Murdering People Is Wrong, I Mean - SQUIRREL!!!!

It's pretty sad when murderers have better ethics than most "spiritual" folks:

"I killed. I deserve to be killed."

Those are the words of "Donald Moeller, a man who was convicted of raping and killing a 9-year-old girl 20 years ago." Sorry, Mormons, I can't help but compare them to the weasel words of John G. Turner, author of the new biography Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet:

"He preserved a church and created a people, but that success damaged and even destroyed some lives."

Talk about letting somebody off the hook! As the late Christopher Hitchens was so fond of saying, bad men will do bad, but for a good man to do so - and, I'll add, for he and his "church" to get away with it - he needs religion. Consider this passage, from a review of Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, from the website Religious Dispatches:

The other reason that Anderson deserves recognition as an honorary scholar of new religious movements is that his curiosity about new religions has brought him into conflict with a culture that still approaches the religious other through an un-nuanced “us vs. them” mentality. Most religion scholars who deal heavily with new religious movements have been branded as “cult apologists” at some point in their careers. At stake in this accusation is an assumption that “whoever is not for us is against us,” and that anyone who is not actively attempting to debunk and discredit minority religions has decided to defend them unconditionally. 

I have written for here and elsewhere that for some commentators, ridiculing Scientology seems to have become a kind of hobby. There are, of course, plenty of reasons not to like the Church of Scientology. Not the least of these are the serious allegations that have been leveled against the Church by former members, especially the children of Scientologists who were raised in Scientology schools or pressured to serve in the Church’s elite order, Sea Org. 

But as disturbing as these stories are, I am more interested in the motivations of groups like Anonymous, who organized angry protests in front of Scientology buildings, and journalists like Tony Ortega, who in two years produced 465 articles attacking the Church of Scientology. 

In a world threatened by the possibility of nuclear conflict in the Middle East, global warming, and growing economic injustice, why direct so much energy toward a religion that is culturally and politically irrelevant outside of Hollywood? What is the sense of satisfaction some people find in crusading against Scientology? Popular animosity toward Scientology is interesting because it seems to point toward much larger patterns in how Americans respond to minority religions.

In other words - pffft! Forget those "damaged and even destroyed" by this nonsense (which even the writer admits "cannot really 'fix'” anything) and "especially the children," the real story are the true crazies amongst us - those who, for some unknown reason, want to stop the hidden or unmentioned death and destruction going on all around them:

Because, as we all know, it is they - the folks who have hurt no one but seek justice for the innocent and injured - they're the ones we should be "more interested in the motivations of,…"
 

You Really Can Get "In" Through The "Out" Door,...

I ran into Scientology and stayed there for 12 years, which is a whole lot more embarrassing than saying “Hi, I’m transsexual.”

-- Kate Bornstein, the former "first mate" to L. Ron Hubbard (emphasis mine)

In the last two years there have been 10 cult-themed movies released, starting with David Wants To Fly and ending with The Master, but, while all of them covers a different kind of cult, and takes a different approach to the issue - everything from deep comedy to deadly serious - there are two messages they have in common:

The false nature of what cults offer, and/or - most importantly - the need to get out.

There are other recurring themes as well, all of them counter-intuitive to the positive messages we've been told are the benefits of participation in such "communities." I'd go through them all but am short of time today, so will only give you this one for now:

All of the cults depicted radiate sex, and love, of some kind - there's not a hateful or Satan-worshipping group in the lot of them - but, still, it's emotional engagement that's found to be phony and, ultimately, harmful to the participants.

Consider that, as you insist on the projected good and wholesome nature of Mormonism, or defend the freedom of it (and other groups) to be able to flourish under our noses. Or consider what wider influence they've been having on a once strong country, brought to it's knees based on what is, quite apparently, it's own desire to dance with folly, if not the Devil. Face it:

Cultism is so last century.

I'll see you later,...

 

You Need Help (TMR Dissects Cultism In "The Master")

"'The Master' is as confounding as it is magnificent." 

 --Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post (emphasis mine)

Huh? I don't understand the mystery.

Near the end of The Master, cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) delivers a sinister line to his escaped "guinea pig and protege'" Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) that sums up the film's purpose for existing, and - as director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson is telling us - ours:

"If you can find a way to live without a master - any master - you come back and let us know."

That we should live free is one hard sell in a NewAge culture where everyone immaturely insists on being condescended to, controlled, and comforted. Freddie Quell, not being the sharpest knife in the drawer, kind of figures it out - once he leaves Dodd's side, he starts using his former master's hustle on the first woman he meets.

Hey, that bullshit worked on him, right?

And isn't that how it goes amongst the not-too-bright? The mousy woman escapes what she's been taught to think of as a "controlling" man only to present herself, afterwards, as having nerves of steel. The man who couldn't boil water - as long as his sophisticated lady laughed at him - acts like a master chef to everyone he later meets. And why? Because neither can admit the dysfunctional traits, by which they "learned," were the very qualities that drew them into those relationships to begin with.

Or that, at that time, they were either either incapable, or unwilling, to learn.

No, all they'll say from then on is how "horrible" it was - it was all their chosen master's fault - and they are now looking for something more (the NewAger's post-divorce "never-ending search").

The idea, that they should never have looked for a master to begin with, escapes them totally - as does the idea they shouldn't repeat the process.

I smiled when I heard Dodd's line because it's exactly what I've been trying to stress, living amongst so many who are looking for someone to control, or to control them, when the truth is - as Americans - we should all want to be free of anyone who'd dare to try.

But what do we have instead? All these many years after the film takes place, it's a culture that's constantly - with our consent - bullying us. We're told "go green," to "save the planet," what not to smoke and how much soda to drink. We're "nudged" to do yoga, go "organic," eat "healthy," be "spiritual," and "tolerant," but whatever we do - and this is reinforced through massive doses of groupthink - we don't dare develop the temerity to truly understand what's going on.

That would ruin everything!

Come on, telling us what we can think is Oprah's job, or Tony Robbins', or Shirley MacLaine's, or Michelle Obama's, or New York mayor Michael Bloomberg's, or Dr. Oz's, or Dr. Phil's, or countless other self-appointed, but completely clueless, guardians of our inner (and outer) lives.

  Consider this statement from a so-called "smart and independent" woman:

"[Doctors] had better start listening – or they'll drive us into the arms of homeopaths."

Is that brilliant or what? If someone trained in medicine doesn't instinctively hold the hand of the "worried well" - rather than trying to grasp they're not really sick and should grow-the-fuck-up - why they'll impetuously run to the local fruitcake instead. That'll show 'em - it'll also destroy the very medical system they'll need to rely on when the quack makes a wrong diagnosis.

Like I said, brilliant!

And just like Freddie Quell, they'll viciously fight to defend the fraudulent, until they get a clue that's what they've been doing, and that's what their chosen master really was. A total fraud.

Oh - and by the way - "The Master" is a picture of Mitt Romney and his "church" too,...

 

Cultism: You Know You Want It (Why's It Everywhere?)

Of course I'm going to see The Master tomorrow, and Wired Magazine knows why:

Beautiful to look at, strangely hypnotic and utterly original, The Master examines cult dynamics through the ’50s-era misadventures of a violent ex-sailor with horrible posture and zero impulse control. 

Filmmaking artistry aside, writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson‘s picture hits home as a period-perfect examination of a perpetually recurring truth: When people hanker for a know-it-all authority figure who will tell them what to think, self-appointed “masters” will be more than happy to oblige. 

Anderson brings cult behavior into fascinating focus by examining the bond between two characters portrayed by extraordinary actors: the accidental, alcoholic seeker Freddie Quill, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and the suave, all-American swami Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. 

The Master casts its own weird, R-rated spell not because it yields shocking revelations or clever plot twists… 

Instead, The Master resonates because its peculiar particulars illustrate why people like Dodd continue to proliferate with near-tragic frequency. Consider such characters as the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who picked spouses for his followers; California Coptic priest Zakaria Botros Henein, whose devotees made the Innocence of Muslims video; and positive-thinking guru James Arthur Ray, whose eager-to-please acolytes sat in a sweat lodge until they died. 

Factor in Vanity Fair magazine’s recent report about Church of Scientology matchmaking practices for Tom Cruise (denied by the organization), and it seems clear that the top-down command structure depicted in The Master remains in full force six decades on. 

Anderson, who’s earned five Oscar nominations for previous obsession-themed films including There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, situates The Master at a comfortable remove from contemporary cult dysfunction,… 

For all its genteel period touches, The Master strikes a chord with contemporary audiences by probing the feral impulses that fuel groupthink then and now. Anderson strips the cult dynamic down to its rude essence,...The men turn on each other. 

“Nobody likes you Freddie,” Dodd says calmly. “I’m the only one who likes you.” 

Freddie, who’s just finished pounding his head against a bunkbed in a fit of inarticulate rage, finally screams the forbidden notion that everyone in the audience has surely already considered: “You’re making this shit up!” 

In The Master’s portrait of cult dysfunction, the misfit and the mumbo-jumbo man share a toxic alchemy more dangerous than any mad cocktail that Freddie could dream up.

Or me - don't leave me out: 

I seriously had no idea how fucked up y'all are out there,...

 

Do You Feel (Fuck Like I Do - At All)?

I'm not supposed to be doing this. "This" being whatever I'm doing now. I had a life and it got derailed by cultism, and now I'm stuck with this,…thing I cope with - that passes for my life - but I know better.

My life will never be the same.

This angst is what most don't talk about when talking about cultism. They're so concerned about the cult's freedom, always with the cult's concerns, but what it takes from the unwilling?

If it comes up, I've never heard it.

Sure, you've got your Martha Marcy May Marlene - which is a fine film - but she, for whatever reason, went into that cult on her own. But what do you do when you had nothing to do with it? When they're after a loved one? When they catch one? What then? And what do you do when they turn your loved one - say, your mate - against you?

All of a sudden nobody's so smart anymore.

No, something's been sucked out of me, and the likelihood I'll ever get it back is as close to zero as anything I was ever capable of gauging. I have no place in a world where writers happily spread misinformation, while the biggest stories are religious fanatics and Kate Middleton's tits. And watching someone like Glenn Reynolds trying to weasely elect a cultist to office is as demoralizing as what cults do to their followers to begin with.

Actually, that's not true - watching people going along with Glenn Reynolds trying to weasely elect a cultist to office is what hurts. Going along is all the rest of these people do. "Go along to get along," isn't that the phrase that pays? Yeah.

I dare you to find a shred of masculinity in that configuration.

I'm waiting for The Master to open, nationwide, so I can see it - not only because it's a film about cultism, but because it's made by Paul Thomas Anderson and he seems to understand ambition. I need to be around somebody - or something - that has some. I need to feel it. Something other than this shameful cowardice others use to pass, like mulattoes during slavery. I can have no part in it. Can play no role.

It's simply not for me,...

I Am "The Master" Of My Domain (The Cult Of One,...)

How much would you like to bet Glenn Reynolds and Ann Althouse (along with their respective "conservative" colleagues and readerships) were making phone calls shouting "bigotry"?

Unnamed Scientologists applied "lots of pressure" to stop The Master being made and have it changed once filming began, studio head Harvey Weinstein said. 

The film's director Paul Thomas Anderson has stated that The Master was partly based on L Ron Hubbard, who founded Scientology in the 1950s. 

The Church of Scientology has denied trying to block the film. 

Weinstein told BBC News: "We've had pressure and we've resisted pressure. Originally people said to me 'don't make it'. Lots of pressure. 

"And then, as we were making it, we had pressure to change it. Paul's not doing that and I didn't think he chose me [to work with] because I was going to acquiesce either." 

The movie tells the story of a cult leader known as The Master, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a troubled World War II veteran, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who is drawn into his world. 

It won awards for acting and directing after its premiere at the Venice Film Festival and is seen as an early contender for The Oscars. 

Asked about the reaction from Scientologists in Hollywood, Weinstein said: "I'm not going to get into names, but they feel strongly that they think it's a religion and as such they think the subject matter shouldn't be explored.

Wow - imagine that:

The same reaction Romney supporters have to anyone looking into Mormonism - isn't that weird?

To have two different "religions," with one openly labeled a "cult" while the other (conveniently) isn't - though they have almost everything in common - including the reactions of their respective supporters?

Could it be because the Mormon cult is seen as conservative and Scientology isn't?

I mean, as I've pointed out repeatedly, I've heard no cries of "bigotry" from Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, Stacey McCain (who should know better) and Michelle Malkin when it comes to explorations into L. Ron Hubbard's malarky - only Joseph Smith's - and only now.

And, when it comes to fighting Islam, Reynolds even decided to change-up his long-standing "bigotry" dance enough to post this yesterday:

Why Defending Free Speech Is More Important than Criticizing Bigotry. The Obama crowd doesn’t care about free speech. Never has, never will.

Notice - after MONTHS of Reynolds & Co. crying whenever someone mentioned Romney's cockamamy "beliefs" - with Reynolds clearly leading the pack to his millions of readers - now it's the Obama crowd who "doesn’t care about free speech. Never has, never will."

And this is from supposedly a conservative, someone supposedly on "my side," though - I must admit - I understand Reynolds currently serves a much higher calling than any mere adherence to truth, logic, reality, or even the protection of our country:

HE'S TRYING TO MOVE VOTES!

Yeah - politics - just like the Democrats. Blatant lies, corruption, and hypocrisy, Be Thy Name,…

 

The Funny Part Is They Think It's HE Who Never Learns

Watching the betrayal in Martha Marcy May Marlene got me thinking about cults.

Which got me thinking about the many betrayals of the cult of Scientology.

Which got me thinking about the up-coming release of director Paul Thomas Anderson's Scientology-is-bullshit themed film, The Master.

Which got me thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson specifically showing The Master to Tom Cruise before it's release.

Which got me thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson's previous film on the difficulty of dealing with cultists, There Will Be Blood.

Which got me thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson's put-upon alter ego in Punch Drunk Love (above) contrasted with that film's beautifully optimistic visual interludes by Jeremy Blake.

Which got me thinking about Blake and his girlfriend, Theresa Duncan, then committing suicide claiming Scientology was out to destroy them but no one would listen.

Which got me thinking about Tom Cruise playing a cult leader in Paul Thomas Anderson's earlier it's-all-connected film, Magnolia.

Which got me thinking about the possible unfolding cult ramifications of Paul Thomas Anderson refusing Cruise top billing as his second film's star.

Which got me thinking about Paul Thomas Anderson only hiring the Scientologist for Magnolia after Cruise requested to work with the massively successful young director of Boogie Nights.

Which got me thinking about the probability of payback being one convoluted motherfucker in cult-infested Hollywood.

The Look Of "Love"

So the reviews of The Master are dribbling out and they're pretty much the same - it's brilliant - but it's also NOT an expose' on Scientology, but more like a glimpse into it. It's early days, specifically.

As can be expected, I'm a little disappointed by that, but anything about a cult leader that includes the words "He's just making it up as he goes along" - as well as shots of that look Amy Adams delivers when her "teachings" are challenged (a "hate stare" all skeptics are familiar with from countless encounters with cultists and religious folks alike) - is more-than-welcome by me.

Do believers want to "save the planet" or just bury those who won't go along with their bullshit? 

Since The Master appears to be about a man barely coping with the horrors of Hitler's World War II, only to find himself encountering another mind control cult in America, I'd say - along with that stare above - the answer to that question should be pretty-fucking-obvious,…