I have written a few pieces here about the general inclination of scientologists to vote Republican.
Hubbard’s disdain for government and welfare are important reasons why scientologists tend not to be liberal/Democrats.
But the biggest reason has to do with psychiatry. In this, scientologists are single-issue voters and virtually every one of them would never vote for a Democratic administration.
Scientology’s oldest and most dedicated “social reform” group, Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has recently made clear to all scientologists that the current President and his administration are committing heinous crimes by wanting to expand mental health care. The rhetoric is colorful as is the way of CCHR (who claim they are “obliterating,” “destroying,” and “annihilating” psychiatry). Nowhere else does scientology take such clear political positions, urging their people to contact their federal representatives to protest this travesty.
It’s also interesting to see them lobby for “effective non-psychiatric, non-drug alternatives” — of course, scientology forbids “psych cases” from participating in scientology at all…
Perhaps they advocate the Hubbard solution from Science of Survival — “quarantining them” like the example he offers of the Venezuelan dictator who “solved” leprosy in his country by realizing most lepers were beggars so he rounded up all the beggars and “destroyed” them.
You also have to love their motto “Put people over profit — take action against abuse.” You would hope they would take this to heart with respect to scientology…
Scientology can’t “clear the planet” or fix every issue. They can’t even fix their own families. You have well connected families getting arrested for drugs, domestic violence, stalking, aggravated assault with a weapon. Doesn’t really sound like they should have any opinion on the world, when their own back yard is a mess. Which just proves that none of it works or is “real”.
Kathy Savas is an elected member of Cresskill, NJ city council. She is a DEMOCRAT and the people there have no idea what they elected. Andrew (Andy) and Kathy Savas have a long history with the church of course. Their children as well, positioned them selves amongst the elite members. Their son Tommy Savas, is still trying to make it as an actor but he is part of the inner circle of Danny Masterson. Has been for most of his life. He’s the one that leaked photos of Ashton Kutcher attending a Scientology member heavy wedding, a few year back. After the allegations against Masterson were already out. So Kathy Savas doesn’t mind being on the Democratic tickets platform. As long as she gets elected? And the voters never find out in Cresskill. Can’t imagine her opinion of mental health has changed as the whole family as still loyalist enough to warrant closeness with the Masterson family and others.
Perhaps the new tactic of Scientologists is to get elected as Democrats?. So you never see it coming.
She’s literally been a council woman for Cresskill for over 40 years. She’s the only woman and no one in town really knows she’s part of Scientology at all. I’m a republican in town and she’s been middle leaning so you can work with her which is vastly different then most of the democratic party. She was an integral part of the recreation center located near the pool. That did not exist it was a literal dump and woods. The building the fields all of it was thanks to her, Fran Regan, and Mr. Corby amongst others. I do not believe in the Scientology nonsense but don’t just toss her aside because of her involvement. I really question how much of a roll she actually plays in the church.
I realize that this may sound like old news to some, but I will repeat it here as it is in the context of what Mike Rinder is trying to make Clear.
In 1994 I went to the Church of Scientology of New York (by being invited there by a staff member named Raymond Baiardi) to discuss my account. While I was there, my account was not discussed. Instead, two OSA people came up to me, jumped me, held me down on the ground, while the police were called and told I forced my way into the building and assaulted a staff member. The “Scientologists on the scene” inside the church (about 6 of them who were not even in the office I was jumped in) told the police how worried they are about me, that they want me arrested and held for psychiatric observations. All of this is documented in the police report I filed with the police.
Quite to the contrary, the Psychiatrist I got to speak to at the hospital asked me if there was something wrong with me for going there in the first place. She wanted to know if I was aware of the kind of reputation that the Church of Scientology has, and told me never to go there again. She cleaned up and dressed the wound on the back of my head the Scientologists caused and sent me home. This happened on Sunday, March 13, 1994 (yes, on L. Ron Hubbard’s birthday!)
CCHR complains they don’t get enough recognition and funding for their causes which are anti-psychiatry. But, if staff at a local org, actively suppress their own public and try to use psychiatry to cover it up, does CCHR refer to this as an anti-psychiatric move?
My basic opinion of it is that Scientologists are not yet ready to deal in a responsible manner with the public. This much I know, and the sooner other people know it the better.
“Coercive, rife with fraud and abuse” describes the CofS. Once again they are projecting – perhaps in need of some good psychiatric therapy to help resolve their emotional issues, and psychological confusion.
I’ve noticed that Hubbard did quite the job of creating a belief system and organization that did just the things he accused others of doing. Psychiatry still wasn’t out of its early era of a bit too much amateurism and quackery – think Freud with his personal fixations on infantalism and sexuality projected into his theories and therapy, which Hubbard just created his own version of – but there was serious reform and modernization (the sort of thing forever forbidden in Scientology) by the time Hubbard started complaining of the profession’s shortcomings.
I think Hubbard saw psychiatrists making big money (Freudian analysis continued to be popular in Hollywood and in intellectual circles into the 60s) and thought in his cynical ends-justify-the-means way that he should be able to do the same, with his own version of what Freud did. There are also theories that underneath it all he was bitter about psychiatry’s inability to help him (before breakthroughs in psychopharmacology) with the issues that plagued him throughout his life, up until the very end.
It seems funny to me, but what else is there concerning the human condition but mental conditions? Be it good, bad, indifferent, whatever, it’s all a state of mind isn’t it?
Geezers, and what a political and medical (big pharm) profession battlefield it is to control & manipulate it. Let alone cults of every description, religious, military (violence) styled and social etc popping up all over the place. I hate to say this, but it sure is easier to gain control and make a profit by playing the mental health or the alternate lifestyle card with a bunch of lies attached. Too many are trying to get into that pie, and the worse it gets the better, hence it creates a bigger pie.
That interview with Aaron posted a couple of days ago and Mike’s book sure has subjectively put a lot of pieces together lately for me. I sigh at my own naivety. Trust is such a fickle but potent thing. It sure is an emotional world out there struggling to grasp what in hell is going on? So many options applied with so little results. Dog eat dog seems to be gaining popularity unfortunately faster than ever. Scientology is very good at creating that within it’s own ranks with smoke and mirrors, plus this thing called CCHR – what a bait and switch operation that is! It is all dying but they won’t admit it nor avert the course of self destruction it is on.
It would be great start for a better life solution to have Scientology brought to its knees and the cult dissected so it’s patterns of manipulation can be better understood and legislated against.
James Clavel’s, “A Children’s Story,” comes to mind, especially associated with the manipulation of young minds like the cadet org does.
Well, nice to know that if I ever did get the crazy idea to join, I’d be ineligible.
Then again, my life has been majorly improved by psychiatric care, so I’m probably not the target audience.
Correction. DEFINITELY not the target audience! 🙂
I am a product of talk therapy AND medication – I have been a college professor for 20 years with a masters which I was able to pursue AFTER this help that addressed a misfire in my brain plus years of abuse. And I DO take vitamins, exercise, get enough sleep as well… did so before I sought help. I can’t help but connect the sci-fi writer background with the philosophies of COS. He said research, but also, per Russell Miller’s excellent book, Bare-face Messiah, he always said the best way to make a lot of money would be to start my own religion! I hope he’s rotting in hell for the damage done to so many for decades.
I wonder what they would do if some mentally ill person would show up at Flag or CC and commit a mass shooting. What would be the response then? They couldn’t say all of the victims had “pulled it in”.
They mostly do not even know the truth about psychiatry. They merely repeat what they are told. There are disreputable practitioners in every profession. But they use generalities labeling the whole profession into one big lump of insulting horror stories! Using generalities is suppressive per their own policies. Sigh
They’re in the Do As I Say mode.
So true…..The practice of psychiatry does have a very long history of embracing destructive and actually cruel “treatments” such as electro shock therapy, pre-frontal lobotomy, insulin shock therapy, et cetera. Horrible stuff!
But on the other hand there are shrinks who do talk therapy, listen to people’s problems and help others. Psychiatry does not have a standardized system of procedures. Once they get that MD license to hang on the wall they can do pretty much what they want. Interestingly back in the seventies there was a psychiatrist named Dr. Frank Gerbode who actually ran a Scientology mission! After the mission network was destroyed by Miscavige he won a lawsuit against them and founded the Traumatic Incident Reduction Association (TIRA) which has practitioners world-wide.
Most of its practitioners, including me, are not psychiatrists But some are.
It is irresponsible to paint ALL members of any group with the same brush. The only thing that is important is what the actual products are of an individual.
Hubbard used people. In my opinion the Republican Party should return to the root of not using people, such as their initial opposition to slavery. (Also, Joy Villa should be shown the door.)
In former days the Democrats were the (pro-slavery, pro Jim Crow, anti Civil Rights) Conservatives and the Republicans were the Liberals and Progressives! Times do change 🙂
Here I have a real issue with them. One of the largest causes of the “mass shootings” we are having is mental health. One of the biggest issues we are having with homelessness is mental health. One of the largest issues we are having with drug issues is mental health.
We simply can not continue to not provide mental health services for people. If we do, we are simply asking for more of the issues we are having now.
But the Scientology response would be that all these issues can be resolved through Scientology processing. This is why we must clear the planet, they would say. The problem is that Scientology is very expensive and, being a religion, not covered by insurance. I agree that the mental health field must expand and be made more available to the people you mentioned earlier.
My response would be they are doing such a good job of it in their own group………not.
I personally am of the opinion that there is way too much drugging of children in schools when the real problem is they are not being properly taught and of people of all ages in general when they are experiencing loss or grief or anger…I’m not talking here about extreme suicidal grief or anger, mind you, just what we all experience in the course of life. I am also of the opinion that it is more than a little absurd and concerning that for untold millenia we humans ate food, slept, woke up, worked, had sex, studied, talk to one another and otherwise socialized with one another without drugs and now it seems we are being told that we must have drugs for these basic human survival activities.
That said, there IS schizophrenia and there ARE other severe mental disorders wherein some people are a danger to themselves and society and for such people I think drugs are very necessary.
Up close I saw my friend’s son (ex-friend, she dropped me because I could not handle being around him any more and told her so) I’ll call him Robbie but that’s not his name if he’s still alive.
I knew him from the age of 9. A very demanding child, nothing mellow about him, always rather angry and extremely insistent upon getting his way – he NEVER gave up unless and/or until one gave in, but otherwise normal I suppose.
At 17 he turned schizophrenic and by the time he was 28 he was unrecognizable in every way – his appearance, his voice, the things he would say – simply something less than human and I was afraid of him and I don’t scare easily.
The hate, the rage that came out of him, his voice, alternately very loud and deep and hoarse and then cackling with a kind of maniacal laughter – not his real voice at all, like a demon talking, and then the way he looked, completely altered from his real self – he would have been unrecognizable to me if I hadn’t known already who he was, if I hadn’t known him from the age of 8. This is what he was like unless he took his medication which he mostly didn’t. His mother never turned her back on him. She stayed with him and supported him in every way. She tried to get him to stay in a few homes for the mentally ill which she thought were kind and humane but he wouldn’t stay, he would always leave and the laws, in this state of mine anyway, are such that he could not be kept against his will. And so he roamed the streets and slept rough. Again, medication would restore him to a semblance of his real self but he refused to stay on it. In the old days he would have been thrown into an insane asylum and kept there, in chains. Medication for such severely mentally ill people is better I think.
Point being, is Scientology going to “handle” people like this?
We all know the answer to that.
…Except that the mentally ill cannot get scientology processing. Irrespective of what the non-scientologists are or are not doing with regards to mental health, the subject here pertains to scientology and its rules.
Scientology screams about psychs, but everything Hubbard ever said or wrote denied scientology to those who would — in their eyes — otherwise be victims of those psychs. He advocated killing the psychs, but was limited by WOG law, to his chagrin. He also, however, rated those with mental illness so low on the Tone Scale as to be irredeemable, impossible for scientology to reach.
Did Hubbard say anything about what to do to help these, or did he just simply disregard them as fit only for disposal, “quietly and without remorse?”
I think this is a valid question.
My take on this is that if Hubbard’s words are to be followed to the letter, then scientology should be eliminating the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped from the earth in addition to servicing only the “able”, right? Those low on the Tone Scale are beyond help, fundamentally flawed, and since they cannot be brought up the Tone Scale they deserve only to be killed.
So does scientology believe that BOTH the psychs AND the mentally ill should be killed off?
Alcoboy, I have to tell you; Scientology will not audit anyone with mental health issues. Flag in particular will throw someone right out on their ear if they uncover that he or she had been taking antidepressants or had any kind of brain operation or just ANY issue that is mental health related and in any way connected up to Big Pharma. Anyone with a history of mental illness is an “illegal PC” and cannot receive auditing.
At the same time Scientology is against medication for the mentally ill. They themselves have NO solution for mental illness, and their policies come right out and say exactly that; Scientology is not for the mentally ill while at the same time they use psychiatric meds as a way to foment anger in the flock; stamping out psych meds is a fundraising ploy with them.
A reflective point came to mind about, “Scientology will not audit anyone with mental health issues,” goodness me! What a massive contradiction that one is, buried by the mind numbing, ‘making the able more able’ bs, but it made me consider staff auditing. Apart from the criminally grueling sec checks they receive, started off with, “I’m not auditing you,” what actual auditing do they receive? I think we all know the answer to that – zip! Unless of course you’re rich & or famous or the siblings there of.
By the logic of this thread and Hubbard’s treatment (Miscavige put it on steroids) of his own staff and what is written in his policies, mostly lies about the Universe Corps and staff don’t have cases on post etc. It could be easily considered horrible to be on staff, be paid pittance, be denied a social and family life, being mentally abused, suffer a disgusting diet, sleep deprivation that all Scientology staff indeed experience, they all do have mental issues or sure develop them as part of their involvement in that organisation. I was never SO but from what I saw of the RPF I consider it a horror of a thing.
In my time of staff in a CL4 org, my observations (in quiet reflection now) was that we all believed in the anticipation of better and happier times fulfilling, at some point in the future, the aims of Scientology. When in reality it was exactly the opposite we were doing. By following Hubbard we were are the forefront of our own later regret of having ever being involved in the first place, we were truly had! Made slaves! To those that stayed in, in my view, they are creating personal severe mental issues with bearing witness to the destruction of others lives at the hands of Scientology. Aaron’s emotional response on camera of the effect of what disconnection did to his family and Mike’s book & letters to his family still inside bear as devastating evidence of the mental instability surrounding any staff member. It eventually catches up with you and you either get the hell out of Dodge and go lick your wounds, or a sort of concrete hardens in your head to avoid the pain and suffering you witness on a daily basis.
There are many definitions of mental illness, Scientology organisational practices fall under that dictionary entry.
Yes, Scientology doesn’t audit anyone with mental issues and that is defined by their inability & refusal to audit their own staff.
Personal note, I don’t consider correction lists and patch ups comes under the guise of auditing. I’ve done hundreds of them and the effect doesn’t last very long, a bit of a temporary case band aid. But with what a staff member puts up with on a daily basis, no amount of auditing of any kind is going to fix anyway. As opposed to celebrity “love bombing” as Aqua pointed out, but look at what that creates…
You are right on EVERYpoint. Sec checking is not auditing. I’ve been sec checked. As a public I was sec checked for something, I forget what. It was done correctly on me and I benefited.
That said, I CAN DEFINITELY SEE what a horribly, horribly suppressive, CRUEL weapon sec checking COULD be (and from the horror stories I’ve read here and elsewhere) HAS BEEN and CONTINUES TO BE when used for the purposes of blaming and punishing someone. I’m shuddering just THINKING about having that same action done on me for THOSE purposes.
Why the cult allows their staff and Sea Org people to be abused in this way is beyond my comprehension. There has to be REAL sadism at the top…I don’t get it…what other explanation COULD there be?
Sec checking has to be done lightly and very skillfully and caringly with the CORRECT purpose or else its just – I don’t know – barbarism, comes to mind.
And yes, correct, Scientology won’t TOUCH someone they know or believe has been treated by psychiatry and yet the cult endlessly HOWLS about and decries the usage of ALL psychotropic meds which are psychiatry’s solutions for mental illness. Does this make any sense?
If the cult were smart they’d shut UP about medication and just go about THEIR business which is SUPPOSED TO BE auditing and training people!
But no! Like every “wOG” group (to which they profess total superiority) Scientology MUST have an enemy, so that the can bind their followers together, so that all the defenseless sheeple have a WOLF (Big Pharma and the psychiatric profession) to hate and fear in solidarity. Which leaves Miscavige I suppose as the Scientology’s answer to the Good Shepherd…its just too ridiculous and sad, just too disgusting…
I am so sorry that well meaning people who joined staff and the Sea Org got belittled and abused and degraded by the cult, by this little plug-ugly from South Philly.
I’m not one to quote the New Testament because technically, theoretically, I’m not a Christian because I don’t believe in the Virgin Birth and a lot of other Christian magic. That said, I have read the New Testament and Jesus (or someone) did say some very wise things, one of which I’ll try to quote now, and its for every staff member and Sea Org member abused and disrespected and hurt, past present and future:
Jesus said something to the effect that a person is not degraded by what goes INTO him, but ONLY by what comes OUT of him.
Its actually very cool. NO ONE can degrade you. No one can do that TO you.
Only you (we) can degrade you (ourselves). In other words, it is not what is DONE TO us that degrades us; it is solely what WE DO that degrades us.
Smart guy, that Jesus. Or (with all respect to devout Christians here) whoever might have said it.
Miscavige is a totally degraded being. HE is degraded. Not his victims.
Yes, makes sense. The smart people eventually walk out the door of Scientology because they see what is actually expected of them – to participate in abusing others and that usually begins by taking that abuse themselves. Really, who wants that much of a guilty conscience and continually create one? At some point the door is just too much relief not to run through.
Those that stay in, may say to themselves they are helping the world, but become so solid by being involved in numerous abuses, never develop the courage or fortitude to see what they are really doing. No wonder they work ridiculously long hours and deprive themselves of lots of necessities, (like sleep) and a extroverted life away from the group. Quite a vicious cycle to get caught up in. Group insanity is like a glue of sorts!
Sage observation from Jesus, but as you imply, the degraded ones such as Miscavige need some sort of consequence forced upon them somehow to get them to stop doing what they do – that’s the puzzle and dilemma we face – how & when? Tax exception removed and Miscavige in a court room explaining himself sure seem to be crystallizing as the solution to terminate the abuses cycle and indeed organizational Scientology itself. That is however, the Achilles heel of Scientology, while a tough target with so many resources, it does come down to just one man (he’s also only ever one mistake away from oblivion). The walls are closing in on him in that regard. Then the ones still in will “snap out of it’ hopefully. The hard core ones, like Chan etc will just move onto the next scam. They have no soul, like the lawyers on the Scio payroll. Oh, that spokesperson woman who dresses in a fancy corn sack, makes me want to reach for the bug spray!
Hubbard’s polices need a good bonfire!