Naturally Putrid Radio Has Lost (And We Juan!)

Life is so strange: we can still remember the very first time we saw Juan Williams on public television, and thinking he was some milk toast-y black guy whose opinions didn't matter much (Which is true if you think about it: until now, has Juan Williams ever said or done anything worth mentioning? Hell, he didn't even do anything now - it was NPR that did something so wrong we're all talking about it). And yet, today, he's the darling of the Right - specifically because he's an old school Democrat and not a "progressive" - after being thrown over the side for ideological impurity. As Bill O'Reilly says, here, Williams' career is now set - thanks to NPR attempting to destroy him. Whodathunkit?

And - wow - who do NPR think they are? Seriously, Juan Williams was a great fit because he was as milk toast-y as they appeared to be. Now, here they come, playing hardball with a guy they probably thought wouldn't fight back - forgetting the thing they hated most about him were his conservative friends - but now he's got a lot of friends, and even worse, they're coming into power, ready to fight. It's just a stupid, stupid, stupid move by NPR, all around.

If NPR soon gets defunded (as Sarah Palin suggests) that'll be fine by us - we stopped watching/listening to them years ago, once we realized they were a part of the NewAge matrix - because anything that forces Louise Hay to dig deeper, into her own pocket, to keep an outlet for her stable of NewAgers open, is A-OK around here. (We'd be happier if Hay just died already, but whatever.)

And if, like Air America, NPR eventually finds they can't survive without sucking on the public tit, all the better. This Juan Williams thing is just the sort of episode that proves why. They weren't ever to have been trusted - or supported - and especially not on the public dime. As we've been saying for years (and even David Mamet eventually discovered - calling them "National Palestinian Radio") underneath that soft-spoken coo-cooing, they're nothing but a nest of NewAge vipers:

And now, in a FOX News frenzy, it appears they've finally gone and bitten themselves to death.

Good riddance.

How Do Our Conspiracy Theories Begin?

First we're told to read stuff like this:

Today's most prominent New Thought teachers deliver their sermons from the couches of television talk shows rather than pulpits; their books are more likely to be shelved under "Business" and "Self-Help" in bookstores than in "Religion." Stephen Covey's highly effective business executives are direct descendants of the constitutionally "healthy-minded" Victorians that William James marveled at one hundred years ago.

Wayne Dyer's "Power of Intention," the ordained Unity minister Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles," Deepak Chopra's many books on quantum healing and spiritual affluence, Gary Zukav's recondite explorations of quantum physics and practical exercises for "soul empowerment," Jerry and Esther Hicks' "Ask and It is Given" (the channeled wisdom of a spiritual entity named Abraham who reveals how you can become "vibrationally aligned" with your desires), not to mention the tapes, infomercials, and packed lectures by the motivational guru Tony Robbins and the first "New Thought" film "What the Bleep Do We Know?" about the invisible organization of energy-all offer variations on ideas that were first proclaimed by Quimby, Warren Felt Evans, the Dressers, Emma Curtis Hopkins, and Mary Baker Eddy more than a century ago.

Clearly New Thought spawned an effective practical psychology-millions of Americans recite daily affirmations to encourage their positivity while they struggle up the career ladder and through the vagaries of toxic relationships. 12-Step programs have empowered countless addicts to reclaim their lives; support groups help the chronically ill maintain hope and according to some studies actually improve their longevity. And innumerable informal groups gather together to learn how to access Universal Spirit in order to "manifest" more good in their lives.

Only to have it followed by stuff like this:

It has been said, rightly I think, that human desire always looks beyond present enjoyments to an absent good. The minute we find ourselves contented by something, we set out afresh on work in the pursuit of happiness. What then is to be made of the recent claim from architects that something as seemingly fleeting and elusive as happiness can be ‘designed in’?

Happiness is the latest Big Idea amongst policymakers and social scientists.  And given architects now justify design almost entirely in terms of delivering social policy, it was probably only a matter of time before attentions turned to shaping our feelings.

The popularity of designing happiness indicates the extent designers have returned to previously discredited ideas of environmental determinism. In recent decades we’ve become used to neighbourhoods designed to control criminal and anti social behaviour, ideas recently extended to include shaping how communities feel – for example safe and secure. Health and well-being are also seen as fair game. The popularity of the “nudge” approach of behavioural psychologists is evident in the “choice architecture” planners require in neighbourhoods to encourage the right – healthy – choice of foods.  Seen in this light, it’s a small step to using design to “optimise” emotions and improve happiness.

What’s striking about the happiness movement is their desperately low opinion of the public, who seem to figure as little more than passive objects in need of designers to pep up their positive thinking or shape their “wise living”.  Despite the claim of following in the tradition of the Enlightenment, it’s clear today’s happy clappy architects reject Enlightenment values of autonomy.

In the 18th century, the active pursuit of happiness represented part of a human awakening. The notable thing about today’s happiness brigade is their degraded view of humanity, for example seeing human society as prisoners of its biology. The RSA, (who ironically promote a “21st century Enlightenment”), argue that our “hunter gatherer” brains haven’t always adapted to abundance in modern society, a problem, they say, that retards our decision making capacity, and makes us obese, or lonely.  The evolutionary biologist Bjorn Grinde thinks we’re ‘stone age creatures living in a jet age zoo’.

So where does this leave designers? Given the interest in designing environmental cues to shape the happiness of those in the zoo, it‘s little surprise that the collaborations designers seem most excited about just now are with neuroscientists.  Yet for all the claims that this puts design on a scientific footing (and architects are never happier than when “evidencing” their design), what shines through is a miserable combination of the mystical and the authoritarian.

Not only have some architects become hostile to medical science (one favours designing hospitals as ‘architectural placebo effects’) but in line with environmentalist fads, discredited ideas of “nature therapy” have become popular. From parks as “natural health services” to the therapeutic value accorded to views of nature out of hospital windows, ideas are flourishing which have their roots in that dark historical period when homeopathy and hydrotherapy were closely aligned with biological notions of superiority.

So that's how we make these connections. Are they connected? Of course, they are.

As The Los Angeles Times said:

We respect the right of some people to hold nonsensical views like that.

Just not a whole hell of a lot:

One Way The French Rioters Are Not Crazy

We, too, always wanted to see those shitty little cars being treated this way.

The View We've Held Of Women Has Changed

NPR Should Now Hire Bill O'Reilly

The Poverty Creep

Save Me (I'm Only Kidding: Save Yourselves) II

Save Me (I'm Only Kidding: Save Yourselves)

Do The Cultists Have You (Coming Or Going)?

Australia's Sydney Morning Herald had a pretty good article about a former cultist named Carli McConkey, and how she fell "victim to mind control" (and isn't it strange we don't see more articles like that, in America, where the phenomena is most prevalent?)

TMR's also been arguing that - after 40 plus years of hippie cult indoctrination - themes of NewAge mind control exist throughout Western culture already. So we're going to look at that idea, using McConkey's story, and see how many of our regular themes formed the matrix that was almost impossible for McConkey - or anyone else - to escape.

(On a related note: have you noticed how NewAgers multi-task, with chiropractors promoting homeopathy, and the like?)

"Prison walls and chains are not necessary when one believes these things.''

So says Clinical Professor Doni Whitsett of the University of Southern California, who has been working with cultists and their families for 20 years.

"Carli's is 'a tragic textbook case', she says" and here's what was in Carli's textbook - and may also already be in yours:

The NewAge doomsday prophesy of Armageddon in 2012. Heard of it?

Why?

"New Age personal development" groups.

Heard anyone else in this destructive Oprah Winfrey and Anthony Robbins-saturated culture say not to?

"Mind Body Spirit".

More like Dumb, Stupid, and Ignorant.

Psychic readings.

They get the really gullible ones.

Metaphysical ''signs''.

The best ones say "STOP".

Being told to keep an open mind, to ''leave your logic at the door'', and to avoid ''judgmentalism".

Cultists hate if you won't do that.

Cleansing impurities.

You know, like getting the toxic cultists out of your life.

''Intuition''.

Guessing - same thing.

Being told one can ''manifest'' (or make) things happen in the real world using your mind.

If that's true, why are they talking - with their mouths?

The "bait and switch" technique of saying the first course will fix everything, only to be informed that to become fully ''integrated'', there were no fewer than 17 other courses, all at considerable expense, to do.

Yeah. That's not cool. Better get them outta here - fast.

Hang out on dating websites.

It's still pathetic.

Communes.

Nobody lives on one but cultists and weirdos.

Women wearing headscarfs to signify subservience.

Real men prefer blowjobs.

Personal growth or spiritual "workshops".

If they know so much, why are they doing this?

Public nakedness.

Insisted on doing it lately?

A strict vegan diet.

Makes the mind weak - because it gets no meat.

An apparently random reward-punishment system.

Think government.

Reincarnation.

Does anybody really need to come back?

The Intergalactic Council of the Universe.

We thought Scientology had put dibs on that one.

The city of Atlantis.

It must've been one hell of a place, to still have such a fan base.

''Spirit guides".

Because you know this guy is in touch with something.

Cult leaders pretending to have god-like powers.

And pretending for a reason.

Feminism.

The outrageous notion women can say and do things that, in a fair and just world, will get them hurt just like a man.

And any outsider claiming to have a symbiotic relationship with someone already in a marriage is probably a cultist out to do damage.

That's why their lying asses keep it secret.

To be continued,...

Memo: What's After TMR's (Tequila) Tea Party?

Yesterday morning, we picked up a copy of Ken Burns' Jazz for $2.00.

Spent the rest of the day mad with power.



Yesterday evening, we began with a viewing of Bronson (above) described by one critic as "watching a violent prisoner who lives for the day when he can get naked and fight prison guards six at a time." You know, with a description like that, time had to be made.

Over came a friend, out came the tequila.

Though we can argue some minor points, we both thought the picture was really great, with a flawless performance by Tom Hardy. My friend says there are people trying to get his character, the real-life British psychopath "Charlie Bronson", out of prison.

But, as much as we found ol' Charlie to be a charmer, we think those people are out of their fucking minds thankyouverymuch.



The evening concluded with tequila and beer, for a re-viewing of Requiem For A Dream, which also didn't disappoint (one critic said it made "Trainspotting look like Teletubbies") even after all these years.

The "dream" in question is our American one, suggested in the movie to now be fueled by television, drugs and bad choices - a message we really got, as we watched a DVD while proceeding to get drunk, and were by then seriously considering munchie options outside the home and walking distance.

It's a direction that's been ritually, and ruthlessly, enforced by a society that ought to know better. Oh - wait - by cultural and "spiritual" mandate, they couldn't know better:



Just as there's "No Parking On The Dancefloor" there's been no thinking outside the NewAge as well. As the French say, "this is not done." You will have to eventually bow to the friendly fascism of Charlie Manson, or you will be branded as some version of a Charlie Bronson.

You really can't win.

So you'd better be ready to fight. We think of ourselves as fighting - to get the American Dream back on track. We're Tea Partiers. Your branch may put the emphasis on some other subject than spirituality, like economics or something. Because, whatever it is, it's a fight worth having, right? But, remember, it's also a fight that's increasingly becoming easy to ridicule. Think about it:

By the time the DVDs were over and the news came on - and we saw this ad - we were drooling all over ourselves:



Which only reinforced why, at the forefront of our efforts going forward - for what probably may not seem like obvious reasons, to some, unless they too are willing to get really, really blasted with the rest of us one night soon - please let it be known we're strongly advising against anyone, and we mean anyone, on our side ever attempting to fight "for what you believe in" ever again.

We just don't have the time.

Washington Cultism: The Real Comedy Central

It's been announced the notoriously NewAge cult suck-ups (and queens of misinformation and quackery) Arianna Huffington and Oprah Winfrey are hosting busses and hotel rooms for Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity".

Great. That means the only way this ever-sillier event can accomplish it's goal is to launch an attack on itself.

Actually, that was the case before these two loony tunes got involved, as well.

Nevermind.

A Prophet - Or Could It Be I'm Fooling Myself?

Gee, is it possible that people are finally getting the message about the NewAge Left that we've been saying, like, forever? Let's see:

The single most dangerous thing about leftists is their capacity for self-delusion. Most leftists really do believe that they personally know what is best for everyone.

That can't be right - it's too straight forward. Plus, it's written by one of those crazy American Tea Party conservatives, so there's no reason to take their word for anything - let's go to Europe, where they're at least edumacated:

Look to the whole of the Left, and you find gullibility. Stick two fingers up at the establishment, flash some 'alternative' credentials, and the Left will embrace you as a subversive Messiah. These are the people who spawned the manic organic brigade, happy to pay inflated prices for bog-standard goods. Lefties cheered on the feminist sisterhood, who talk of loving women but in fact want to be just like men. The Left also fell for the Fair Trade campaign, even though farmers in developing countries say it is our protectionism, not our pricing, that cuts into their income.

Time and again, the Lefties fall for some questionable initiative that promises a panacea for the world’s ailments – from the patriarchy to pesticides. Their boundless naivety propels them towards dodgy causes,...it also makes them vulnerable to gross self-deception.

Man, if they keep this up, I'm probably going to have to find a new gig - like fortune teller!