Shit… interrupted by Rathbun again.
Marty’s recent post, Why Cold Steel and Scientology Don’t Mix (don’t ask me what that means… if I didn’t know how Scientologists abhor drugs, I’d think there was something more wacky than tabbacy in those cigarettes he smokes), Marty quotes from an L. Ron Hubbard lecture called The Fact of Clearing.
LRH recorded countless hours of lectures, about which Scientologists rarely think critically (if they do, they often stop being Scientologists). But I think we protesters don’t look carefully enough at them either. Because as complex, verbose, and overwhelming as LRH’s droning speeches are, they’re about as substantial as an office building made of dryer lint. Let’s take a closer at the speech Marty quoted and see. Heeeeeeeeeere’s Ronnie:
“Man definitely has a right to certain happiness. He isn’t going to experience that right under the circumstances of his own past. He can’t. He’s too wound up in this and that.”
Not even halfway through the first paragraph, and we’re already knee-deep in the bullshit. Man can’t experience happiness? Really, Ron? Sorry, Scientologists, but I’m happy. I have a lovely spouse, a fulfilling job, enough money to pay my bills, and the freedom to write about the causes I care about. And yet here’s Hubbard, the man who says there are no absolutes, saying I can’t experience happiness.
“It’s not the mores of the society that prevent him. It’s all of these delusions about how bad the other fellow is.”
This is typical Hubbard, subtly trying to engender fear of the outside (“Wog”) world. Note the choice of words – not “how bad people are,” but “how bad the other fellow is.” He’s talking about us. (Newcomers might think I’m reading too much into this, but once you read or hear enough Hubbard, you’ll see that this is a frequent tactic – supposed examples of crazy non-Scientology behavior that anyone with half a brain can see are bullshit.)
“You have police because other people are so bad.”
Again with the demonizing of the world! Funny, because Scientology says it believes that man is basically good. In fact, I believe Hubbard said “Man is basically good, but Man can act badly.” But now he’s saying people are bad? Which is it, tubby?
“I investigated police one time. I became a cop. That’s the best way to investigate something — become it for a while, you know? You can go too far with that sort of thing.”
Hubbard? A cop? Yup, it’s true… well, sort of. Hubbard was a rent-a-cop.
Back in the late 40s, the Los Angeles Police Department sometimes sub-contracted security-officer duties to third-party detective agencies. These “Special Officers” had to be licensed by the LAPD, and Hubbard was. They got badge numbers, ID cards (you can see Hubbard’s here; clearer scan at this Church site), and could even carry guns, but had no power to detain beyond a citizen’s arrest. Hubbard’s card, issued in 1948, indicated that he worked for the Metropolitan Detective Agency, not the LAPD, but that doesn’t stop this Church site from claiming, “In 1947-1948 Hubbard served as a Special Police Officer with the L.A. Police Department.” Nor does it stop LRH from claiming that he became a cop. (Marty did say we weren’t supposed to take LRH literally, right?)
Incidentally, according to Russel Miller, author of Bare Faced Messiah (based on documents gathered by Gerry Armstrong while putting together a biography for Hubbard), Elron spent most of 1947 scraping out a living as a sci-fi writer, begging the VA for benefits, and taking classes at the Gellar Theater Workshop (maybe he played a cop?). In 1948, though, he did find himself at a police station… but on the wrong side of the desk. He was charged with petty theft for writing a bad check in San Luis Obispo county, some 200 miles north of Los Angeles.
Question for Ron: When you said “You can go to far with this sort of thing,” did you mean someone who briefly worked as a security guard claiming he was a police officer?
“But where do we have, in essence here, a cave-in of the society? What could cave the society in? Well, all you’d have to do is have a police force and a society would start caving in.”
Got that? Every society with a police force is going to start caving in. Any day now. After all, Hubbard would know, right? He was a cop!
Seriously… I know Scientologists are willing to swallow a lot of bullshit, but how the fuck do they buy into something that is so obviously false?
“Why? The police force constitutes a constant reminder that men are evil, which is a constant reminder that we must agree with these evil men. Do you see how this would work? Neat little trick.”
No, Ron, I don’t see how that would work. Even if I bought the first part about police force reminding us that men are evil, how do you make the leap to “we must agree with these evil men”? There is no logic there. But chances are Hubbard said this in a lecture that stretched on for hours and hours, and no Scientologist, eager to progress up The Bridge to Fund Ron’s New Bluebird Motorhome, is going to stop to pick these little nits.
This is a good time for a quick tangent: What happens if you do stop the tape and ask an instructor how Ron could say something so utterly false? Well, according to The Tech, you must have misunderstood a word. So you’ll be forced to work backwards, get quizzed on your vocabulary, look up stuff in the dictionary, until they find your “M.U.” Maybe some definition of “agree” or “evil” or “with” that will make Ron’s illogical logic make some semblance of sense. The exercise will be long and tortuous enough that you’ll quickly learn not to disagree again.
“Now, that doesn’t say that we are so starry-eyed as to believe that at this time we could dispense with all police. Or could we?”
Uh-oh… I feel a pitch for an all-Scientology world coming on!
“Now, you have to make up your mind which way you’re going to go with a society if you’re thinking about a new society of one kind or the another. And if you say, ‘Well, this society would be totally unregulated,’ then we would be proposing an anarchy. And all the anarchists tell us that the only way a society would work as a total freedom without government would be if everyone in it were perfect.
“All of the anarchists?” Flunk for making a generalization. (Hubbard said that people who speak in generalizations like that are supressive persons. Maybe he was right!)
“Well, I don’t know whether we propose — when we talk about a cleared society — whether we propose or not to have an anarchy. That’s beside the point. That’s up to the people who get cleared.
Translation: “This is a big issue that would require thought and discussion. I don’t want you thinking, because I want to keep your hands in Scientology and my hands in your wallet. And I don’t want to discuss, because that would take me away from my next point, which is…”
But I don’t think you’d wind up with an anarchy. I think you’d wind up with a much finer level of agreement and cooperation because I think you’d then be able to realize the rest of the dynamics.
Translation: The world would work better if everyone was a Scientologist. No more insanity like wogs who can’t be happy because their town has a police force.
“The cops are there only because the rest of the dynamics aren’t there! So, if you put those back into society, then you’d get a society.”
Translation: Buy more Scientology, get others to buy more Scientology, and your problems will go away.
So that’s my take on a segment of an LRH lecture. Now, let’s be frank: There’s nothing I’ve written that you couldn’t have come up with yourself. In fact, I’ve probably wasted your time by making you read my shallow insights. Sorry about that. My point is that this is another way we can communicate with Scientlogists – just get them to look more closely at what LRH says and see how little sense it makes. It’s not easy; the ol’ fraud convinced his customers that he really did all this “research,” and you’ve got people like Marty who take this paper-thin bullshit as gospel.
But if you can get them to examine even one line – maybe that bit about how a society with police will cave in – well, maybe you can put a crack in the facade. Just a little hairline crack, maybe… but we all know where that can lead.
ML,
Caliwog
Caliwog's Blog 