George Layton
Silver Meritorious Patron
The alternative to being "anti-" something is to be "pro-", but then you must articulate what values you are seeking to promote or exemplify. This is problematic from the days of a.r.s. forward because much of the "cult of the anti-cult", as the admirable intellect of Bernie styled it, is really about seeking excuses to act and think like a 13 year old engaged in a schoolyard taunting match.
Pro- free speech? A.r.s. liked to fly its colors in that way. Also, Andreas tried to make Operation Clambake about this, but it was largely HIS fortitude in keeping his eye on that prize that accomplished anything of the sort. The majority of regular denizens of Clambake were simply rehashing a.r.s. juvenile style thought and argument and demonstrating that in both a.r.s. and Clambake the task is to be the most outrageous acting-out or dramatizing person. Genuinely useful critical dialogue was invariably drowned out by juvenile acting-out in both forums. Clambake failed to be a genuinely CRITICAL community as evidenced by how easily nonsense about minute electric potentials associated with the e-meter somehow overpower the very stout electrochemical potency of the human body and produce addiction. This happened despite at least a few people in Clambake having the background to know better, yet it took an embarassing retraction by a media organ to finally show this silly notion has no traction except among select "true believers" of the cult of the anti-cult. Apparently you can stand up for free speech as what you are "pro-" about, but at the expense of rational and productive discourse that you'd want from a critical community, or else be glaringly shown a liar by the threads you willingly join.
Pro- decency? Much of the cult of the anti-cult is about providing frequent and shocking enough verbal indecency as its main battle tactic. A few civilly speaking and informed people in places the ex-scientologist might go manage to provide extremely valuable critical information, to great and good effect. But civilly speaking, critically thinking people and the cult of the anti-cult are mutually exclusive things. One would not be so prone to fall prey to the Mirror Image Rule that Bernie so aptly illustrated if one simply resolved to not "deliberate" like an obnoxious and smugly self-assured 13 year old. This allure is too much to resist for the "COTAC" though, and trying to define itself as pro-decency is a losing game for it.
I could continue to list all sorts of potential "pro-" principles about which COTAC could organize itself and present itself to the world as based upon. Unfortunately too much in the way of contradicting verbiage and other conduct by the COTAC defeats almost all such attempts. They must be anti-, as they cannot conform to desirable "pro-" principles in their actual conduct.
I really don't understand how from the mid-90s when I first started to monitor a.r.s. to the mid-teens some 20 years later, the old game of "Yousa not march in lock-step with us, so yousa OSA: yousa bad!!!!" still gets played with gusto.
What's so funny about wanting GENUINE critical deliberation, EVIDENCE that consists of more than luridly described speculations that often passes for "evidence" with the COTAC, and the ability to act in a social environment not dominated by seemingly 13 year old smug taunters who set the standard for the milleu? Why must someone be thought to be sucking up to DM or a false flag operator to simply desire these things???
It can be pondered and debated in so many ways but it ALL is still a distraction from the abuses ongoing in scientology today and the exposure of those abuses.