Putting The Cart Before The Horse (Is The Easy Way To Make A Life Harder)

Political partisanship appears to cause almost every major writer, who sees the world as I do, to forget or ignore (or maybe they were already oblivious to) Andrew Breitbart's admonition that politics lives downstream from culture. So - by putting the emphasis on the wrong people: politicians - they've pointed their readers in the wrong direction, in almost the exact same wrong way, to end up telling the exact same wrong story, over and over again:

Francis Wheen discovered - almost immediately - he blew his NewAge thesis by attaching Margaret Thatcher to it.

Christopher Locke revealed the weakness in his argument, through the Republican-to-hate of the moment, George W. Bush.

And Kurt Andersen of The New York Times (of course) spirals down the drain by being unable to resist the zeitgeist, and attaching Donald Trump to his, otherwise sound, theories.

They're all wrong, with TMR's point being - even if they weren't - we wouldn't have any of them without a NewAge MOVEMENT, and that puts the ball back in the court of an Oprah or Deepak or Shirley MacLaine or Arianna Huffington or Gary Lachman or any of the other frauds and cult leaders assisting The Democrat Party in distorting reality, and thus, the American way of life.

 

TMR's Christmas Gift To You - An Extended Explanation With Links: (Just Like) Starting Over

The links in this post will tell you the whoooole story of this blog:

We want you to consider an alternate universe, where John Lennon was a passionate black artist, living in San Francisco, and Yoko Ono was his French NewAge bride and actually liked.

And, instead of John cheating on Yoko at a New York party and she sends him away to California, Yoko cheated on John while in France and, upon discovery, ran back to that country to join her lover - a Dr. Timothy Leary/Charles Manson type.

And finally - rather than this change of events leading eventually to Mark David Chapman killing John - this new trajectory led Leary/Manson and Yoko Ono to killing others.

What do you think John's reaction would've been? Do you think he would've taken the advice of most NewAgers and just "moved on", or do you think he would've gone the primal scream route to exorcise his pain and call attention to the murders?

Do you think he would've attacked the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi/NewAge hippie culture that led to this turn of events? (For instance, do you think he would've stayed shy, or become emboldened enough to call the song "Sexy Sadie" by it's real name, "Maharishi"?)

And how virulent would've been the reaction of the hippies - now siding with Dr. Timothy Leary/Charles Manson and the likable Yoko - if John had done so?

This is kind of the situation TMR found itself in, not long after it started in 2005. (The blog did not begin in 2007, as it appears now, but was sabotaged - twice - by NewAge "friends" upset with the direction it had taken, and the attention it had garnered.)

And just as we're surprised that - in this universe - even Charlie Manson has supporters after all he's done, and everything he (apparently) is, we're even more surprised at the level of hostility we've received over the years for suggesting there's something wrong with the culture that produced him - and a coming reckoning for the many crimes that culture's bestowed on the rest of us.

We've admitted, many times, that we know we're probably not the best representative for our position.

But honestly - because of a cultural acceptance of the views and positions that's produced the many crimes we've documented - there are very few attempting to bring these issues to the public, and even they don't have the up-close-and-personal experience (or insight) that someone who's been intimate with a believer - or been a believer themselves - carries.

So we're kind of stuck.

Fortunately for us (if not our readers) the immediate problems we face in this work are pretty self-evident.

We think The San Francisco Chronicle's Mick LaSalle sums it up nicely in his review of the new (former Scientologist) Nicole Kidman movie, "Rabbit Hole":

The movie's area of inquiry is essentially undramatic, a tale told in a minor key, but it's sensitive and illuminates areas of experience that usually go unexplored. What happens to the couple, each one grieving separately, each one associating the other with loss? How do friends talk to them? It's easy to console people when you don't think their misfortune is all that bad, but what do you say to somebody experiencing your own worst nightmare? "Rabbit Hole" depicts the isolating nature of grief, a self-isolation that is also, to some degree, community enforced.

In other words, no matter what you may think of us, divorced and/or broken - or how we're choosing to alert others to the dangers of cultism in general, and NewAge culture in particular - like those Charlie Manson fans, many of you are part of the problem as well.

Believe it or not, despite our apparent glee at saying something is cultish (or someone is in a cult) it still tears us up, as much as the accused, to discover this is the situation we live currently in; realizing it's the Western World's 21st century. The difference is only in our comprehension of it all.

You have to understand, though we knew nothing of cultism, homeopathy, quackery, or numerology, or any other such things, we do remember what life was like before our wife's murders and we were forced to grapple with them.

We remember what it's like to think of NewAge, and it's many tentacles, as "harmless".

We remember what it was like to unabashedly admire Oprah Winfrey, and her many accomplishments, including the legion of women who listen to, and "follow" her.

We remember what it was like to vote Democrat, to side with environmentalists, feminists, and gays.

We remember what it was like to admire aspects of socialism, and communism, and multiculturalism, and to reject sexism, and racism, and all the other "isms" that have been brought to our attention from our first days growing up in the ghettos of South Central, Los Angeles.

But now - since replacing all of that with the glory of being an un-hypenated American - we just can't stomach any of it any longer.

Now, eschewing conspiracy theories (and conspiracy theorists) and all those words imply, we stand with those who have examined this entire social phenomena anew - Christopher Locke, Jonah Goldberg, Bill Whittle, Neil Davenport, Barbara Ehrenreich, and others - and who have found a sinister threat to all we hold dear.

We stand with those who have called for a new Nuremberg Trial for it's ringleaders - and for many of it's fellow travelers.

And we stand with those who have called for a new emphasis in our schools (and especially our media) on real science, critical thinking, and common sense, for the common good.

We embrace the American Founder's "enlightenment" - and no one else's.

We have stood before you, for five long years, as merely a betrayed artist with a certain insight - and, yes, a lot of anger and resentment - that we've refused to abandon until it's acknowledged as accurate, right, and good.

We are John Lennon - across the universe - declaring, "the dream is over".

And "Merry Christmas" from The Crack Emcee.

Call TMR "Hogan's Raiders Of The Lost Heroes"

We swear - we're going to stop this at some point - but that "dead end" of a "New Age witch hunt" Ann Althouse's (second) husband, Meade, says we're on never seems to actually come to a cul-de-sak.

Like today, Ann and Meade's friend, Glenn Reynolds (above) has a long (for Instapundit) and fascinating discussion of the resemblances between Communists and Nazis. Reynolds ends his first section of the discussion with these words:

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.

Got that? Communists are as bad as Nazis. Nazis and their defenders are bad, and "when you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest."

Well, we couldn't agree more! That's why we find it weird that we're considered crazy for attacking NewAge when it was Glenn Reynolds' other friend, Jonah Goldberg (above) who wrote:

Many of the progressive and holistic ideas that lie at the heart of today’s lifestyle Left, the environmental Left, and the New Age movement share numerous unquestioned philosophical, emotional, and practical similarities with the intellectual and cultural currents that fed into and sustained Nazism.

Seems to us, this means we should all be treating NewAgers as Reynolds says and "when you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest", right?

Yet we can barely compel Reynolds or Althouse (or Meade) to take the subject seriously.

Another of Glenn Reynold's friends, Bill Whittle (above) did a talk that got this response from a commenter:

[Bill Whittle’s] attacking a whole group association think-set. I had been an uber New Agey leftist for many years and his caricatured characterization is right on. He could have also put in adjectival terms such as 'homeopathic', 'Buddhistic', 'yoga posturing', Indigenous peoples loving’, or 'meditating'. Any of those fits the group although none on their own would be considered insulting — except for perhaps, homeopathic — if you don’t like invisible, non-existent medicines. There is definitely a personality grouping of the New Agey hip, cool, enlightened, pacifistic Earth warrior. I think that ignoring the hard core paganistic tendencies of the New Agey left is to be in denial.

We hope Meade remembers this the next time Ann does a post about the gobs of money the two of them spend at Whole Foods, where they had to have passed the various sections devoted to Buddhist statues, homeopathic medicines, yoga mats, the sale of items by Indigenous peoples, fraudulent environmentalist items, and the like.

Moving along through Instapundit's Communist/Nazi conversation, in the next section Reynolds reminds us:

The [communists] “good intentions” argument has long been an excuse for mass murder.

"Good intentions" and "mass murder", you say?

Well, on that note, we'd like to point you to a post we did - about Geoff Gilpin (above) author of the book The Maharishi Effect - which we called "Good Intentions Can't Help The Occultists". Don't forget - according to Glenn Reynolds' own friends, Goldberg and Whittle - the NewAgers are Nazis and, according to Reynolds, "when you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest".

So who are the Nazis Gilpin's referring to? He calls them "the "left wing occult" which, by some remarkable coincidence, is exactly what we call them too! Small world, huh?

Communists, Nazis, The Left, and NewAge, all wrapped up together like that. Remarkable!

So what's our proof there's a connection between all these influences Reynolds has labeled "evil"? How about a New York Times Magazine interview with Louise Hay (above with Oprah Winfrey) - AKA "The Queen of New Age" - where she agrees that "with a situation like the Holocaust, the victims deserved what they got"?

Or how about that slip-up film director David Lynch (above) made in Germany?

Lynch ("whose new-age beliefs are sometimes as quirky as his movies") was trying to establish "a network of so-called 'invincible universities' to teach the philosophy of transcendental meditation", when his partner in the effort to build a school on "Devil's Mountain", Emanuel Schiffgens, took the podium and this happened:

"What do you mean by this concept of invincibility," asked an onlooker from the audience, made up mainly of film students with a smattering of meditation devotees. "An invincible Germany is a Germany that's invincible," replied a Delphic Schiffgens, who was dressed in a long white robe and gold crown. Adolf Hitler wanted that too!," shouted out one man. "Yes," countered Schiffgens. "But unfortunately he didn't succeed."

Nice, huh?

By the way, the connection between NewAge and Naziism has also been pointed out by Bronte Baxter of the Transcendental Meditation Free blog, and Chris Locke (author of the internet marketing bible "The Cluetrain Manifesto") has repeatedly been banging that drum (and hitting all the same major themes and players we do) to almost no recognition.

What's important for Glenn Reynolds, Ann Althouse, and Meade, to understand here is we are (all) trapped in a NewAge culture - it's the Baby Boomer's true legacy to America - and, being Baby Boomers themselves, we can see how easily it can be for them to ignore or dismiss it rather than fight:

They (all) grew up in it.

What Geoff Gilpin called the Maharishi's "create your own reality" philosophy is the same one mentioned by "Brightsided" author Barbara Ehrenreich (above) as she's been explaining the reasons our economy crashed.

It's the same one that provided the fuel for the Bernie Madoff scandal. And it's the same one that caused my ex-wife, Karine Ann Brunck (a Boomer) to kill three people, for Penelope Dingle's husband to kill her, for Thomas Sam to kill his daughter, for Oprah Winfrey to help kill Kim Tinkham (as well as getting girls raped at her NewAge "school" in Africa) for Homeopath Frank Shallenberger to kill two people, and for NewAgers the world over to kill countless others - especially in Africa.

NewAge is Naziism, and this is Glenn Reynolds' "mass murder" - happening right under everyone's nose because they claim to have "good intentions" - and we think it's a shame so many truly smart people can find nothing better to do than attack the messenger for utilizing the only style available that's been proven to work.

Honestly, we're sorry - we don't necessarily mean to offend - but, as Glenn Reynolds himself also says:

Communists are as bad as Nazis, and their defenders and apologists are as bad as Nazis’ defenders, but far more common. When you meet them, show them no respect. They’re evil, stupid, and dishonest. They should not enjoy the consequences of their behavior.

Once You Get It, Wear It like A Badge Of Honor

Here is a message everyone should get firmly in their mind. So firmly it should practically cripple your brain (as it does ours) when you're confronted with a situation that demands you use it:

They all say they aren't "woo-woo" people, don't they? In fact, if you hear someone on a show about a faith healer say they're a skeptic or "not a woo-woo person" you can be pretty sure that she either has just said or is about to say something that proves she is a woo-woo person.

Now, we know what you're thinking:

Notice it says "she"? Whatever. The question is, do they "all" say they're not woo-woo people?

Well, let us ask you this:

With all the NewAge stuff around - from aura readings to the zodiac - when was the last time you actually heard someone, with their own mouths, openly claim they were NewAge?

Come on, somebody's going to all those psychics planted around America, right?

And somebody's buying those Homeopathic "medicines" in Whole Foods, making it a $12 billion industry.

And somebody's watching Oprah and making The Secret a world-wide bestseller - and yet, somehow, nobody's claiming to be NewAge.

Not even Oprah.

Now why is that?

Right here, we'll let Chris Locke AKA Rageboy explain it to you:

Stop me if you've heard this before. My inspiration, if you could call it that, was the painful death of an important relationship. She always protested that she was not New Age. You've heard that one before, for sure. "Who me? Oh, I'm not New Age!" We've all heard it. Only terminal cases ever admit to the proclivity. Maybe the last gasp of those people who recently died in James Arthur Ray's Sedona sweat lodge was "Oh fuck, I guess I am New Age!" But of course, we'll never know if, even then, the denial was finally overcome. When you get right down to it, nobody wants to be seen as New Age because nobody wants to be seen as irreparably stupid.

Now, here, we at TMR would like to point out a really super-duper important distinction:

That even though nobody wants to be SEEN as New Age, there are quite a few people who don't mind actually BEING NewAge.

What's important is to lie about it, to pull the wool over other's eyes, to deceive as many as possible, as much as possible, and as often as possible - so as to feel smarter than others and make cockamamy ideas, like your Aunt Bernice becoming a "Reiki Master", or that woman in Human Resources who moonlights as a "Psychic Priestess", seem as everyday normal as you are.

But they're not as everyday normal as you are. Because you're normal.

And there's nothing normal about NewAge.