen, Colo., and paid for them to live in a $20,000-a-month manor in Santa Barbara, Calif. Hunter chose the location because it was close to her New Age spiritual adviser, Bob McGovern.
Hunter so relied on McGovern that when an Aspen restaurant served her a Reuben sandwich with the wrong sauce on it, she made an angry call to him to ask him to fix it, according to testimony at Edwards' trial.
It's like society is infested with gremlins, practicing the dark arts behind the scenes, disrupting lives and causing chaos, while flipping bad intentions (and behaviors) into "moral issues" on a whim:
Obama: Yeah, we’ve been fibbing about my position on same-sex marriage for a while now,…
The NewAge is driving us to avoiding the truth, and making us think attacking truth-tellers - and creating a nation of liars - is the height of "enlightenment," when it's (honestly) not working at all:
What HRC and other gay rights groups would like to sell the straight public is that gay couples are just like straight married couples. In many cases, they are. They are monogamous and have been together forever and raise their kids behind white picket fences. What they don't want you to know is that many gay couples, though married, civilly unionized, or otherwise commonlaw are inviting guys over for threeways, playing around with other guys on the side, or engaged in all other sorts of sexual hijinks. Yes, straight people have "swingers" but it seems like there is a stronger bent of "non-traditional arrangements" among the gays. It might be because gay men are horny bastards and because we didn't have your fiendish and chaste preset relationship constructs until recently when straight people decided it was time to stop treating us like second class citizens. Yeah, we may be married, but that doesn't mean we're dead or conforming to your rules.
I may not be the most successful blogger out there, but I know why, as others line up against me, time and again, to "do the right thing" without knowing where they got "the right thing" from. They call me a "bigot" because I claim I understand, and I do, but only because it's the same as it ever was:
As early as 1820, [Mormon leader, Joseph] Smith, at the age of about 19 years, began to assume the gift of supernatural endowments, and became the leader of a small party of shiftless men and boys like himself who engaged in nocturnal money-digging operations upon the hills in and about Palmyra.... Numbers of men and women, as was understood, were found credulous enough to believe "there might be something in it," who were induced by their confidence and cupidity to contribute privately towards the cost of carrying on the imposture, under the promise of sharing in the expected gains; and in this way the loaferly but cunning Smith, who was too lazy to work for his living, (his deluded followers did all the digging,) was enabled to obtain a scanty subsistence for himself without pursuing any useful employment. (Pomeroy Tucker Wayne Democratic Press, May 26, 1858)
So I leave you today with a warning, Ladies and Gents, as you line up on "the right side of history" (that's the area marked, "Suckers") and if you're smart, it's a warning you'll not soon forget:
Except for the cars - which were pretty ugly, and lousy, too - all gremlins are fictional creatures,…
O’Brien makes it clear that Hunter has some kind of unreported charismatic power, but doesn’t quite explain what Edwards saw in her that would prompt him to put his campaign (and party) at risk. …
Really? Out of the many bloggers we read and respect, Mickey Kaus is no slouch in the Thinking Department, so it seems odd to us he'd need more help from O'Brien (above) to sort that particular issue out.
Especially when she opened her piece this way:
Lisa Druck was trouble,...Yet we liked her. There was something charming and feral in her aggressive bubbliness. The seedier stuff bothered my prudish self, stories of strip poker and non-monogamy. But I was seeing her ex-boyfriend and if I wanted to keep him out of the riskier stuff, I had to like her. So I did.
Charming, feral, aggressive, bubbly, seedy, non-monogamous, and risky.
If you ask us, that's a lot for Ol' Mickey to work with - even if O'Brien is describing Hunter in the 1980s. Fortunately, she doesn't stop there, and paints a more recent picture of Hunter:
In 2004 I went to a dinner party for the anniversary of [our friend Jay McInerney's book] Bright Lights, Big City in New York, and there she was. She looked and acted nothing like frenetic, drama-dragging Lisa. We became fast friends, again. Lisa -- now Rielle -- was living in Boulder, in the carriage house of her former mother-in-law. I was doing publicity, website design and marketing. She wasn't doing a whole ton of anything, but she had some ideas.
A foundation was the center of the work, which we broadened to a website as a way of marketing her voice and image for a possible TV show, the "MTV guru." Rielle's friends Bob McGovern and Randy would help with logistics. We made a website. She paid for the domain name, I paid hosting. We spent five, six hours a day on the phone, gabbing and working.
She was really good at the guru stuff. Once I was on a miserable, rainy client trip. I moaned to Rielle. She was impatient, not loving my issues. "What are things you want?" she barked. I babbled about wanting prompt payment and value in my personal life. "No," she cut me off. "Money and love. Can you get those today? On this day? In the rain?" "Well, no..." I stammered. "Then focus on today. What's in front of you to do. The path. Don't be attached to outcomes. Don't DO, just BE." Oh. Ok. And the money and love came in time, as they will.
Soon the foundation and the website -- Being Is Free -- spiraled into too many months of fruitless work. I abandoned it. We spoke less, but a few months later, she was back on the beam. She had a crystal clear vision of what she wanted, and had moved to the New York area to stay with her friend Mimi. We rapidly filled in the site: her bio, cringingly titled 'Story of My Life,' a story of awakening called 'Shift Happens,' and 'Kids on Board,' the ever-important board of directors, which was mostly just a list of people helping Rielle. I came and went from this list. It was a fun gauge of how useful I was to old Lisa Druck.
Two sections remained blank: 'Fame I Am Lives Forever' and 'Where the Money Goes.' It's funny how those came in time, as they will.
As she made forays into yoga instruction in New York, there abruptly came a two-day silence. When she surfaced, it was loudly: "I met someone!" Her voice was thrilled. He must be really something. "What's his name?" "JOHN!" she sang. "Does he live in New York?" "No, North Carolina!" North Carolina? I pictured a skinny bearded guy, with enough money or mojo to catch her eye. "He's married," she quickly added, "small kids."
And there you have it. In Part I of this series, "The Safety Dance", we observed the bizarre, yet seemingly deliberate way bloggers discuss religion and spirituality, in an apparent attempt to avoid whatever troubles can arise from appearing to do so. Mickey Kaus appears to be engaged in just this behavior when he suggests that, with the wealth of information O'Brien lays at his feet, he somehow needs more before he can figure out what was going on between Edwards and Hunter.
But, in case we're wrong, let's clear it up for him:
A self-styled guru, spitting mindless pabulum like "Don't DO, just BE" (as in "Be Here Now") and is either into teaching or learning yoga to better bend over for married fathers?
The attraction was NewAge and sex, Mickey, though not necessarily always in that order.
Now before you say that's not enough for Edwards to "put his campaign (and party) at risk", we will remind you only one of them was necessary for Bill Clinton to put his presidency at risk. Also, Clinton, too, has shown a weakness for NewAge psychobabble, working as he has with Tony Robbins, and as his quoting cult leader Ken Wilber proves:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also been known to agree with Wilber's "Theory of Everything", as well as cavort with NewAge psychics.
I struck up a conversation with the woman at the next event, as we waited outside. She told me her name and asked me what my astrological sign was, which I thought was a little unusual. I told her. She smiled, and began telling me her life story: how she was working as a documentary-film maker, living with a friend in South Orange, N.J., but how she'd previously had "many lives." She'd worked, she said, as an actress and as a spiritual adviser. She was fiercely devoted to astrology and New Age spirituality. She'd been a New York party girl, she'd been married and divorced, she'd been a seeker and a teacher and was a firm believer in the power of truth.
She told me that she had met Edwards at a bar, at the Regency Hotel in New York. She thought he was giving off a special "energy."
...I would soon learn that there was no such thing as small talk with Rielle Hunter. She told me that she'd felt a connection to me when we'd first met, that she could tell I was a very old soul. This meant a lot to Rielle. Her speech was peppered with New Age jargon—human beings were dragged down by "blockages" to their actual potential; history was the story of souls entering and escaping our field of consciousness. A seminal book for her had been Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now." Her purpose on this Earth, she said, was to help raise awareness about all this, to help the unenlightened become better reflections of their true, repressed selves.
Her latest project was John Edwards. Edwards, she said, was an old soul who had barely tapped into any of his potential. The real John Edwards, she believed, was a brilliant, generous, giving man who was driven by competing impulses—to feed his ego and serve the world. If he could only tap into his heart more, and use his head less, he had the power to be a "transformational leader" on par with Gandhi and Martin Luther King. "He has the power to change the world," she said.
I had been nodding and sipping my wine through all this. "Do you talk about this stuff with the candidate?" I asked. "All the time," Rielle replied. "I'll lecture him on it when he's getting too much up in here," she said, gesturing toward her head. "He'll see a look on my face and say, 'Yes, I know, Rielle, "Power of Now" says …' "
...She hoped that with her unique eye for Edwards's true potential, she could show the world the real John Edwards and, in the process, help him to become the better version of himself.
So what's our point? We wouldn't hesitate to place a bet that somewhere around a quarter of the Democratic Party is somehow involved in some form of NewAge spirituality or another - and all without the public's notice or understanding of how it influences their leader's choices or what a politician's occult beliefs actually mean.
We'd also be willing to wager, if the public knew these things - and we mean really knew - they'd leave the Democratic Party in droves.
And it is TMR's contention they have every right to know. That it's about time somebody started speaking the truth about what's going on with the NewAge belief system in particular.
But what, exactly, would we tell them? Consider:
Rielle Hunter saw John Edwards - a white ambulance chasing lawyer and opportunistic politician - as the modern day equivalent of Martin Luther King.
And, since we all remember Bill Clinton was also seen, somehow, as America's "first black president" (until reality set in) we think that's also a pretty good place to start.
Oh, man, how messed up can a life get after hooking up with a NewAger? Read it and weep - or laugh, your choice:
Attorneys for a former aide to John Edwards today sought a court order to compel the two-time presidential candidate to provide additional information in a dispute over ownership of a sex tape he allegedly made with his mistress.
Edwards gave a sworn deposition in the case last month.
The details of the court filing are shielded from public view because of a broad protective order sought by Edwards' attorneys in advance of the deposition and issued last year by the judge. But if the court were to grant a hearing on the motion, it is possible that a transcript of Edwards' deposition, or portions of it, could be entered into the public record.
Edwards' testimony was taken in Chapel Hill last month in connection with the civil suit filed by his mistress, Rielle Hunter, against Andrew Young and his wife, Cheri.
Andrew Young, a former close aide to Edwards, claimed in 2007 that he was the father of Hunter's child, but retracted that assertion last year and published a tell-all book, writing that he took the fall for Edwards as part of an elaborate and expensive cover-up of the affair designed to protect Edwards' political aspirations.
Hunter brought the suit in January 2010, days before the publication date of Young's book, "The Politician." At the center of the suit is Hunter's allegation that Young took from her a "personal and private" videotape that depicts Edwards and Hunter in a sexual encounter, as well as a series of photographs that include images of Edwards with his daughter, Quinn, who turned 3 last week.
Attorneys for Hunter and Edwards, who is not a party in the lawsuit, have pointedly accused Young of trying to sell the sex tape and of using it to promote his book and a forthcoming film adaptation by Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.
America has probably supplied the world with more new religions than any other nation. Since the first half of the 19th century, the country's atmosphere of religious experimentation has produced dozens of movements, from Mormonism to a wide range of nature-based practices grouped under the name Wicca.
By 1970 the religious scholar Jacob Needleman popularized the term "New Religious Movements" (NRM) to classify the new faiths, or variants of old ones, that were being embraced by the Woodstock generation. But how do we tell when a religious movement ceases to be novel or unusual and becomes a cult?
It's a question with a long history in this country. The controversy involving Hollywood writer-director Paul Haggis is only its most recent occurrence. Mr. Haggis left the Church of Scientology and has accused it of abusive practices, including demands that members disconnect from their families, which the church vigorously denies.
Now's where they go for the argument we hear all too often:
To use the term cult too casually risks tarring the merely unconventional, for which America has long been a safe harbor. In the early 19th century, the "Burned-over District" of central New York state—so named for the religious passions of those who settled there following the Revolutionary War—gave rise to a wave of new movements, including Mormonism, Seventh-Day Adventism and Spiritualism (or talking to the dead). It was an era, as historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom wrote, when "Farmers became theologians, offbeat village youths became bishops, odd girls became prophets."
When the California Gold Rush of 1849 enticed settlers westward, the nation's passion for religious novelty moved with them. By the early 20th century, sunny California had replaced New York as America's laboratory for avant-garde spirituality. Without the weight of tradition and the ecclesiastical structures that bring some predictability to congregational life, some movements were characterized by a make-it-up-as-you-go approach that ultimately came to redefine people, money and propriety as movable parts intended to benefit the organization.
Many academics and observers of cult phenomena, such as psychologist Philip G. Zimbardo of Stanford, agree on four criteria to define a cult. The first is behavior control, i.e., monitoring of where you go and what you do. The second is information control, such as discouraging members from reading criticism of the group. The third is thought control, placing sharp limits on doctrinal questioning. The fourth is emotional control—using humiliation or guilt. Yet at times these traits can also be detected within mainstream faiths.
The writer, Mitch Horowitz, then goes on to add two more categories:
Financial control and extreme leadership.
Financial control translates into levying ruinous dues or fees, or effectively hiring members and placing them on stipends or sales quotas. Consider the once-familiar image of Hare Krishna devotees selling books in airports. Or a friend of mine—today a respected officer with a nonprofit organization—who recalls how his departure from the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church was complicated by the problem of a massive hole in his résumé, reflecting the years he had financially committed himself to the church.
Problems with extremist leadership can be more difficult to spot. The most tragic cult of the last century was the Rev. Jim Jones's Peoples Temple, which ended with mass murder and suicide in the jungles of Guyana in 1978. Only a few early observers understood Jones as dangerously erratic. Known for his racially diverse San Francisco congregation, Jones was widely feted on the local political scene in the 1970s. He was not some West Coast New Ager gone bad. He emerged instead from the mainstream Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) pulpit, which sometimes lent a reassuringly Middle-American tone to his sermons.
We say Mr. Horowitz is wrong about all of this, of course, because cults have expanded their reach so far into the mainstream over the last few decades, it's almost impossible for his old school definitions to apply. For instance, homeopathy doesn't fit within his definition, but it's most definitely a cult - a cult that's gone mainstream.
Homeopaths live in the same space as you but are in a different world, and they ‘know’. To come out of that world is a complete revision of assumptions, thought systems and thinking style. It is very hard to do. I think I’ve been trying to say that for a long time. The larger the numbers have grown the easier it is for people to live in that world with others like them.
In other words, the Homeopathy cult's reach is such that there's no need for control over the follower's movements. And why should there be? It's online, it's on Oprah, it's in Whole Foods - Hell, even conservative Michael Savage is a Homeopath, and Rush Limbaugh is a fan!
Our point is, there's no escaping the Homeopathy cult's influence once you're under it, so there's no need for it to engage in behavior control, information control, thought control, emotional control, financial control or extreme leadership.
Those old definitions no longer matter. Even the government will force someone to go into a Scientology program, like Narconon, so who's fooling who here?
Now, all that's needed for a dangerous cult to exist is for everyone to ignore what they're up to and not think too hard. To reject critical thinking. Think about it: Even John Edwards - a top tier presidential candidate - was able to believe the nonsense a NewAge fruitcake like Rielle Hunter was laying down. It is our contention that could only happen if NewAge - which is now the umbrella term for all cult activity - was a familiar, yet still unknown, part of the culture.
We ask you, when was the last time we heard of a Homeopath being convicted for murder or manslaughter? We hear of them killing people, certainly, but so few outsiders understand cultism the Homeopaths almost always walk free because the mental trap cults have weaved around society is unknown to those charged with getting at the truth. Most people think Homeopathy is Herbal Medicine and there is almost no effort to explain the difference, anywhere.
Anyway, we're happy to see anything that mentions cults, cultish thinking, or cultism in America, but unfortunately, under the circumstances, this particular piece is about as worthless as they come.
When John Edwards showed up at the Beverly Hilton hotel to meet with Rielle on the evening of July 21, 2008, a large team of reporters and photographers were on the grounds for the Enquirer, and he was photographed secretly as he confidently walked into a side door at 9:45 p.m.
The Enquirer knew what room Hunter was in, as well as the room where her male traveling companion was staying. When Edwards came down to the lobby at 2:40 am the Enquirer was waiting for him, famously chasing as he ran into a public bathroom.
Behind the scenes we exerted pressure on Edwards, sending word though mutual contacts that we had photographed him throughout the night. We provided a few details about his movements to prove this was no bluff.
For 18 days we played this game, and as the standoff continued the Enquirer published a photograph of Edwards with the baby inside a room at the Beverly Hilton hotel.
Journalists asked if we had a hidden camera in the room. We never said yes or no. (We still haven't). We sent word to Edwards privately that there were more photos.
He cracked.
First, the Enquirer "knew what room Hunter was in, as well as the room where her male traveling companion was staying." Who else would know that but "her male traveling companion" - who was Bob McGovern?
Second, Bob McGovern is an astrologer. Has anyone ever heard of an astrologer, mixed up in anything, who didn't immediately try to capitalize on their fame? Hunter's friend, Pigeon O'Brian, was on television as often as she could be, but good Ol' Bob was nowhere to be seen.
Third, McGovern is a NewAger. These people, because of their unstable belief system, have no solid morals to lean on. Consider this loopdy-loop:
Even Louise Hay, the so-called "Queen of NewAge" let it be known that Sylvia Browne - her best-selling author - was a fraud, but somehow, utilizing those values, we're supposed to believe Bob McGovern wouldn't sell out Lisa Druck/Rielle Hunter (AKA “Riddleydoo Spacepod Rainbow.”) for a payoff from the Enquirer? Puh-Leaze. As our friends at Death By 1000 Papercutssaid at the time, "it’s likely that the Enquirer pays better than his regular day job in the mystic realm."
Forth, there was no one else who could've been in the room with Rielle Hunter and John Edwards, when the photo of Edwards and the baby was taken, but Bob McGovern.
And last but not least, since Bob McGovern was in the room when that photo was taken, Rielle Hunter had to know what was going on - either during Edwards' visit to see the baby or once the photo was publicized - making her an accomplice in a doublecross. Again:
Another NewAge liar engaged in betrayal - probably to end Edwards' marriage, so Hunter could live out her dream of becoming Mrs. John Edwards, or (since "Being" Isn't "Free") to get a settlement for child support.
So there you have it - Bob McGovern, the man who took out John Edwards, as both were sliding around on snake-oil.
And the destruction of everything NewAge touches continues,...
