Preying On The Sick And Dying Is How NewAge Grew

Mothering with malicious misinformation.

  AIDS gave Louise Hay a following.

Dead bodies everywhere.

  Marianne Williamson developed a large following, particularly among Los Angeles’s gay community, which was then being ravaged by the initial outbreak of AIDS.

Coinkidink?

I hate being reminded of the NewAge vultures back then,…

 

Instapundit "Got" An Honorable Mention As 1 Of The 25 Most Influential People On The Right (As He Gets "Got")

Stick with me, kid, you'll,...something.

Away we go:

This morning I noticed Glenn Reynolds said, "I think the GOP can win even by losing," which I identified as con artist patter - and, Good Golly Miss Molly, what do you know?

It IS con artist patter! Straight from The Atlantic:

Now is the time for all good men to fail. Good women, too. Fail early and often, and don’t be shy about admitting it. Failing isn’t shameful; it’s not even failure. Such is the message of a growing body of self-help and leadership literature. 

...Given this growing cultural fixation on failure, it was probably inevitable that politicians would begin clambering aboard the pro-failure bandwagon.

There it is - our buddy - good ol' Self-Help to the rescue!

Are you listening, y'all? You can't hear it:

Glenn Reynolds is in the NewAge world of Billary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey/Tony Robbins/James Arthur Ray/Louise Hay Grade-A bullshit, and he's delivering it to your door as political wisdom without the slightest clue how he's being played.

As a matter of fact, back when Reynolds used to post TMR and it was almost All-NewAge-All-The-Time, that's what his last email to me indicated:

Hey, I've got nothing against you, Crack.  But I really don't get your blog, and God knows I've tried.  Sorry.

Think about that for a second:

Glenn Reynolds has been seen to "get" a Mormon for president - who devoutly believes he'll get his own planet. Glenn can "get" that you can relearn to breathe with Laughing Yoga, all the many bogus concoctions, preparations, and devices in Quackery - and even inserting vapid win-from-losing Self-Help nostrums (I know you don't think I "get" it but I got it) into our supposedly serious game of politics - but he doesn't "get" why a conservative blogger, versed in NewAge solipsism, would be skeptical of the whole election-losing Instapundit enterprise.

Why wouldn't I point it out?

This flaw in conservative reasoning needs addressing and now:

I've got nothing against Glenn. What I really don't get will be conservatives losing through NewAge, and God knows I've tried. 

O.K., there is no God, but - even for that - I am really and truly sorry,...

 

Proudly Being A Witch Never Made Much Sense To Me

MS. LOUISE HAY (Self-Help Movement Founder):

"Happiness is choosing thoughts that make you feel good. It's really very simple."

I understand I'm probably not getting the most out of life right now, being exposed to those who don't take seriously the harm NewAge does to me and others, but - until they do - I can't think of much that's more important to pursue. To me, real people are getting hurt badly, right under our noses, when it could be stopped. Horrible crimes. But few others want to stop them, and - if nothing else - that fact's fascinating to me.

"It was an hour into the self-help session when the girl began sobbing uncontrollably. For Ali Campbell, the celebrity life coach, it was just another example of the potency of his ‘being true to yourself’ workshops. 

But for Michael Le Vell, it was the beginning of two years that threatened to rob him of his career, his family and his sanity. 

Today, The Mail on Sunday can reveal the moment that led to  the Coronation Street actor being falsely accused of raping a child – and to the life coach being questioned by police. 

It took place at the so-called ‘Glastonbury of the self-help world’, an annual conference called I Can Do It! A two-day festival of self-development, it was set up by Louise Hay, an 86-year-old American whose controversial brand of positive thinking has earned her millions of followers around the world."

Part of the issue is, today, there's no escaping it. Another - watching where the money goes - is such a potent symbol of why we've so quickly become a basket case of a country. 

Here's where a huge chunk of our change goes:

"Though you may not know it, you live in Louise Hay’s world. Are you a black man who thinks psychics are nonsense but reads the affirmations of Tavis Smiley? Hay House has a special imprint just for Smiley. Are you a TV-loathing snob who occasionally condescends to watch PBS? The pledge-drive specials that Hay House has produced for Wayne (“Inspiration: Your Ultimate Calling”) Dyer have helped raise more than $100 million for public television — they are one of PBS’s most-successful fund-raising tools."

Real people in the way, of this juggernaut of chaos, hardly stand a chance - because we're almost always alone and blind-sided:

"For Michael Le Vell, it was the beginning of two years that threatened to rob him of his career, his family and his sanity."

Meanwhile, the Boomers, etc., chant the NewAge phrase, "move on" to unburden themselves.

But also as a necessary rear-guard action.

What's done is done - and everybody will know them for who they are and what they've done.

It only follows, you know, they're expecting a reply,...

 

Rape, Adultery, Murder - Everything's "Spiritual" Now

Let me try my hand at this NewAge prophecy thing again. Yesterday I wrote "I Just Discovered Why Rape Is O.K. (NewAgers Say So)" and today we find this:

February’s broad daylight attack and rape of a visiting brunette co-ed stunned and scared the University of California-Santa Cruz campus. 

Now, prosecutors say, the claim was all a hoax perpetrated by a twisted 20-year-old who used Craigslist to find a man who would abuse her in exchange for sex. 

After the act, Morgan Triplett called police and claimed she had been raped and assaulted by a stranger. The allegations set off a frantic 11-day search for her supposed attacker. 

Triplett, a University of California-Santa Barbara student, had been visiting the Santa Cruz campus for a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender conference, the Register Pajaronian reported.

I should mention, here, that I have a friend who goes to UC Santa Cruz and - despite being a biology major - she thinks vaccines cause autism. Great "institution of higher learning" they've got there, no? Any-waaay:

Do you get it? 

While attending a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender conference, this woman invited a man to rape her - just as the NewAge LGBT community allowed Louise Hay to kill them during the AIDS crisis. And some man did rape the woman - and probably got away with it, since she probably has no idea who it was - making the rape O.K., just as I said. 

 And, being a foolish LGBT-indoctrinated NewAger, that made *perfect sense* to her. 

 I rest my case,...

 

Can't Wipe Me Out? Then Go For The Next Best Thing,...

You've gotta love Helena "Big Eyes" Blavatsky, The Mother of NewAge, if only for nothing other than how fucking all-around batty she was. On the other hand, you can reasonably also hate her guts for all the trouble she started amongst the pea-brained. What do I mean? Let's turn to Wikipedia's "Aryan Race" page and find her writings that got the Nazis all KILL! KILL! KILL!:

"Esoteric history teaches that idols and their worship died out with the Fourth Race, until the survivors of the hybrid races of the latter (Chinamen, African Negroes, c.) gradually brought the worship back. The Vedas countenance no idols; all the modern Hindu writings do". 

"The intellectual difference between the Aryan and other civilized nations and such savages as the South Sea Islanders, is inexplicable on any other grounds. No amount of culture, nor generations of training amid civilization, could raise such human specimens as the Bushmen, the Veddhas of Ceylon, and some African tribes, to the same intellectual level as the Aryans, the Semites, and the Turanians so called. The 'sacred spark' is missing in them and it is they who are the only inferior races on the globe, now happily -- owing to the wise adjustment of nature which ever works in that direction -- fast dying out. Verily mankind is 'of one blood,' but not of the same essence. We are the hot-house, artificially quickened plants in nature, having in us a spark, which in them is latent". 

According to Blavatsky, "the MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained" savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had". She also prophecies of the destruction of the racial "failures of nature" as the future "higher race" ascends: 

"Thus will mankind, race after race, perform its appointed cycle-pilgrimage. Climates will, and have already begun, to change, each tropical year after the other dropping one sub-race, but only to beget another higher race on the ascending cycle; while a series of other less favoured groups -- the failures of nature -- will, like some individual men, vanish from the human family without even leaving a trace behind".

Got that? Genocide AND the "science" of climate change, all in one paragraph! Who'da thunk it? This NewAge is really something to behold (And why isn't Blavatsky's name ever brought up in "global warming" discussions?) Needless to say, if she was the Mother of NewAge, "Dad" - in the form of Adolf Let's-speed-up-that-lesser-races-vanishing-act Hitler - was going to be a hoot!

And, in case you thought this "thinking" died out with Blavatsky and old bullet-to-the-head, let me remind you of this exchange with the current holder of the Mother of NewAge title, Louise "Skull Face" Hay, publisher of the inspirationally NewAge "Hay House" books:

When I asked her if, since people’s thoughts are responsible for their conditions, victims of genocide might be to blame for their own deaths, she said: “I probably wouldn’t say it to them. That’s not what I’m after.” 

I pressed harder: Did she believe they are to blame? “Yes,...” 

So, I asked, with a situation like the Holocaust, the victims might have been an unfortunate group of souls who deserved what they got because of their behavior in past lives? “Yes,..."

I swear, finding sickness in the NewAge movement is like shooting fish in a barrel. (And I still find it bizarre that, after she said that, there's still no condemnation or outcry - times don't change that much, do they?) BTW, as I read further down that Wikipedia "Aryan Race" page, I found this revealing line:

Samael Aun Weor published a book in 1967 retitled in 2008 The Doomed Aryan Race in which he asserted that the Aryan "Root Race" is doomed to be destroyed by hydrogen bombs unless the people of the Aryan race learn tantric yoga.

So, NewAge racial theory not only explains past genocide, but familiar scenes of today:

Good God, Hippies - "save" yourselves,…

 

Whoopi Goldberg Takes Her Idiocy Seriously

Ed Driscoll has the "slightly racist" story, including other stuff I've covered about Whoopi. Tavis Smiley's even in there - he of Louise Hay's NewAge clique - and isn't it amazing how I, the internet's anti-cult crusader, always already have stuff on the very people who pop up saying crazy shit? How DOES that happen? Just lucky I guess,...

Anyway, after reading Ed's piece, hit the tags for the various fruitloops, below, if you want "the view" of these numbskulls to become clearer.

Looking At TMR's Past (To Find TMR's Future)

Every so often, I'll do a post I'm really proud of, or that proves to have staying power with the public by being passed around for years and bringing in new readers. Here's a few of those, so the rest of you can see what's so special and maybe start passing them around as well. In no particular order:

Hay Is For Horses: Reading Between The (Circular) Lines (Of Reasoning) On Louise Hay

"Eternal War Must Never End" - Barack Obama And The Alinsky Method: Leftist NewAge Beliefs

The Big Bang (Part 1)

Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf?

Women Getting Squirrelly (And Collecting Nuts)

Black Bigotry Won't Lead Us To Freedom Either

Jon Stewart Has His Fun: "I Don't Want To Live In A World Where Charles Manson Says What Our Children Can Watch On Television" (Cute)

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

I'm going to update this with text, in a bit, so check back for that. This is funny stuff, but should hardly be the last word on Glenn Beck, conspiracy theories, and how secularists should approach what seem like some of the "out there" investigations going on in this country, such as Beck's. (Remember: he's a Mormon, while I'm an atheist.) For now, I'll just say I think people need to remember The Daily Show is a comedy program, and that's enough reason to trust what they say less than anything FOX News's resident bible-thumper did:

Beck, as a believer, has to say what he thinks is the truth. Jon Stewart, as a comic, just has to make you laugh.

I'll be back - and thanks for the donations. You've saved my ass again.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

UPDATE: So, while Jon Stewart is going on and on about everything that's easy to mock about Beck, he's conspicuously, and conveniently, leaving out the White House scalps Beck collected, and the level of political interest he inspired. He's also leaving out the fact that, though The Glenn Beck Program won't be on FOX, Glenn Beck will, in some capacity, so - along with his excellent radio broadcast - liberals will continue to be stuck with him, whether they like it or not. My take:

Liberal applause, now, many be somewhat warranted, but, to me, it still seems waaay premature.

The Daily Show - Barack Obamayan
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And finally, as an atheist who gets deep into religion and spirituality, it seems disingenuous for Jon Stewart to knock Glenn Beck for his Book of Revelations nonsense by twisting it up with 2012 and the Mayan calendar, when Stewart has to know Beck is a conservative Mormon - commenting on that Leftist spirituality nonsense. All it makes me wonder is why Jon Stewart never says anything about, say, Louise Hay's influence on PBS? Actually, I don't have to wonder why, because the answer is obvious:

PBS is for and of the Left, so they can spout all the NewAge nonsense they want, and Stewart won't say a word about how crazy they appear.

But that's fine - as I said, the man's a professional clown, and his mandate is to make us laugh - so, as long as he's being funny and Beck & Co. are kicking his and the Left's NewAge ass, we should occasionally be able to give Stewart a pass because, in the larger scheme of things, the joke is definitely on him.

Which is yet another topic he'll never discuss on The Daily Show.

Why Is This Blog Always So Angry? (It Is Those "Shiny Happy People" You Have Got To Watch)

I really like reading your blog, though I'm still trying to keep up the same level of harsh that you do. It wears me out, man.
You are an inspiration, but an exhausting one.

--Anga2010

Love you, Anga! (So much like "anger"!) I have repeatedly made the argument that NewAge is Naziism and believers get away with their crimes because they seem "nice" to others (and I will continue to make that argument) but now there's a new book in France that makes my argument for me:

The history of French collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II is still a very sensitive subject in Gallic literary and political circles. Bestselling novelist Alexandre Jardin has learned this the hard way with the publication of "Des Gens Très Bien" (or "Very Nice People"), a startling exposé of his famous family's association with Nazism under the Vichy government of Marshal Philippe Pétain.

Mr. Jardin's new book, published in January by Grasset and available only in French, mixes the confessional genre with biography, history and narrative, and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies since its release. The author now finds himself accosted daily by perturbed readers desperate to unburden themselves about their own "collabos" ancestors. Yet critical reactions in the Parisian press have veered from occasional plaudits to often vicious attacks from across the ideological spectrum. The trouble for these academics and baby boomers alike is that in his work, Mr. Jardin not only denounces his respected paternal grandfather, but by extension all the other "very nice people" of wartime France.

NewAgers are proponents of the concept of "duality", where there is no right or wrong (as long as they're happy!) and they maintain this through delusion, or an escape from reality - but there is no escape:

"After 70 years I thought we could start to recognize the reality of our families and how they behaved during the war," Mr. Jardin tells me in an interview from Paris. "The core of the problem is that I have not spoken about monsters. My grandfather was not a monster. I have spoken about what 'very nice people' did in France when they accepted collaboration with Nazism. I did not realize I would provoke such anger. So long as we were putting authentic monsters on trial—like Maurice Papon for example—no one was worried. But to lift the lid on the question of the responsibility of people who were 'moral' during the collaboration has totally panicked French society."

The reaction to Mr. Jardin's book tells us as much about France as does the work itself. As Mr. Jardin observes, "It expressed something very powerful inside French society: the desire to protect the honor of our families, while in reality the large majority in France were behind Pétain during the Second World War. . . . With the liberation, France threw herself behind Gaullism with such fervor because we were ashamed of our behavior. He [de Gaulle] offered us his glory. . . it seemed to me that 70 years on we could tear up this pact and come to terms with reality. But this has provoked incredible emotion."

Most historians, and renowned Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, remain unmoved, pointing to Mr. Jardin's lack of archival proof. But Mr. Jardin has at least one powerful supporter for his claim that Jean was fully aware of the atrocity of July 1942.

"A few weeks ago I found myself around a table at the Elysée with [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy, at a lunch with three writers and a journalist and a historian," Mr. Jardin recounts. "The historian suddenly said to me: 'But you don't have a lot of proof against your grandfather; [Mr.] Sarkozy got up out of his chair, cut her off and said 'Madame, I have had a lot of chiefs of staff.' He gave her a lesson explaining that a chief of staff was nothing like a government departmental head. It was evident listening to [Mr.] Sarkozy that the prime minister's chief of staff could not but be intimately associated with the decision.

All the same, in Mr. Jardin's telling, the historian insisted that "'that did not constitute proof.'" Then, "[Mr.] Sarkozy's temperature rose and he said something incredible which came from his gut: 'Madame if I asked [French Interior Minister and Mr. Sarkozy's former chief of staff] Claude Guéant to organize a round-up of 13,000 Jews next week in Paris, whatever the circumstances, I know Claude would resign. His [Mr. Jardin's] grandfather did not resign.' Then [Mr.] Sarkozy turned to me and said: 'I don't understand why there is a polemic.'"

As Mr. Jardin sees it, a certain moral code, exemplified by his "loyal" grandfather, was crucial to the Vichy machine. "In the end it was not at all necessary to be a monster to participate in the worst. There was an anti-Semitism of the state. Men like my grandfather were prepared to do absolutely anything to preserve a little fragment of national sovereignty," Mr. Jardin observes. "They preferred that the French police came to arrest Jewish families rather than let the German police do it. It is disturbing. In any case in my family there has not been any [feeling of] guilt after the war. My grandfather had the feeling of having done good. It is incredible."

Incredible, indeed. And this is what we live with today - with the Oprah's and the Ellen's, Huffington's and Knight's, the Deepak's and Hay's and the Ray's and Maclaine's - the unending idea that, no matter what harm they and their "beliefs" have brought to other's lives, they are somehow doing good. Hell, even psychics who are busted in crimes, red handed, claim as much. But, one day, this, too, will all be exposed as a lie.

And, like France, the entire society that protected and promoted them will be determined to be complicit.

So enjoy it while it lasts, people - smile! These are the good times!