I started as an LA cop in 1971 and drove in an insulated bubble, the black and white cars the City entrusted my partner and me with. Not being a Scientologist, I was and remained rather woefully ignorant of what went on and still goes on behind closed doors in the beautiful but secretive buildings topped with the pointed cross. In those heady days we often drove by Nichiren Shoshu, Synanon, and Scientology buildings and we’d respond every now and then to a hang-up call from a building and after entering we’d always be met with stony silence.
Then a few years ago, after I had retired, I found that girl I had grown up with, Laura Hippe, who had also, like me, gone to LA to seek her fortune. Unlike me wearing a blue suit and that ubiquitous oval badge and name tag, both praised and damned, Laura sought acting and her friends said she was quite good (you may look her up on IMDB). However, in an LA story like so many I witnessed and responded to, she got caught up in alcohol and drugs and, as a loyal Scientologist, she checked into Narconon and while there – took her life.
Shortly after taking this in, I saw ‘Going Clear’ on TV, which further reinforced my curiosity.
Then came Leah and Mike and while watching their incredibly moving TV show I heard about Mike’s blog. Here I am with another story about a beautiful girl whom I once knew and her end in Scientology. As a cop I saw horrible things on the street and at the same time, while on the job, I also experienced intense camaraderie. Yet when I view the collective you, I see that you saw and experienced terrible things but then, against our honest report writing, you then had to lie about them. Lie, that is, until you escaped and only then could the truth see the light of day among yourselves and, thanks to you lucky few, in the media. As the comments to the blog now reveal.
I knew of a retired professional who had a decent retirement plan. When he and his wife joined the sea org I was told he had to donate it all to the cherch. He “wouldn’t need it”. I asked about leaving something for their kids, and was told they are capable of handling their own lives. Will they be capable of handling their own lives plus their parents when they become “useless?” What does it take to get even educated people to look past their noses?
One of the more outrageous columns in the past year was the one on Ortega’s site about Claire Reppen, and I have been negligent in not posting a comment about it here. What she had to go through when she became sick is UN – FUCKING – BELIEVABLE! The woman put in DECADES of production as an AUDITOR no less (the supposed MOST valuable beings on the planet) and then is treated like total shit when she becomes old with cancer (when she SHOULD be treated like a fucking QUEEN for her contributions!). And to add insult to injury, her “senior” treats her with complete condescension as well.
This is the face of the “church” that Scientologists cannot even contemplate confronting.
I agree! That story was so upsetting and sad, I still think about it although it was posted over a month ago. The I.A.S. should take a percentage of their donations and create a pension plan for their aging members. There is no excuse for not doing this. 🙁
Sure, “present time” in Scientology does indeed suck, big time, but the way the still ins “deal” with it is to pretend everything’s GREAT!
Now, as far back as I can recall, they’ve ALWAYS maintained that everything is great (and for many years I didn’t even know it was a pretense) but by the time I left the pretense appeared to be quite studied, purposeful, and stubborn.
Yet, I saw the fear flash in their eyes when, every so often, I’d do a little Sherlock Holmes type probe on them. Very quickly, just a quick verbal reach and a quick withdraw, and never said anything afterwards, I just let it go, never made a point of it with any of them, but I saw their fear – panic, actually – as it flashed out, before it became buried in their very good TRs. It was easy to see if you were paying attention, and I was, without appearing to do so.
They know, and they don’t want to know, and they are scared shitless of the fact that they know, so they pretend not to.
Poor devils, its going to be tough for them when there’s finally no space left to twist and turn, back and fill to justify and dub in. Tough for these poor devils when at some point they’ll have to acknowledge what they’re looking at. They’ve made their lives so very complex because of this inability and/or unwillingness to confront.
RB, i almost forgot: thank you for another thought provoker. What you do sometimes makes me laugh, other times makes me want to cry, and frequently I feel like doing both at the same time. But one thing your comics always do and that is make me think.
Regraded Being, I find this comic disturbing, because it is true. Older Sea Org members have no social security or pension, and they are at the mercy of an organization that has little mercy and dependent on the charity of people who are not known for being charitable. Once older workers are deemed less useful, they are treated as expendable and as liabilities. Younger and middle aged people have a chance to make a new start, but the elderly are powerless. It’s really sad and troubling.
When a journalist uses italics around words; my understanding is that this means:
these are exactly the words that were said. And the writer, Bill Jensen, quotes Michael
Lewis on the subject of why he didn’t bother to warn Catherine Davis or her other tenants
about his son’s problems:
. “It didn’t occur to me to say, ‘Oh, by the way, he was having problems,’ ” he says. “I thought, ‘This is a place he was familiar with, and they will give him a lot of love.’ ”
I’m having trouble understanding why that is. Michael Lewis already knew this:
1) He had personally witnessed erratic and bizarre behavior after Johnny’s
motorcycle accident.
2) His son had refused two MRI appointments that Michael had made.
3) Johnny had walked out of his parents apartment in his pajamas, broken into
a neighboring apartment, assaulted two men with a bottle, and bitten one of them.
4) He had made multiple suicide attempts.
5) He had cold-cocked a man outside a yogurt shop
6) He had walked fully clothed into the ocean and developed hypothermia
7) He had been arrested for breaking into a woman’s apartment
8) And in Michael’s own words: “We got the motorcycle head injury, then he’s beaten in the head 17 times [during the Northridge break-in],” Michael says. “Then when he’s in jail, he is pounding his own head against the concrete and attempting to leap from the second-story pier. Then you have the doctor’s own diagnosis of brain trauma. And that’s just the stuff we know about.”
I just don’t get it. It didn’t occur to him. How could that be?
You had a link to the article…the third link on your post about psychosis. It went here, here and here. I think it is an excellent article by a great journalist and that it is worth careful perusal.
OMG, RB, this is one of your best ones yet. And sadly, you aren’t exaggerating about some of the older people in the SO, I feel for them. They literally can’t leave because they have nowhere to go, no one to go to, no pension, no work skills, no nothing. Sad.
Your globetrotting to the UK and New Zealand should be giving you a temporary false sense of freedom. El Chapo has now been extradited from Mexico to the US. Worldwide justice and consensus on crimes against humanity will continue to tug on your ass until your are flailing in the courts and plea bargaining for your life.
Barry and Michelle had to divert to Andrews AFB after circling the Palm Springs Airport for an hour due to the second storm system passing over Club Med in Hemet. You may want to stay out of the country on a more permanent basis; the third storm system will be creating more mudslides in the area on Sunday.
By the way, ‘Rifle’ is still looking like the worst house in the neighborhood, adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria La Quinta Resort; is the black Range Rover provided by the IAS? Shouldn’t you be trying to impress the locals and Beyonce when she arrives for Coachella 2017?
OUCH! That’s a good example of what must go on as social chatter between staff in an org. There’s a weird similarity to what Custer’s men must have felt when they saw the size of the Indian village at the Little Big Horn. Some leaders are just plain suicidal in their decisions.
An active scientologist once said in an interview that his father was “a bully and a coward … a merchant of chaos … the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life – how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”
It got so bad his mother fled with her children in the middle of the night.
Just as his own wife did years later to get herself and his child away from the grips of The Cult of Scientology.
Seems obvious he didn’t learn a great lesson in his life after all.
And, so to this gentleman, and others of his ilk with plenty of TRUTH at their disposal but who continue to CHOOSE to look the other way, I’m compelled to say…
Is the abuse and chaos in your Cult okay as long as it only happens to someone else?
As long as it is someone else who cleans the bathroom floor with his tongue. Someone else who is molested. Someone else who is forced to crawl for days and weeks on end until their knees are scarred. Someone else who is beaten. Someone else who is forced to have an abortion. Someone else whose bank accounts and credit cards are raped for the cause. Someone else whose passport is taken. Someone else held against their will. Someone else disconnected. Someone else with frivolous lawsuits filed against them. Someone else with malevolent “whois” websites. Someone else stalked and recorded and harassed.
It’s time to realize that the dwindling upper echelon of Scientology are the true SUPPRESSIVE PEOPLE. They SUPPRESS truth and spread LIES. They SUPPRESS Total Freedom with a Bridge to brainwashing and manipulation. They SUPPRESS the joys of everyday life and replace them with an existence of physical, mental and spiritual abuse.
Please ask yourself, “Who are the true bullies. The cowards. The merchants of chaos.”
And seek out TRUTH. Here is a starter: There are NOT 8,000,000 active Scientologists worldwide. At most there are 17,000 or so. That is TRUTH. Research it for yourself. Think for yourself! The TRUTH is out there. What else have they LIED TO YOU about?
… And, they said, “So, have you met a Scientologist?” And, I looked at them, you know, and I thought… Oh, what a beautiful thing because, you know, maybe one day it’ll be like that and, you know what I’m saying, maybe one day… wow, Scientologists, we’ll just read about those in the history books.
Well said! Almost all of those featured on Leah’s series were either $cilons with decades of service to the cult as overworked, underpaid and constantly fucked with senior $ea Orgy staff members or public $cilons who’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives going up the bridge. None of them ever even dreamed that they’d be declared suppressives, yet there they all are!
Those who think that it can’t happen to them and who are trying their best not to see all the evil that $cn has been directly responsible for are not going to be safe from the all-powerful, vengeful hand of the tiny tyrant. Until the lights go out and that sadistic authoritarian ruler of $cn is taken down, there’s always going to be a need for more scapegoats, for more people to blame for why $cn is not flourishing and expanding, which means that no one who’s still in will ever be safe.
Get out now because it’s only going to get grimmer and more authoritarian as the cult collapses in on itself prior to imploding completely.
Someone else who does your domestic labour, vehicle repairs, construction etc. for little to no compensation when you have millions. I will never get over that revelation and will never see any of his films again.
LOL! What else can be running through the minds of long-term staff at least every now and then? They are not totally oblivious to reality all the time. People are natural born inquirers and snoops. We all have curiosity and we all ‘sneak a peek’ or ‘listen in’. They know stuff.
I can hear the older! “Lady” Sea Org member hissing Come Up To Present Time like the snake she is.That is one of the more odious commands used when all else fails.I got it frequently from a Div 2 head at Asho and back then I stayed in line for awhile because of her yelling at me.Now I would give her a big smile and say you just try and make me do anything remotely resembling your cult and the evil within and you will soon be off the dm train and out in the wog world alone.But seriously the problem of older SO members will come back to bite the cult.More going out than coming in.Eventually something will start collapsing.It is sad but cos keeps plodding along the Ron/dm have to keep clearing the planet path.Thank you from my heart RB.❤️
” Now I would give her a big smile and say you just try and make me do anything remotely resembling your cult and the evil within and you will soon be off the dm train and out in the wog world alone”
Well said Ann! I can see you saying it too. I would probably be adding a hand gesture as well but I am less refined in my approach!
Mike it takes a man to apologize for things he did in the past and to face people he has wronged.
You have done this over and over and it should be noted. Great job turning your life around. Like Leah said there are a lot of really caring non-Scn’s out there. You are now oneof them/us.
So true, and sadly unspoken, since staff keep all of these thoughts to themselves. If only the masters of communication weren’t so terrified of communicating.
You see I don’t think a conversation like this is even REMOTELY true to life, as with many of the other conversations in Regraded Being (though I think the points are well made in this series as to how the CoS operates and what many Scientologists experience, so maybe it’s not meant to be more impressionistic one might say rather than realistic, which is certainly fine). I was on staff for many years and active in Scientology up to 2006 and except for a very brief discussion at a dinner party that I still remember from the early 80s , when a fellow staff member almost whispered that he thought the constant price increases were bad (and hen quickly shut up), I never heard ANYONE overtly bring up ANY outpoints about the CoS in discussion. No one talked about Quentin dying, no one talked about the outpoints of Mayo being declared or about the missions being destroyed or any other events that took place. If staff ACTUALLY talked like they do in Regraded Being, things might not have gotten to the point they have currently.
Even though I’m a never-in, I agree that these conversations between two people would likely not take place so openly (due to fear of KR’s and sec-checks). However, I take the cartoons from RB every week (I’ve only been here a few weeks) to be sort of a way of explaining what Scientologists are actually thinking (as opposed to what they would actually verbalize openly). I basically view them as what Scientologists would say if they were being truly honest without fear of the repercussions. These cartoons also offer a way for never-ins like me to sort of understand the mind-set of Scientologists, which I find very enlightening.
Mick…..If you aren’t already doing so…..make sure you read Tony Ortega’s website…..The Underground Bunker….tonyortega.org. It is also an excellent site….and adding it to Mike’s…..you will be a Scientology expert in no time.
I do post and read Tony’s everyday as well. His site and Mike’s blog here both have a lot of stuff that was written before I started down this rabbit hole. Plenty of reading for me to catch up on. Fascinating stuff.
Maybe I am off base, but I see these as abstract conversations the artist is having with himself. That kind of documentation is not only social satire but cathartic I imagine. Even intellectual monsters are less potent when you draw them, and can be banished more easily when they are made manifest. Art is often used as a way to heal and come to grips with trauma. It doesn’t have to be literal to have value.
Satire Joe. Through comedy disgraceful subjects can often be aired where any other discussion of it is shunned because it’s too real or is unbelievable to those who haven’t seen it. Artistic licence is earned in this instance of RB’s experience of once experiencing the fate and life as a Scientologist, same as you. Similar to how a veteran policeman can joke about the most gruesome of crimes, yet others can’t get away with it who don’t have the same experience. The term levity works here.
I htink people did talk like that in the 1970s and 1980s. They were younger, though. The Sea Org was just starting to come on strong and the people who were talking like that soon left.
Joe, you’re missing the satirical point of most of RB’s best work: Of course no one in the cult talks like that; if they did, their asses would be in a sling like RIGHT NOW! There’s almost nothing funny or witty or charming or whimsical about being a $ea Orgy staff member; it’s a grim and deadly serious life which is always taking place within a culture of fear and dread. If RB’s portrayal of cult life was realistic, then it wouldn’t be amusing at all; it would only be disheartening , depressing and anger inducing.
RB’s cartoons are hysterically funny, in large part, because they are so improbable. Like some of Gary Larson’s best work, in which non-human animals suddenly become self aware and comment on no longer being just another unaware herd animal, RB portrays duped and docile $cilon sheeple as they wake up to the reality of cult life and assert their own unique individual right to think, feel and say what they like to who they like.
It’s subversively humorous and crafted in the very best tradition of political cartooning because it’s not at all mean-spirited or after the cheap laugh at the expense of those who are being satirized (that is, except for DM, of course). RB goes for the jugular almost every time, but in a wry and rueful way whose overall tone is one of compassion and understanding for those still in. At its heart, the unstated message is always: I was once one of you and I know exactly the kind of pressure and mental contortions that you live under and have to put yourselves through because I had to do the same when I was a $cilon.
Harpoona … I do think that your comments and the others to my post are essentially correct, thank you … but if you haven’t placed hidden mikes among cows as I have, you are no doubt unaware that Gary Larsen is simply relaying cows’ actual conversations when they think they are alone and unobserved …
I think RB is kind of running a Level O process in a way, “If you (as an older Scn) could talk with another Sea Org member frankly about Scientology staff life, what would you say?”
Miscavage just added more smoke and mirrors and time at the grindstone to mask how destroying the mission network screwed the ability to get new meat. After Al Gore invented the internet, $cientologists couldn’t hide any more.
My only question is what would it take to cause a revolution in $cientology? DM has put fealty as his first priority and money as his second. Can all the remaining clams really ignore all that is going on? Yes, they can. Almost everyone who could see the smoke and a mirrors has already left.
Every staff member and SO knows what they have to do. Just keep on keeping on.
zemoo, I have a general interest in what it takes for totalitarian organizations (including governments) to fall, though I can’t claim to be too serious a student of the phenomenon, but I’ll have a stab about your questions as to what it would take to cause a revolution.
The first mechanism seems to me to be what I might call a cascading revolt, where a few people take a bold step, and then more and more people are emboldened to follow them. This is sometimes after scandalous or discrediting facts about the regime become widely known, and typically at a point where a regime’s authority has weakened and they are no longer able to entirely crush dissent. This is how the Berlin Wall came down (starting actually with street protests), and the Communist regime of East Germany subsequently fell.
The second mechanism I would identify as organizational disruption. This would be something like an internal split occurring along some sort of fault line, or a leader dying or becoming disabled. The Soviet Union collapsed after internal splitting of first its larger Warsaw Pact block and then of its own republics, while Yugoslavia came apart after its founder and longtime leader Tito died (both of these examples and the one above are simplifications that experts might challenge).
Either of the above could be triggered or hastened by external factors, like government and legal action. And external action itself could cause a collapse through these or various other mechanisms, though that is beyond the scope of the question you are asking.
I think that Debbie Cook’s e-mail and the defections that followed were a small-scale and abortive example of the first, and the breakaway Dror Center in Israel a very limited example of the second. Both those cases suggest that Scientology is in a phase of eroding authority and decreasing ability to stifle dissent. Real “revolution” might result from of a new case of someone even more prominent or with more shocking information about the actual state of affairs within Scientology coming forward, or of a larger scale breakaway such as that of a whole country.
But the other lesson to be take from history, is that totalitarian regimes are often far more tenacious and long-lived than outside observers might expect or predict. For example, the Unification Church (“moonies”) remains organizationally intact in spite of declining and aging membership, and the death of its founder in 2012 followed by scandals that unseated the daughter who tried to succeed him. And on the political side, Zimbabwe has been collapsing economically for three decades under Mugabe’s rule, and yet he remains firmly in control at the age of 92.
Hard to find humor in an organization full of such stress and misery. Just a few more huffs and puffs, and the piglet’s house will fall in. Don’t give up. These people deserve a real life.
This is a really good review of Aftermath.
I especially love the take on what a well-run or sane leader would have done in response to it – the leader of it (David Miscavige) would be removed, an investigation into the church as to the voracity of the claims made, and a termination of the abusive practices – but that cannot be done when the leader of it is the only one in charge.
That is why this “church” will fail – because it does not correct itself.
Ok, I love the elderly lady. I remember many staff that resembled her. I think they were much kinder than RBs elderly Seaborg lady. No matter, they are almost all gone now. Thrown under the bus. Deposited in cheap homes for the elderly.
RB you keep hitting home runs. You are the true voice of Scientology staff. Rock On!
It makes you wonder what the condition of the old timers like Heber, Guillame and Louis Schwartz are. When this cult finally comes apart we are going to see some horrific souls in very poor shape I am afraid.
My daughter turns 35 in March. She has been in the cult for 19 years. I have not seen or heard from her in 5 years. She goes to work every day in the HGB building on Ivar and Hollywood in LA.
Today I will wonder what a day in her life is like. If her stats were up last week, maybe she will have gotten a little sleep. If not, who knows. I can’t imagine that her stats were up last week but then again, I have no idea what she even does.
Perhaps next year I will appear on Leah’s show but I think my story is mild compared to most. One thing is certain, I will never stop doing everything I can to expose the horrific truth about this dangerous cult.
Thanks RB for a great laugh today. Humor is a very effective antidote to the chaos known as $cientology.
Your story is not “mild.” You lost 2 kids and a wife because of the deceit and lies and extortion of this “church.”
You are one remarkable man to be able to turn your life around the way you have. You’re a testament to honor, courage and integrity.
Newcomer, your story is heart wrenching and definitely important. I totally feel for you. We will get our children back in our lives someday…I feel the pain.
I started as an LA cop in 1971 and drove in an insulated bubble, the black and white cars the City entrusted my partner and me with. Not being a Scientologist, I was and remained rather woefully ignorant of what went on and still goes on behind closed doors in the beautiful but secretive buildings topped with the pointed cross. In those heady days we often drove by Nichiren Shoshu, Synanon, and Scientology buildings and we’d respond every now and then to a hang-up call from a building and after entering we’d always be met with stony silence.
Then a few years ago, after I had retired, I found that girl I had grown up with, Laura Hippe, who had also, like me, gone to LA to seek her fortune. Unlike me wearing a blue suit and that ubiquitous oval badge and name tag, both praised and damned, Laura sought acting and her friends said she was quite good (you may look her up on IMDB). However, in an LA story like so many I witnessed and responded to, she got caught up in alcohol and drugs and, as a loyal Scientologist, she checked into Narconon and while there – took her life.
Shortly after taking this in, I saw ‘Going Clear’ on TV, which further reinforced my curiosity.
Then came Leah and Mike and while watching their incredibly moving TV show I heard about Mike’s blog. Here I am with another story about a beautiful girl whom I once knew and her end in Scientology. As a cop I saw horrible things on the street and at the same time, while on the job, I also experienced intense camaraderie. Yet when I view the collective you, I see that you saw and experienced terrible things but then, against our honest report writing, you then had to lie about them. Lie, that is, until you escaped and only then could the truth see the light of day among yourselves and, thanks to you lucky few, in the media. As the comments to the blog now reveal.
I knew of a retired professional who had a decent retirement plan. When he and his wife joined the sea org I was told he had to donate it all to the cherch. He “wouldn’t need it”. I asked about leaving something for their kids, and was told they are capable of handling their own lives. Will they be capable of handling their own lives plus their parents when they become “useless?” What does it take to get even educated people to look past their noses?
One of the more outrageous columns in the past year was the one on Ortega’s site about Claire Reppen, and I have been negligent in not posting a comment about it here. What she had to go through when she became sick is UN – FUCKING – BELIEVABLE! The woman put in DECADES of production as an AUDITOR no less (the supposed MOST valuable beings on the planet) and then is treated like total shit when she becomes old with cancer (when she SHOULD be treated like a fucking QUEEN for her contributions!). And to add insult to injury, her “senior” treats her with complete condescension as well.
This is the face of the “church” that Scientologists cannot even contemplate confronting.
I agree! That story was so upsetting and sad, I still think about it although it was posted over a month ago. The I.A.S. should take a percentage of their donations and create a pension plan for their aging members. There is no excuse for not doing this. 🙁
A 4×4 upside the head comes to mind!
Sure, “present time” in Scientology does indeed suck, big time, but the way the still ins “deal” with it is to pretend everything’s GREAT!
Now, as far back as I can recall, they’ve ALWAYS maintained that everything is great (and for many years I didn’t even know it was a pretense) but by the time I left the pretense appeared to be quite studied, purposeful, and stubborn.
Yet, I saw the fear flash in their eyes when, every so often, I’d do a little Sherlock Holmes type probe on them. Very quickly, just a quick verbal reach and a quick withdraw, and never said anything afterwards, I just let it go, never made a point of it with any of them, but I saw their fear – panic, actually – as it flashed out, before it became buried in their very good TRs. It was easy to see if you were paying attention, and I was, without appearing to do so.
They know, and they don’t want to know, and they are scared shitless of the fact that they know, so they pretend not to.
Poor devils, its going to be tough for them when there’s finally no space left to twist and turn, back and fill to justify and dub in. Tough for these poor devils when at some point they’ll have to acknowledge what they’re looking at. They’ve made their lives so very complex because of this inability and/or unwillingness to confront.
RB, i almost forgot: thank you for another thought provoker. What you do sometimes makes me laugh, other times makes me want to cry, and frequently I feel like doing both at the same time. But one thing your comics always do and that is make me think.
Regraded Being, I find this comic disturbing, because it is true. Older Sea Org members have no social security or pension, and they are at the mercy of an organization that has little mercy and dependent on the charity of people who are not known for being charitable. Once older workers are deemed less useful, they are treated as expendable and as liabilities. Younger and middle aged people have a chance to make a new start, but the elderly are powerless. It’s really sad and troubling.
Maybe your readers can help me out, Mike. I am having incredible
difficulty understanding the article you referenced on Jan 10th:
http://www.lamag.com/longform/the-secret-life-of-johnny-lewis/
When a journalist uses italics around words; my understanding is that this means:
these are exactly the words that were said. And the writer, Bill Jensen, quotes Michael
Lewis on the subject of why he didn’t bother to warn Catherine Davis or her other tenants
about his son’s problems:
. “It didn’t occur to me to say, ‘Oh, by the way, he was having problems,’ ” he says. “I thought, ‘This is a place he was familiar with, and they will give him a lot of love.’ ”
I’m having trouble understanding why that is. Michael Lewis already knew this:
1) He had personally witnessed erratic and bizarre behavior after Johnny’s
motorcycle accident.
2) His son had refused two MRI appointments that Michael had made.
3) Johnny had walked out of his parents apartment in his pajamas, broken into
a neighboring apartment, assaulted two men with a bottle, and bitten one of them.
4) He had made multiple suicide attempts.
5) He had cold-cocked a man outside a yogurt shop
6) He had walked fully clothed into the ocean and developed hypothermia
7) He had been arrested for breaking into a woman’s apartment
8) And in Michael’s own words: “We got the motorcycle head injury, then he’s beaten in the head 17 times [during the Northridge break-in],” Michael says. “Then when he’s in jail, he is pounding his own head against the concrete and attempting to leap from the second-story pier. Then you have the doctor’s own diagnosis of brain trauma. And that’s just the stuff we know about.”
I just don’t get it. It didn’t occur to him. How could that be?
Sorry — I didnt quote the article and have not read it and make no claims that it is either accurate or that it makes sense. Who posted it?
You had a link to the article…the third link on your post about psychosis. It went here, here and here. I think it is an excellent article by a great journalist and that it is worth careful perusal.
?”Present Time in Scientology sucks.”
Yup, deal with that soulless, sociopathic, dickless dave.
OMG, RB, this is one of your best ones yet. And sadly, you aren’t exaggerating about some of the older people in the SO, I feel for them. They literally can’t leave because they have nowhere to go, no one to go to, no pension, no work skills, no nothing. Sad.
As with the rest of life, it’s all about choices. We eiither make them…or fail to do so. Life is the result.
DM is a prime example of “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”.
And don’t forget, the dwarf has ‘asshole’ written into his DNA.
Dave,
Shitstorm Update:
Your globetrotting to the UK and New Zealand should be giving you a temporary false sense of freedom. El Chapo has now been extradited from Mexico to the US. Worldwide justice and consensus on crimes against humanity will continue to tug on your ass until your are flailing in the courts and plea bargaining for your life.
Barry and Michelle had to divert to Andrews AFB after circling the Palm Springs Airport for an hour due to the second storm system passing over Club Med in Hemet. You may want to stay out of the country on a more permanent basis; the third storm system will be creating more mudslides in the area on Sunday.
By the way, ‘Rifle’ is still looking like the worst house in the neighborhood, adjacent to the Waldorf Astoria La Quinta Resort; is the black Range Rover provided by the IAS? Shouldn’t you be trying to impress the locals and Beyonce when she arrives for Coachella 2017?
OUCH! That’s a good example of what must go on as social chatter between staff in an org. There’s a weird similarity to what Custer’s men must have felt when they saw the size of the Indian village at the Little Big Horn. Some leaders are just plain suicidal in their decisions.
An active scientologist once said in an interview that his father was “a bully and a coward … a merchant of chaos … the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life – how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”
It got so bad his mother fled with her children in the middle of the night.
Just as his own wife did years later to get herself and his child away from the grips of The Cult of Scientology.
Seems obvious he didn’t learn a great lesson in his life after all.
And, so to this gentleman, and others of his ilk with plenty of TRUTH at their disposal but who continue to CHOOSE to look the other way, I’m compelled to say…
Is the abuse and chaos in your Cult okay as long as it only happens to someone else?
As long as it is someone else who cleans the bathroom floor with his tongue. Someone else who is molested. Someone else who is forced to crawl for days and weeks on end until their knees are scarred. Someone else who is beaten. Someone else who is forced to have an abortion. Someone else whose bank accounts and credit cards are raped for the cause. Someone else whose passport is taken. Someone else held against their will. Someone else disconnected. Someone else with frivolous lawsuits filed against them. Someone else with malevolent “whois” websites. Someone else stalked and recorded and harassed.
It’s time to realize that the dwindling upper echelon of Scientology are the true SUPPRESSIVE PEOPLE. They SUPPRESS truth and spread LIES. They SUPPRESS Total Freedom with a Bridge to brainwashing and manipulation. They SUPPRESS the joys of everyday life and replace them with an existence of physical, mental and spiritual abuse.
Please ask yourself, “Who are the true bullies. The cowards. The merchants of chaos.”
And seek out TRUTH. Here is a starter: There are NOT 8,000,000 active Scientologists worldwide. At most there are 17,000 or so. That is TRUTH. Research it for yourself. Think for yourself! The TRUTH is out there. What else have they LIED TO YOU about?
… And, they said, “So, have you met a Scientologist?” And, I looked at them, you know, and I thought… Oh, what a beautiful thing because, you know, maybe one day it’ll be like that and, you know what I’m saying, maybe one day… wow, Scientologists, we’ll just read about those in the history books.
Amen
I hope Dave gets a turn at the bathroom floor before this is over!
Well said! Almost all of those featured on Leah’s series were either $cilons with decades of service to the cult as overworked, underpaid and constantly fucked with senior $ea Orgy staff members or public $cilons who’d invested hundreds of thousands of dollars and years of their lives going up the bridge. None of them ever even dreamed that they’d be declared suppressives, yet there they all are!
Those who think that it can’t happen to them and who are trying their best not to see all the evil that $cn has been directly responsible for are not going to be safe from the all-powerful, vengeful hand of the tiny tyrant. Until the lights go out and that sadistic authoritarian ruler of $cn is taken down, there’s always going to be a need for more scapegoats, for more people to blame for why $cn is not flourishing and expanding, which means that no one who’s still in will ever be safe.
Get out now because it’s only going to get grimmer and more authoritarian as the cult collapses in on itself prior to imploding completely.
Very well said!
Someone else who does your domestic labour, vehicle repairs, construction etc. for little to no compensation when you have millions. I will never get over that revelation and will never see any of his films again.
LOL! What else can be running through the minds of long-term staff at least every now and then? They are not totally oblivious to reality all the time. People are natural born inquirers and snoops. We all have curiosity and we all ‘sneak a peek’ or ‘listen in’. They know stuff.
Whatever. I respect truth. Not – anymore – LRH. Thank you for your great cartoons, RB!
I can hear the older! “Lady” Sea Org member hissing Come Up To Present Time like the snake she is.That is one of the more odious commands used when all else fails.I got it frequently from a Div 2 head at Asho and back then I stayed in line for awhile because of her yelling at me.Now I would give her a big smile and say you just try and make me do anything remotely resembling your cult and the evil within and you will soon be off the dm train and out in the wog world alone.But seriously the problem of older SO members will come back to bite the cult.More going out than coming in.Eventually something will start collapsing.It is sad but cos keeps plodding along the Ron/dm have to keep clearing the planet path.Thank you from my heart RB.❤️
” Now I would give her a big smile and say you just try and make me do anything remotely resembling your cult and the evil within and you will soon be off the dm train and out in the wog world alone”
Well said Ann! I can see you saying it too. I would probably be adding a hand gesture as well but I am less refined in my approach!
Mike it takes a man to apologize for things he did in the past and to face people he has wronged.
You have done this over and over and it should be noted. Great job turning your life around. Like Leah said there are a lot of really caring non-Scn’s out there. You are now oneof them/us.
Keep going – the world is with you!
So true, and sadly unspoken, since staff keep all of these thoughts to themselves. If only the masters of communication weren’t so terrified of communicating.
Dave,
The second of three storm systems is headed toward Club Med in Hemet. Another 4 or 5 inches pointed at you (think: “rain”, not “Tom!”).
You see I don’t think a conversation like this is even REMOTELY true to life, as with many of the other conversations in Regraded Being (though I think the points are well made in this series as to how the CoS operates and what many Scientologists experience, so maybe it’s not meant to be more impressionistic one might say rather than realistic, which is certainly fine). I was on staff for many years and active in Scientology up to 2006 and except for a very brief discussion at a dinner party that I still remember from the early 80s , when a fellow staff member almost whispered that he thought the constant price increases were bad (and hen quickly shut up), I never heard ANYONE overtly bring up ANY outpoints about the CoS in discussion. No one talked about Quentin dying, no one talked about the outpoints of Mayo being declared or about the missions being destroyed or any other events that took place. If staff ACTUALLY talked like they do in Regraded Being, things might not have gotten to the point they have currently.
Well — kind of tough standard to hold a cartoonist to! 🙂
It’s the thought that counts!
Even though I’m a never-in, I agree that these conversations between two people would likely not take place so openly (due to fear of KR’s and sec-checks). However, I take the cartoons from RB every week (I’ve only been here a few weeks) to be sort of a way of explaining what Scientologists are actually thinking (as opposed to what they would actually verbalize openly). I basically view them as what Scientologists would say if they were being truly honest without fear of the repercussions. These cartoons also offer a way for never-ins like me to sort of understand the mind-set of Scientologists, which I find very enlightening.
Mick…..If you aren’t already doing so…..make sure you read Tony Ortega’s website…..The Underground Bunker….tonyortega.org. It is also an excellent site….and adding it to Mike’s…..you will be a Scientology expert in no time.
I do post and read Tony’s everyday as well. His site and Mike’s blog here both have a lot of stuff that was written before I started down this rabbit hole. Plenty of reading for me to catch up on. Fascinating stuff.
Welcome Mick!!!
Maybe I am off base, but I see these as abstract conversations the artist is having with himself. That kind of documentation is not only social satire but cathartic I imagine. Even intellectual monsters are less potent when you draw them, and can be banished more easily when they are made manifest. Art is often used as a way to heal and come to grips with trauma. It doesn’t have to be literal to have value.
Satire Joe. Through comedy disgraceful subjects can often be aired where any other discussion of it is shunned because it’s too real or is unbelievable to those who haven’t seen it. Artistic licence is earned in this instance of RB’s experience of once experiencing the fate and life as a Scientologist, same as you. Similar to how a veteran policeman can joke about the most gruesome of crimes, yet others can’t get away with it who don’t have the same experience. The term levity works here.
Exactly.
I htink people did talk like that in the 1970s and 1980s. They were younger, though. The Sea Org was just starting to come on strong and the people who were talking like that soon left.
Joe, you’re missing the satirical point of most of RB’s best work: Of course no one in the cult talks like that; if they did, their asses would be in a sling like RIGHT NOW! There’s almost nothing funny or witty or charming or whimsical about being a $ea Orgy staff member; it’s a grim and deadly serious life which is always taking place within a culture of fear and dread. If RB’s portrayal of cult life was realistic, then it wouldn’t be amusing at all; it would only be disheartening , depressing and anger inducing.
RB’s cartoons are hysterically funny, in large part, because they are so improbable. Like some of Gary Larson’s best work, in which non-human animals suddenly become self aware and comment on no longer being just another unaware herd animal, RB portrays duped and docile $cilon sheeple as they wake up to the reality of cult life and assert their own unique individual right to think, feel and say what they like to who they like.
It’s subversively humorous and crafted in the very best tradition of political cartooning because it’s not at all mean-spirited or after the cheap laugh at the expense of those who are being satirized (that is, except for DM, of course). RB goes for the jugular almost every time, but in a wry and rueful way whose overall tone is one of compassion and understanding for those still in. At its heart, the unstated message is always: I was once one of you and I know exactly the kind of pressure and mental contortions that you live under and have to put yourselves through because I had to do the same when I was a $cilon.
Thank you for defining what RB is all about. That’s it. And that’s why RB is such genius.
Harpoona … I do think that your comments and the others to my post are essentially correct, thank you … but if you haven’t placed hidden mikes among cows as I have, you are no doubt unaware that Gary Larsen is simply relaying cows’ actual conversations when they think they are alone and unobserved …
I think RB is kind of running a Level O process in a way, “If you (as an older Scn) could talk with another Sea Org member frankly about Scientology staff life, what would you say?”
Miscavage just added more smoke and mirrors and time at the grindstone to mask how destroying the mission network screwed the ability to get new meat. After Al Gore invented the internet, $cientologists couldn’t hide any more.
My only question is what would it take to cause a revolution in $cientology? DM has put fealty as his first priority and money as his second. Can all the remaining clams really ignore all that is going on? Yes, they can. Almost everyone who could see the smoke and a mirrors has already left.
Every staff member and SO knows what they have to do. Just keep on keeping on.
zemoo, I have a general interest in what it takes for totalitarian organizations (including governments) to fall, though I can’t claim to be too serious a student of the phenomenon, but I’ll have a stab about your questions as to what it would take to cause a revolution.
The first mechanism seems to me to be what I might call a cascading revolt, where a few people take a bold step, and then more and more people are emboldened to follow them. This is sometimes after scandalous or discrediting facts about the regime become widely known, and typically at a point where a regime’s authority has weakened and they are no longer able to entirely crush dissent. This is how the Berlin Wall came down (starting actually with street protests), and the Communist regime of East Germany subsequently fell.
The second mechanism I would identify as organizational disruption. This would be something like an internal split occurring along some sort of fault line, or a leader dying or becoming disabled. The Soviet Union collapsed after internal splitting of first its larger Warsaw Pact block and then of its own republics, while Yugoslavia came apart after its founder and longtime leader Tito died (both of these examples and the one above are simplifications that experts might challenge).
Either of the above could be triggered or hastened by external factors, like government and legal action. And external action itself could cause a collapse through these or various other mechanisms, though that is beyond the scope of the question you are asking.
I think that Debbie Cook’s e-mail and the defections that followed were a small-scale and abortive example of the first, and the breakaway Dror Center in Israel a very limited example of the second. Both those cases suggest that Scientology is in a phase of eroding authority and decreasing ability to stifle dissent. Real “revolution” might result from of a new case of someone even more prominent or with more shocking information about the actual state of affairs within Scientology coming forward, or of a larger scale breakaway such as that of a whole country.
But the other lesson to be take from history, is that totalitarian regimes are often far more tenacious and long-lived than outside observers might expect or predict. For example, the Unification Church (“moonies”) remains organizationally intact in spite of declining and aging membership, and the death of its founder in 2012 followed by scandals that unseated the daughter who tried to succeed him. And on the political side, Zimbabwe has been collapsing economically for three decades under Mugabe’s rule, and yet he remains firmly in control at the age of 92.
Holy cow, I love it when thought-stopping lingo like “present time” is explained so instantly and clearly.
Hgc10! Come up to present time…NOW! Just kidding. You can stay where are. Grab a couple of cold ones…
Which incident are we at the beginning of again?
You get the language just right. Good going.
Hard to find humor in an organization full of such stress and misery. Just a few more huffs and puffs, and the piglet’s house will fall in. Don’t give up. These people deserve a real life.
As tragic and true as it is, you made me laugh. Thanks!
Direct from a live feed at an org to the artist’s sketch pad!
Especially the children.
Everywhere I look mike.
Everywhere I look.
Amazing.
http://www.scaredstiffreviews.com/leah-remini-scientology/
This is a really good review of Aftermath.
I especially love the take on what a well-run or sane leader would have done in response to it – the leader of it (David Miscavige) would be removed, an investigation into the church as to the voracity of the claims made, and a termination of the abusive practices – but that cannot be done when the leader of it is the only one in charge.
That is why this “church” will fail – because it does not correct itself.
Present Time in Scientology?
Suppressed!
Thanks Mike and Hurricane Leah!
You are doing something about it!
Ok, I love the elderly lady. I remember many staff that resembled her. I think they were much kinder than RBs elderly Seaborg lady. No matter, they are almost all gone now. Thrown under the bus. Deposited in cheap homes for the elderly.
RB you keep hitting home runs. You are the true voice of Scientology staff. Rock On!
It makes you wonder what the condition of the old timers like Heber, Guillame and Louis Schwartz are. When this cult finally comes apart we are going to see some horrific souls in very poor shape I am afraid.
My daughter turns 35 in March. She has been in the cult for 19 years. I have not seen or heard from her in 5 years. She goes to work every day in the HGB building on Ivar and Hollywood in LA.
Today I will wonder what a day in her life is like. If her stats were up last week, maybe she will have gotten a little sleep. If not, who knows. I can’t imagine that her stats were up last week but then again, I have no idea what she even does.
Perhaps next year I will appear on Leah’s show but I think my story is mild compared to most. One thing is certain, I will never stop doing everything I can to expose the horrific truth about this dangerous cult.
Thanks RB for a great laugh today. Humor is a very effective antidote to the chaos known as $cientology.
Your story is not “mild.” You lost 2 kids and a wife because of the deceit and lies and extortion of this “church.”
You are one remarkable man to be able to turn your life around the way you have. You’re a testament to honor, courage and integrity.
I’ve had help from some amazing new friends …… like you Mary!
And thanks to everyone here for allowing my snarky comments and an avenue to vent.
And to Dave BTW,
Kiss my ass good buddy
Your story is not mild! Being disconnected from your child, is a terrible thing! I will pray for her to get out and come home to you! Blessings
Newcomer, your story is heart wrenching and definitely important. I totally feel for you. We will get our children back in our lives someday…I feel the pain.
All I can say is, how very true.
LOL
Ah,priceless.
Wow that is really sad. It didn’t even make me laugh. Was it supposed to?
I think the best satire doesn’t necessarily make you laugh, it makes you think. Great job, RB.
I think that when it comes to the tragedy of Scientology, you sometimes just have to sit back and laugh.
Because if you’re not laughing, you’re crying.
I thought the “deal with that too! ” was priceless. The elderly lady obviously gets it and knows her position is tenuous at best.