Naked (Wondering What's Under Those Pajamas,...)

Now this is weird: 

 Pajamas Media has an article called "Cults: The Mind Enslaved." 

It's not like PJMedia to wander into my neck of the woods, and as with so many others, it's an article on being a full-blown cultist as opposed to the much more prevalent phenomena of being surrounded by cultish thinking - so it hardly applies to most people - but, still, it's welcome:

Nobody joins a cult; people are attracted to cultic groups by an apparent good. This could be legitimate elements borrowed from a non-cultic faith, the “high” experienced at a self-help conference, or the camaraderie and affection offered by a new group of caring people. These attractions fill a need experienced by a vulnerable recruit. The benefits prime the new member to identify the cult as the source. 

Cult members invariably begin to experience a discrepancy between cult teaching and what he or she observes. Mr. Goldman spoke of knowing LaRouche published antisemitic literature while the leader claimed to have a special love for Jewish people. Confronted with inconsistencies, the subject must choose between personal thinking and the cult-knowledge with all its perceived benefits. Once a person consciously repudiates his or her own mind, defending against intruding reality becomes imperative. As the cult-thought becomes more and more invasive, the member no longer lives life based on the normal ebb and flow of information, analysis, and personally selected behavior. Instead, the subject defaults to free-standing dictums that have no root in reality. 

The mind continues to receive sensory input from the world and this causes “dissonance,” a struggle between suppressed reason attempting to reassert itself and the post-analytical intellect. … 

The Cult Mind frequently violates conscience, that internalized voice of universal right and wrong. For Jason Beghe, it was continuing to recruit for Scientology when he saw that expensive training was not helping him. For David Goldman, he knew assisting an antisemite spread the “Jewish Banking Myth” was wrong, but he was not willing to substitute reality for the emotional comfort of LaRouche’s inner circle. 

The need to limit contact with people who live according to reason explains alienation from family, friends, and non-members. Living extensions of the Gnostic group-mind are only comfortable with people who affirm the illusion in which they live. Within a cult, subjects serve to continuously monitor one another’s level of blind adherence to cult ideology and to suspension of critical thought. Deviations such as questioning or criticism are met with social sanctions that vary in intensity depending on the cult. Anyone who threatens the unity of thought is deemed an enemy. Such a person threatens the essential psychologically dependent state that constitutes the essence of the cult. 

The Gnostic Mind is often compartmentalized and people who eschew reason in one area of life are able to function at high levels of professionalism in others. The more dangerous cults are precisely those whose members seem relatively normal on the surface because they offer fewer external warnings to the vulnerable.

Yep, all that sounds about right, but I still can't help wondering why is PJMedia covering it? And why now? Tom Cruise's troubles? Moon's death? A warning on Mormonism?

Or maybe it's just a fluke. A one-off. Or,…maybe cultism is being seen as the very problem I've been saying can't be ignored.

No, I doubt that - the framing of this issue as someone else's problem - something you don't concern yourself with until it's too late (which, by then, is too late) is still too prevalent.

 I'm just going to be glad it's there and let it go, as so much has gone before,...

 

San Francisco, Obama, And Hitler: All Shameful

For how long, and how many times, have I said San Francisco is an illiberal place, filled to the brim with cultists, where you can get attacked by cowards for holding the wrong views? Well, here's your proof - again:

A man who set up a table with political literature and a sign opposing President Barack Obama was attacked in San Francisco’s North Panhandle neighborhood, police and witnesses said Tuesday.

Initial police accounts had indicated that the man had a sign supporting Obama, but witnesses later said it was an anti-Obama sign with a Hitler mustache drawn over the president’s face.

The attack happened around 11:30 a.m. Monday in the 1200 block of Fell Street, where the victim, a 29-year-old Daly City man, had set up his table, said Capt. Denis O’Leary of the SFPD’s Park Station.

A man and woman approached the victim, tore the sign and shook the table, causing the political literature to fall to the ground.

The attackers also kicked the man in the hand, O’Leary said.

The SFPD captain said he did not know whether the victim was a supporter or opponent of Obama, but a witness who was in the area Monday said the victim was a supporter of Lyndon LaRouche, a left-wing political activist who opposes the president.

The witness, Wayne Friday, a former San Francisco police commissioner and local journalist, said he was stopping by the Bank of America at Fell and Broderick streets and saw a sign that read “Impeach Obama” with a picture of the president with a Hitler mustache.

Friday said he did not see the attack happen.

The two attackers, who had dogs with them, fled south on Broderick Street before officers arrived, and hadn’t been located, O’Leary said.

So let's see:

Attacking someone they don't agree with?

Check.

A member of the Lyndon LaRouche cult?

Check.

LaRouche is described as merely "a left-wing political activist"?

Double check!

After doing something they supposedly believed in - whether it's protesting criticism of Obama or cultists openly operating on the streets - they ran away.

Check.

It covers all the bases I've already covered - many times. Poor San Francisco:

It's so sad to see such a confused city living such a massive lie.

There's Crackpots And Then There's Crackpots

The Tea Party movement was first seriously called racist after the Lyndon LaRouche cult started showing up to conservative rallies with posters of Barack Obama wearing a Hitler mustache.

This led to the Tea Party movement brilliantly defending itself by declaring it was the Lyndon LaRouche cult - not they - who were racist.

Now the Lyndon LaRouche cult has black guys displaying their signs - without controversy - while the Tea Party movement (as evidenced by Rand Paul) is still caught up in playing the liberal's sorry game of "You're a racist!" "No we're not - you're a racist!"

TMR's take on all this:

The cult of Lyndon LaRouche is smarter than the Tea Party movement.

Welcome To "Change" (Can We Stop It Now?)

"Jerry had been a student at the British Institute in Paris but he had travelled to Wiesbaden to attend what he thought would be an anti-Iraq war conference. 'He was an idealistic boy who wanted to change the world,' his mother said. 'He was angry about the upcoming war and wanted to do something about it. But he was also excited because he was beginning to learn about politics.'

The conference was organised by the Schiller Institute, an extremist political think-tank linked to a right-wing conspiracy theorist, Lyndon LaRouche. He is an 87-year-old convicted fraudster who has made eight unsuccessful attempts to run as an independent candidate in the US presidential elections. Some of LaRouche's more unusual claims include that the British monarchy and MI6 are behind the global drugs trade.

In the States, he is largely regarded as an amusing sideshow whose apocalyptic writings attract vulnerable people looking for answers.

The LaRouche Movement: A 'sinister' cult

Former members have accused it of brainwashing members, as well as promoting anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic conspiracy theories."

-- Jerome Taylor, on the mysterious and gruesome death of Jerry Duggan, an English Jew - the newest victim of the "amusing sideshow" of "vulnerable people looking for answers" - and yet another body, cruelly piled up on this blog, and in the pages of The Independent.

Needless to say, TMR is not amused,...but then, I'm not a cynically idealistic journalist.

Fighting Over The Same Organic Vegetables

"The who's-a-Nazi fight, which Nancy Pelosi started last week by claiming that ObamaCare opponents were 'carrying swastikas,' has taken an interesting turn. Pelosi's defense, such as it was, was that she meant to criticize ObamaCare opponents who likened the president's plan to Nazism--which would have been a valid criticism had Pelosi made it clearly and not in a way that insinuated the opponents were Nazis.

NewsBusters.org, a Web site of the conservative Media Research Center, notes that CNN, NBC and MSNBC have all shown 'a poster of President Obama--on whose face a Hitler mustache has been Photo Shopped--bearing the caption "I've Changed."' to illustrate the supposed extremism of ObamaCare critics:

But there's a problem with this media narrative.

For written at the poster's bottom is the web address 'LaRouchePAC.com,' the political action committee website for Communist and perpetual Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

We're not sure that describing LaRouche as a "communist" is fair to communists; our sense is that his ideology is eclectically extreme and nutty, drawing elements from left, right and directions we haven't heard of."

-- James Taranto, on everyone's favorite political cultist (well, mine anyway: he's loo-ny) who's followers can be found in front of most Trader Joe's and Whole Foods outlets - yes, like the Democrats, he knows where his natural constituency can be found - which is why he's rarely mentioned in The Wall Street Journal.

Tongues Are Gonna Be Waggin' Now!!!

"I welcome the idea of a qualified Hispanic woman being appointed to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, Judge Sonia Sotomayor may not be the right choice. The Federal Circuit Court judge is involved with, and apparently committed to, a youth charity run by one Fred Newman--the Marxist psychotherapist and cult leader who used to boast about having sex with his patients and whose philosophy of 'friendosexuality' has been promoted among the charity's kids.

According to Daily News columnist Errol Louis, Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor has worked as a volunteer workshop leader for the past four years with the Development School for Youth (DSY), a branch of the Newman-controlled All Stars Project (the latter is a multifaceted youth charity that works with kids of all ages). Louis quotes the White House as saying that the DSY is Sotomayor's 'favorite project.'”

-- Dennis King, with even more evidence Obama's favorite "wise Latina" ain't so wise about (what else?) cults - but this accusation's especially damning - because it's popped up on the batshit-screwy Lyndon LaRouche Watch.

Well I'll be damned. No - wait - I'm damned already. This is another of those "hidden in plain sight" (AKA "occult") things that so many people are letting slide in their, totally non-racial, rush to appoint any minority to a post she's got no business being in. (I know, I know: Now I hate my Latina heritage as well,....) The Anti-Defamation League called this group "A Cult By Any Other Name," and said Newman, in a 1985 speech, called Jews "storm troopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over." But - hey - as far as I know, nobody ever let little things like that stop anything in these parts.

Like I said, I'm damned,...to this life in hell.

The S.F. Bay Area Liberal's Friend

"I mean: Obama is a racist. I mean, with an African father--he wasn't much of an African father, but was an African father of Kenya. He was part of a British operation, which took over Kenya, through MI5's operation. But this guy was away from Kenya, and he married a Margaret Mead type, a woman who had a number of successive husbands, like Margaret Mead did. Went out to the poor, brown people, in Asia, and had sex with them! It was called "Coming in Samoa." [groans, laughter] And she wore through a number of successive husbands, and by them, had various children. And therefore, you'll find Obama's ancestry, if you chase his family tree, everybody's climbing and swinging from the branches there--from all over the world! All parts of the world! This guy is the universal man. Every monkey in every tree, from every part of the world, has participated in the sexual act of producing him. And he works for organized crime--which is a branch of British intelligence."

-- Lyndon LaRouche, the political cult leader, whose followers can be found recruiting all over the San Francisco Bay Area - in places like the Haight/Ashbury, Berkeley, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe's - just doing what comes naturally.