From Wikipedia: “a form of manipulation that seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, hoping to make the target question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, it attempts to destabilize the target and delegitimize the target’s belief.”
Sound familiar? It should.
At 3:30 a.m., I woke up to this inspiring thought: I really think that Trump could shoot someone on 5th avenue and his clones would say, “You need to give him a chance”, or “that person shouldn’t have gotten in the way of Trump’s bullet”, or would insist that those of us who protested the murder should just shut up and “deal with it”, and continue to treat over half the voting population as inconsequential and insignificant – with the dismissive, “oh well, they’ll never accept him as a legitimate president.”
I guess that’s true. He’ll never be a legitimate president in my eyes because he’s too narcissistic to understand democracy, he was put in office by Putin, and it’s obviously not his intention to strengthen democracy. His aim is to aggrandize himself. Bannon, et al, seem to have an even more sinister agenda.
The immigration ban obviously destabilizes the entire country, in the name of “security”. As in every good cult leader, whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth, is exactly the opposite of what’s true. When you destabilize a nation, security decreases. Making America “Great” again, I see. Get ready for a crap 4 years … or 8. If Bannon has his way, longer.
Yep, if you want to save democracy, you oppose this guy while he runs roughshod over the country. And if you support him, you support a dictator.
So you can wave your flags and claim to be a patriot. But at the end of the day, your “president”, ala dictator, is destroying democracy, this this country you claim to love so much, while you cheer him on.
Isn’t that “great”.
Greetings Everyone!
Are any of you songwriters, poets, performers of some kind? If so, do you want to join me on Thursday night at the Amazing Things Art Center open mic?
The open mic starts at 7:30. From 9-9:30, I’ll be trotting out songs from Cult Confessions, joined by producer extraordinaire, Doug Kwartler of Hollow Body Studio.
While the political landscape right now is surreal and infuriating and terrifying, I do have a dream and, yes, you may say I’m a dreamer: I believe the arts and music can save our sorry butts. 🙂
But I will leave the pontificating and philosophizing for another day and venue (maybe tomorrow ;-)) In the meantime, come on out, bring a song, or two, or a poem, or a joke … or just hang out. Let’s get together and help each other try to stay sane.
Address: 160 Hollis Street, Framingham. Ma.
Keep inhaling and exhaling!
xo, ERF, (aka GSR to some)
Good Morning Readers:
So much to talk about! But this morning I’m keeping it to a short announcement: Due to a hack job, my fellow evil blogger has now removed the blog formerly known as Standing Up To Sharon Gans and re-posted ALL of its contents here: The Sharon Gans Cult News Report.
You see once upon a time, when the cult was unhappy with your blog, it would follow the lead of the larger, more successful cult, Scientology: hire a hack lawyer and bully you legally. These lawsuits are always absurd. Once I received legal papers from a complete stranger who was claiming that I was the “only one” who could supply the name she needed for another “meritorious lawsuit” against another evil blogger. I had nothing for her big case (Sad!) And now have lifelong, pro bono legal protection from a global firm. (that’s a longer story).
Besides being a waste of money, when “the invisible world” files a lawsuit the plaintiff’s claim becomes public record, i.e. very visible. I guess “school” decided to take a new tact when dealing with the above-mentioned blog. Instead of a hack lawyer, it hired an honest-to-God hacker who did something that suppressed the site such that it didn’t show up on Google searches.
Luckily, a reader realized there was something wrong and brought it to the attention of blog authorities. We thank her for that and carry on. Be vigilant, folks. We’ve got to look out for each other these days!
I raise a mug to your “school”-free life! Be careful out there. GSR
Hello Fellow “Disgruntled ex-Students”, Soon-to-be-“Disgruntled ex-Students” & Blog Monitors:
Lately, I’ve been ranting about our current narcissist-elect, but today I’m thinking about something else. Blog monitors probably already know about “school’s” roots – 60s-70s, San Francisco, The Theater of All Possibilities, led by Alex Horn, etc, but some of you may not have had time to unearth the rot. These articles exposed allegations of violence, sexual exploitation and child neglect, back in the day.
“Teachers” don’t share the illustrious beginnings. They often vaguely allude to luminaries from the past or periods of great creativity and intellect: the existentialists, the Renaissance, and such. Occasionally, Robert announced, “… it has been said that [Hans Christian Anderson/Henry David Theroux/Shakespeare/Jesus Christ/Bugs Bunny/ etc. etc. etc.] was in a ‘school’...” his claims, always preceded by the pretentious, “it has been said…”
In my post-school rule breaking –i.e. internet research about “school”– I bumbled into an author named Thomas Farber. The Fulbright scholar, and English professor published a book, Tales for the Son of My Unborn Child, copyright 1971. It chronicles characters and vignettes from his mid-to-late 60s adventures in Berkley, California.
On a whim, I ordered Farber’s book because Chapter 10, Getting Religion, recounted his Alex Horn encounter. Here’s some of what he said:
“… Alex was right in front of Joe, telling him to say something honest, just one clean word. Joe faltered, and Alex hit him hard with one quick punch to the heart, slapped him backhand across the face, and said: ‘Joe, straighten up or get out.’ ” p. 137
” … Alex stepped into the circle and grabbed her by the wrist. She pulled away. He held her tight and, with the greatest deliberation, hit her very hard, once, and then again. She screamed, she cried, and in a delirium of vitriol, pain, and outrage, she ranted … And then, with a great effort, she broke loose, ran to and crashed through the glass door, and stumbled to the street calling for help. Two men started to go after her, but as they rose Alex said, ‘Stop!’ They froze, we all froze, and, as we held the positions of the moment of that call, Alex ordered us to do our Work. We did, even as her sobs and cries reached he room from the street below.” p.144
Isn’t that inspiring. “School’s” illustrious beginnings. Robert’s first “teacher”. Sharon’s deceased husband.
If you’re “breaking rules” in search of the truth about “school”, you can order Farber’s book on Amazon. When you read the Getting Religion chapter, the pretentious language will sound very, very familiar:
“We are a group that works together to build higher levels of being ..”
“We aspire to something finer”
“we must first confront the worst in ourselves, our mechanical-ity, our sleeping state …”
“with the help of the work we may be able to remember ourselves”
“Here we try to get past self-pity, we try not to live on our imaginations., we try to do our being-duty…”
“The Work is to go beyond life, to build being. Chief weakness … begin with self-remembering … pass false personality to essence…”
” … we were stars, that from the stars we chose a life on earth.”
“there was a wolf in us, too, which had to be fed …”
“there was no time for unnecessary suffering …”
Blah, blah, blah. Farber, for his part, eventually left this iteration of “school”. He did conclude that Alex was sincerely trying to do something, I guess, worthy, writing, “Who can judge him?” To which I’m happy to respond: sounds like he was a narcissistic, asshole with charisma.
So, my dear readers, those are the roots of our illustrious “school”. Couple that with your own experiences and come to your own conclusions.