Why Everyone Lies But Me (I'm Not Involved In Cults)

These poor deceitful fools, I'm usually 5-10 years ahead - and, since they can't keep the truth quiet forever, even amongst themselves - eventually, I always win: 

“LIKE most children of the Reagan era, I grew up with a steady diet of media warnings about the perils of religious cults — the gurus who lurked in wait for the unwary and confused, offering absolute certainty with the aftertaste of poisoned Kool-Aid. From the 1970s through the 1990s, from Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate, frightening fringe groups and their charismatic leaders seemed like an essential element of the American religious landscape. 

Yet we don’t hear nearly as much about them anymore, and it isn’t just that the media have moved on. Some strange experiments have aged into respectability, some sinister ones still flourish, but over all the cult phenomenon feels increasingly antique, like lava lamps and bell bottoms. Spiritual gurus still flourish in our era, of course, but they are generally comforting, vapid, safe — a Joel Osteen rather than a Jim Jones, a Deepak Chopra rather than a David Koresh. ”

And that's the cult world I've been writing about for almost a decade - to massive denials from all quarters - only to have The New York Times now detail how the liars pulled it off:

They're all, collectively, still lying to anyone who will listen - which ain't ever going to be me.

Don't be surprised,...

 

I Know This, Too: "Transformers" Is A Really Bad Movie

 

I spent most of the day with my getting-better-but-still-really-delusional (former) roommate, who was 100% positive of three things:

1) His parents were coming to see him today - even though they're long deceased.

2) Someone in his care facility was stealing money from him - even though the facility hasn't allowed him to have money since the day he arrived.

And 3) He claimed to be currently working, selling time shares in Florida, even though,...well, you get the picture.

  Reading this reminded me of spending time with him:

Clive Doyle is a pleasant-looking man of 72, with wavy graying hair. Australia lingers in his accent. He wore a leather jacket on the chilly recent afternoon when we spent more than an hour together at a picnic table in a Waco park. He was soft-spoken, articulate and seemingly very sane. 

Yet 20 years ago this Friday, this same man was one of only nine Branch Davidians to survive the internationally televised inferno on the Texas prairie. Killed that day near Waco were cult leader David Koresh and 73 followers, including Doyle's 18-year-old daughter, Shari, and 20 children under 14. Before the fire and the 51-day standoff with the federal government, Doyle's daughter had been one of many women and girls of the cult taken into Koresh's bed. Koresh -- who preached that he was the Lamb of God, drove a sports car and motorcycle, and had a rock band and an arsenal of illegal weapons -- had ordered his male followers to be celibate. 

Doyle has had two decades to reflect on these things, and clearly he has. So my question was obvious. 

"You mean, have I woken up?" Doyle said to me with a smile. 

Well, yes. 

"I've had questions and adjusted my beliefs somewhat," Doyle said that day in the park. "But I still believe that David was who he claimed to be. You are sitting there listening to him. You hear all these things and the Scriptures come alive. And at the time, everything seems so imminent. That's why I believed the way I did. 

"I believe he was a manifestation, yes, of God taking on flesh," Doyle said. "God has done that more than once." 

Most of the other survivors remain similarly steadfast, Doyle said, a handful of people who still gather in Waco on Saturday mornings to pray. Thus one of the most tragic and bizarre episodes of American history remains just that. Bizarre, unexplainable.

 It's always "I believe" this and "I believe" that. These people never "know" anything. 

                                                               Here's what I know:

Accept some people are crazy - even the "seemingly very sane" - and then it all makes sense,...

When "Revenge Is A Dish Served Cold" Just Might Work

I told you. There's movies about cults, TV shows about cults, books about cults, and now - Cult Pizza:

"The vegan chef is again going for the artistic jugular by hanging portraits in his new Cult Pizza shop of notorious cult leaders including David Koresh, Roch Theriault, and a photo of people who died at Jonestown."

I know - even more than addressing the disgust some may have by being reminded of who they are, and what they've done, over dinner - there's only one really important issue here: 

 Who in the fuck eats vegan pizza?

 

Whether Charlie Sheen Is Crazy Is A Matter Of Opinion (Whether This Society He's In Is, Is Not)

Damn it, there's just not a lot of NewAge news out there today - we've been looking - but the gremlins are keeping most of it to themselves. We did find this informative letter, which should make Whole Foods a little nervous, considering they're one of the biggest purveyors of the Homeopathy scam in America:

Dear Editor,

One particularly troubling trend in the modern world is the advancement of faith in the supernatural, superstition, and pseudoscience.

This trend is also puzzling, as we live in an age where real information is so readily available. Unfortunately, so is bad information and propaganda.

On Feb. 5, hundreds of people in 23 countries around the world overdosed on homeopathic so-called "remedies" to demonstrate that there's nothing in it.

Homeopathy was simply stated by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann, who had no evidence and was just making assertions based on primitive and unscientific beliefs about "vibrations" and other nonsense. He asserted that water has "memory," that poisons can cure the symptoms they cause, and that if you dilute a poison by such a degree that there are no molecules of the poison left, somehow this will cure ailments.

Of course, this violates the laws of thermodynamics, as well as the principle of Avogadro's limit in chemistry.

When you buy homeopathic "remedies," you are buying water and/or sugar. Nothing more. And yet, pharmacies sell those sugar pills alongside real remedies. Shame on them! If someone forgoes real medical treatment in favour of this superstition, they may well die.

And die they do! Don't take our word for it, here's a confession from someone who believes in it:

Just what is it that makes so many people so angry about homeopathy? I’ve been using it on and off for years — arnica tablets for when the kids fall over, a magic box of special remedies which helped cure my hay-fever. I’ve always thought it was something harmless, something all of us did now and again.

Apparently not, though. In the past few months, whenever I’ve mentioned my guilty homeopathy secret to friends, it’s as if I’ve confessed to a penchant for child sacrifice.

‘What?’ the general reaction has been. ‘Don’t you realise all homeopaths are charlatans; their remedies are nothing more than sugar pills; they’re a drain on the NHS; they’ve resulted in the deaths of gullible innocents all over the world?’

Now why would any "follower" let a little thing like "the deaths of gullible innocents all over the world" come between them and their magic water? It's perfectly natural to ignore death for water, right? Of course it is.

Doesn't everybody know kings and queens have been using Homeopathy for 200 years? That's before there was really even medicine!

After our Charlie Sheen post on Alcoholics Anonymous, we were reminded AA's an evil that's been around for 80 years, but so what?

A cult is a cult is a cult is a cult - how long any particular cult has been around doesn't matter. It still should give you the creeps - as it does Charlie Sheen.

The point, to us, is that after Charlie Manson, David Koresh, Jim Jones, and all the rest, cults (and cultish thinking) have been accepted into mainstream American thought to such an extent that now, when they kill, nobody thinks that cults have anything to do with it - because cults are part of the fabric of our society. When's the next time Oprah will have a Scientologist on her show/network?

When's the next time Oprah will offer a Scientologist their own show - like she did Kirstie Alley?

Why, this cult business is happening to such an extent that even doctors, rather than saving our lives, are fighting for their own against it.

But don't be fooled - we're all being made fools of by these people - get this:

"I think it's a scam," said Jeremy Adler. "I really do."

Adler's claims of a scam come after working for three months as the manufacturing manager at a Seattle company called Biomed Comm. The company makes and sells a variety of homeopathic remedies advertised as treatments for autism, menopausal symptom relief, and boosters of immune systems and energy.

Last week the State Department of Health ordered the company and it's founder and CEO Barbara Brewitt, PhD to cease and desist her making and selling of drugs without a license. They also directed her to stop "posing as a medical doctor."

Adler is the whistleblower who started the investigation that led to the Department of Health action. He tells KOMO 4 News he still stands behind those accusations.

"The comment was made once that we don't care what the government says because we're homeopathic," he said Brewitt told him and other employees. "We can make this stuff in a bathtub if we want to."

FDA regulations are different for the makers of homeopathic remedies where the active ingredients are markedly diluted in their final medicinal form. "In clinical studies, patients have reported increased memory, focus and energy, stronger heart and immune systems, relief from stress and headaches, weight loss, increased muscle mass and improved sleep, among other factors," it says on the Biomed Comm website. "Biomed's cell signalers are being taken by autism and HIV (AIDS virus) patients as well as baby boomers who want to stave off aging. "

The Department of Health ordered Brewitt to immediately "stop her unlicensed practice of manufacturing drugs," saying that they do not have the necessary federal approval.

Adler, who says he was hired to help establish a small manufacturing facility in Woodinville, says many of the medicines were mixed by Brewitt herself in her own kitchen as she chanted over a crystal bowl.

"She told all of us the magic is in the chanting and the crystal bowl," said Adler. "And that's what caused everything to work was the energy from the crystal bowl."

Folks, by allowing these NewAge "ancient teachings" to flourish within our modern society, we've slipped further away from reality than Charlie Sheen ever could - no matter how many drugs he's done.

It can even be said that, by mentioning the cult of AA in his ravings, he's made an important contribution to getting us back on track.

And the sooner we come to terms with that, the better off we all will be.

Especially if anyone's serious about wanting to "help" the likes of Good Time Charlie.

Lot Of 'Clinton Kool-Aid Drinkers' In The Media!

Some of you will keep pretending we're crazy, or putting this language in people's mouths - like when the "Obama Cult" talk started - but no, the repeated phrases that indicate a Democratic Party inthralled with cultish thinking keeps popping up in the mouths of others, and we've merely made it our job to catch it when it appears. Of course, it affirms the very point of this blog, so we'll leave it up to you to determine if everyone who brings it up is crazy - like when James Taranto just called Obama supporters "delusional". What say you? Is it us or is it him? Or maybe Bill Whittle? (Those are two men lauded for their sanity, intelligence, and clear-eyed view of things, no?) Or maybe the crazies are anyone else who sees it in passing but loses the thread whenever the next news cycle comes around? Yea, yea - we know:

Anyone who grasps an understanding of the NewAge culture that keeps producing our Charlie Manson's, David Koresh's, Marshall Applewhite's, and others is nuts - because you say so.

Yes, the rest of you are totally aware of the situation - though you never stop it until somebody gets hurt, or killed, and sometimes not even then - because that's the way you like it.

It's your sure sign of a healthy society.

Just Another Part Of The American Landscape

"Cults are notorious for convincing people to do the unthinkable. In March, a member of the now-defunct One Mind Ministries pleaded guilty to starving her son to death. Allegedly, she and other cult members stopped feeding the 1-year-old because he wouldn't say "amen" at mealtime.

Back in 1993, David Koresh's Branch Davidian sect ended in a conflagration after a 51-day standoff with the FBI. In 1978, over 900 members of the People's Temple died at Jonestown, Guyana, in a mass murder-suicide; and in 1997, scores of Heaven's Gate followers killed themselves in California."

-- Krystle M. Davis, mentioning many of the stories we've covered in her review intro for Jayanti Tamm's ''Cartwheels in a Sari'' (see the tags below) - and only mentioning once that cults are "mainstream" now (but not a word about stopping the zombie invasion) - like, maybe, even in Forbes Magazine.

Dissecting The New Age Movement, Part III: What's The Indicator A Person Is A Cultist?

This is the image most people have when they hear the words "cult" or "cultists" - but we know most cultists aren't that obvious - so what's the indicator a person is a cultist?

Let's take a look at a few of the most well-known cultists and see if you can spot it:

David Koresh

Oprah Winfrey

Marshall Applewhite

Charlie Manson

Jim Jones

J.Z. Knight

Shirley MacLaine

Rev. Sun Myung Moon (and wife)

So, the question was:

What's The Indicator A Person Is A Cultist?

And the correct answer is:

The ideas they claim to believe.

Turn Out The Light (More Cult Of Obama)

New Age America Is Entranced By Obama's Electoral Aura

The best-selling American new age guru Deepak Chopra* is fond of the word "quantum": reading his work, one begins to suspect that he has it set up as a shortcut in Microsoft Word, so that he doesn't have to type it out in full every time he wants to refer to "quantum health", "quantum healing" or "the quantum mind".

*Don't forget: this is the same Deepak Chopra who first came to our attention when he was busted for sneaking a Maharishi-backed paper full of bogus B.S. into the Journal of American Medicine - TMR.

This kind of thing makes physicists want to sob uncontrollably, so they've learned to ignore him. But not long ago, Chopra used the word in a new context that bears closer inspection: if Barack Obama enters the White House as president next January, he declared, "it will represent a quantum leap in American consciousness"*.

*Which has always been a goal of the American public,....

Chopra, it turns out, is far from alone. A curious side-story in this year's election campaign is that the new age movement in the US has embraced Obama even more fervently than most of his supporters. New agers are traditionally liberal, so it's no surprise that they're backing the Democratic candidate. But the question that's been gathering steam among them in recent weeks goes much further than that, and brings - shall we say - a whole other dimension to the race: could Obama be a "lightworker"?

"New agers are traditionally liberal,..."? You don't say! I always thought they were rock-ribbed traditionalists!

"Many spiritually advanced people* I know ... identify Obama as a lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who [can] actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford in a piece headlined "Is Obama an Enlightened Being?" On the higher astral planes of the blogosphere, the notion met with enthusiasm. "He may play a major role," one blogger wrote, "in bringing us to [what] the Hopi Indians call the Great Shift." The endorsement of Oprah Winfrey, increasingly involved in new age spirituality, underscored the point.

*And if these people are "spiritually advanced," what does that make you?

The cultish side of Obama-worship has been noted before: the online magazine Slate has been running an Obama Messiah Watch, as has a blog, obamamessiah.blogspot.com. Star Wars creator George Lucas said - perhaps facetiously - that he thought it "reasonably obvious" that Obama was a Jedi knight. But the Obama-as-lightworker notion is more than a matter of tone. We're talking about the dawning of the age of aquarius.

He's leaving out CNN, FOX, etc. - and, of course, TMR - but in a country known for burning David Koresh and his followers, jailing Charlie Manson and his, and the mass suicides of Heaven's Gate and the People's Temple, who can complain about the "cultish side" of anything in America?

New agers are often unfairly maligned*: look at life through a slightly different lens, and you instantly get associated with a tiny handful of crystals-cure-cancer maniacs. But if they want their preferred candidate to win, they might consider keeping quiet for now. Already, the right, in the form of unhinged pundit Michelle Malkin, has started exploiting the story to mock the Democrats. And Obama has quite enough to do to fight the threat of pigeonholing - as "the black candidate", "the elite candidate" - without becoming the kooky candidate too**.

-- Oliver Burkeman, catching TMR's vapors, in The Guardian.

*Who says it's unfair?

**Too late.