Hilarious Scientology Goons

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hilarious Scientology Goons

 

I finally came across something that expressed the emotional universe I felt I was living in when I was discussing The Passion of Ayn Rand's Critics by James Valliant with the True Believers and Branden scapegoaters during the months after the book was released.

 

The video below sets that tone far, far better than anything I have come across.

 

 

I saw it a couple of months ago when I was researching Scientology. It bothered me back then. Something was deeply familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

 

This morning it went off like a flashbulb in my mind.

 

The Scientology goons.

 

The hardcore PARC defenders.

 

Eureka!

 

 

Talk about Ayn Rand's drooling beast! Just as a reminder, here is the passage from The Fountainhead where Steve Mallory talks about it to Howard Roark.

 

I'm not afraid any more. But I know that the terror exists. I know the kind of terror it is. You can't conceive of that kind. Listen, what's the most horrible experience you can imagine? To me—it's being left, unarmed, in a sealed cell with a drooling beast of prey or a maniac who's had some disease that's eaten his brain out. You'd have nothing then but your voice—your voice and your thought. You'd scream to that creature why it should not touch you, you'd have the most eloquent words, the unanswerable words, you'd become the vessel of the absolute truth. And you'd see living eyes watching you and you'd know that the thing can't hear you, that it can't be reached, not reached, not in any way, yet it's breathing and moving there before you with a purpose of its own. That's horror. Well, that's what's hanging over the world, prowling somewhere through mankind, that same thing, something closed, mindless, utterly wanton, but something with an aim and a cunning of its own.

 

There's no terror in the current analogy, of course, but talk about being unable to get through to a person!

 

btw - I was once assigned a "Drooling Beast Award" over on SLOP (right after those knuckleheads awarded OL the honor). The PARC discussions I mentioned above were an integral part of all this. Basically, these awards came about in an approach similar to when two small kids argue:

 

"You're a poo-poo-head."

 

"No. You're a poo-poo-head."

 

The first poo-poo-head drooling beast salvo was by a guy named James Kilbourne, who wrote an article calling Perigo an alcoholic and saying his excesses in public while under the influence were the drooling beast in the room nobody wanted to talk about.

 

So here came "No--you're a poo-poo-head (drooling beast)" right back with the awards.

 

Anyway, enough about that.

 

Now for a little background on the Scientology video. Mark Bunker, the person filming and talking off-screen, is not a disgruntled Scientologist. He's never been one. But for a good number of years he has made exposing the underbelly of Scientology his life's work. He has a site called XenuTV where you can get all kinds of information. Basically, the Scientology people hate him about as much as Valliant hates the Brandens.

 

In the video, Mark is going to an open-air Scientology event in Clearwater, Florida, where it has one of its headquarters. The reason why Scientology is headquartered there is a long story, but it basically goes like this.

 

Hubbard used to live on a ship on the high seas. He wanted to come ashore to set up headquarters on land. When he saw the name "Clearwater," I think he became enchanted with the place based on the name alone. People become "clear" in Dianetics--the "mind science" part of Scientology--when they are in top mental shape (allegedly erased their "reactive mind").

 

So Scientology invaded the sleepy coastal town little by little under false pretenses. When it finally came out to the locals who their new neighbors really were, it was too late and that's that.

 

The reason the police were so willing to take Scientology's side in the video is that the organization hires many Clearwater off-duty and retired cops for security and spreads some money around to them.

 

Note that the goons said "enturbulation" was not a word invented by Hubbard. But it was.

 

Also, Mark talked about Lisa McPherson. This was a nasty affair in Clearwater in the 1990's when a perfectly healthy young woman died--basically of dehydration--while in the care of Scientology during a brainwashing routine they were doing on her. (With her "consent" of course.) You can read an overview here. Scientology sank a boat-load of money and effort into intimidating people, court costs and a final secret settlement back then.

 

Anyway, I can't get the looks on the faces of the Scientology goons out of my mind as they say in all belligerence:

 

"Go on, Mark. Spit it out. What are you afraid of? What are your crimes, Mark? Come clean, Mark. Spit it out. We can help you. What are you afraid of, Mark?"

 

Their images and sounds meld with the PARC goons in the echoing recesses of my mind...

 

 

To think I could have become that in the name of Rand.

 

Now that...

 

That is not so funny...

 

Michael