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Marty: An Open Letter to Tony Ortega

Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
An Open Letter to Tony Ortega

http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/an-open-letter-to-tony-ortega/

An Open Letter to Tony Ortega

Posted on September 28, 2011 by martyrathbun09| 33 Comments

reference: yours at,

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/09/l_ron_hubbard_top_25_crippling_scientology.php

Notwithstanding your prediction, you won’t hear any howls from me Tony. Only a long sigh of disappointment.

You start out your opus on L Ron Hubbard with an interesting incongruity: the Village Voice sanctimoniously talking down on somebody for being “a bigamist” and an “occult dabbler.” Really? Who do you expect to stand out of line and swim against the current at the height of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and state sponsored institutional psychiatry? The monogamous, obeying, church-going Ozzie Nelson? I would think the Village Voice of all fairly influential publications would understand this: If you want to find someone to step outside the box and question the manner in which humankind has been doing business for thousands of years don’t call on Little Lord Fauntelroy.

The first crux of your attempted take down of L Ron Hubbard begins with a straw man burning of what you quote a religious scholar as calling the church’s “mythological hagiography” of Hubbard. Tony, name an established religion whose founder or messenger is promoted by its organization with anything other than a “mythological hagiography.”

You then “prove” it’s all by Hubbard’s design by taking a third-rate propaganda piece (Russell Miller’s Barefaced Messiah) and converting it into, well, your Bible. It is the same technique being used by mainstream, corporate media for the past sixty years to make fun of and tear down that which it doesn’t have the intellectual integrity to attempt to understand. So, just as you introduced your hagiography burning by allowing yourself to call my “bullshit”, please allow me to call yours.

I explained to you at some length my own considerations about Hubbard’s hagiography; and explained to you that most Independent Scientologists share them. First, I told you that I was not the kind of person to allow someone’s alleged “biography” to influence my evaluation of the workability of methods suggested by that person. In fact, I told you that I caught myself beginning to do so when I first entered a church of Scientology in 1977. But, it wasn’t in the way you’ve inferred is the only way to evaluate the worth of Scientology. I saw a photo of Hubbard in his naval uniform, with some plug as to how this showed him to be credible. I nearly made an about face right then and there because to me the last cred I would credit in the field of the mind and the spirit would be someone’s stint as an officer in the US Navy. But, I decided to keep an open mind and stay focused on what he had to offer; and more importantly to test for myself whether it produced a result. Remember, I was a writer for the alternative paper at the University I had attended before all this; I had been honing my bullshit detector for some time.

Whether Hubbard was a blood brother to Native Americans, an Eagle Scout, a teenager who in the 1920’s once used a pejorative term to refer to Chinese, was responsible for killing a sub full of people, considered homosexuality deviant in 1951, or generally went about his life with a bigger-than-life swag really never figured into the equation for me.

So, your part A, for me, is not much more than much ado about nothing.

As for your part B, the recitation and condemnation of the very few words you cherry picked out of the millions Hubbard wrote and spoke on the subject of Scientology, your techniques were even more disappointing. I’ll cite some of the words you chose to characterize as policy, and give each passage a touch of context.

a. “The only way you can control people is to lie to them.”

Tony, I have heard more than one one-hour lecture by Hubbard where takes this axiom and ruthlessly examines it toward forever freeing those listening from ever being controlled through lies.

b. Your repeated references to and quotes on the Hubbard Policy Letter Keeping Scientology Working:

In context, again as I explained to you, outside the culture of the church that policy letter, Keeping Scientology Working, means ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That was the meaning my wife summed up as gleaning from it. As you know she had never set foot in any “church” of Scientology, and therefore was uninfluenced by the culture of Miscavige that interprets virtually everything for people, when I asked her to read it. But, apparently her view doesn’t count, not when it might slow down a witch burning of L Ron Hubbard.

c. “There’s only one remedy for crime — get rid of the psychs! They are causing it!”

Is Shakespeare condemned for having prescribed a disappearing of all lawyers to remedy the world’s ills? Is Michael Moore condemned for cheerleading for the abolition of all Capitalists to create peace on earth? Certainly not in your publication. Further, it really doesn’t sound much different from the attitude you’ve espoused about Scientology in your article on Hubbard. Glass houses?

d. “A truly Suppressive Person or group has no rights of any kind and actions taken against them are not punishable.”

Tony, while you know damn well that I – and all Independents I know - take exception to any attitude or conduct even reflecting adherence to the above sentence, let’s add a broader type of context. Apparently the mental health field is sixty years later coming round to Hubbard’s way of thinking. I am reading a book (The Sociopath Next Door) by a prominent practitioner in the specialty of repairing the victims of sociopaths. Her description of the sociopath reads like a modern day rewrite of Hubbard’s descriptions of what he then called the covertly hostile person, and later called the suppressive person. The psychiatrist announces that modern psychiatry cannot cure the sociopath, and muses for 3 pages beating around the bush about what then to do about them – the subtext is clear, she wishes it were 1951 and it was politically correct to say “quarantine them”, but alas, it is 2011 and she winds up babbling into apathy over the problem.

e. “MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY.”

A Finance Office policy. I think if your job is Finance and you do things that do not add up to making more money and getting others to do the same, you are not long for finance (whether you are in the Finance Office of the Catholic Church, the United Way, or General Motors). To infer this policy applies broadly to Scientologists is just a plain cheap shot.

To place L Ron Hubbard above David Miscavige in your rankings of those doing the most to “cripple Scientology” does everyone a disservice in my opinion. L Ron Hubbard died twenty-five years ago. He wrote what he wrote. He has no further say in what people do with what he wrote. Following your logic, the solution would lie along the lines a good old-fashioned book burning. Further, you are naïve to assume there are more active Corporate Scientologists (whom Miscavige demands read Hubbard the way you have chosen to) than there are Independent Scientologists (who don’t miss the forest for the trees and choose to apply what Hubbard wrote in a sensible, lawful, respectful manner befitting the age in which they live). Your final article tells the latter that they are no different than the former – that all are condemned to read and apply Hubbard as you and David Miscavige have chosen to. Worse, you aid and abet a dangerous sociopath by providing him with the ultimate defense – Hubbard made him do it.

I respectfully disagree.

While Independent Scientologists might be inclined to howl, I can guarantee you one thing. They won’t investigate you, they won’t threaten you, they won’t attempt to intimidate you, they won’t threaten to sue you, they won’t sue you, and they won’t do much of anything to make you even slightly uncomfortable.

I’ve got news for your Tony. Those facts right there about how Independent Scientologist will conduct themselves towards you is living proof that your article was dead wrong.

Peace my brother.
 

Free to shine

Shiny & Free
Oh dear, Tony Ortega has been consigned to "mainstream, corporate media" (shudder) instead of a believed mouthpiece for "Independent scientologists" who don't question Hubbard. :lol:

Keep picking them raisins Marty, see how long they sustain you in the long term.
 
Miscavige's Former Waterboy said:
The first crux of your attempted take down of L Ron Hubbard begins with a straw man burning of what you quote a religious scholar as calling the church’s “mythological hagiography” of Hubbard. Tony, name an established religion whose founder or messenger is promoted by its organization with anything other than a “mythological hagiography.”

An Open Letter to Tony Ortega

Tony, The pile of shit I'm selling is not the issue. Sure be both know I'm running a con game on the chumps who want to follow Hubbard, but so has everyone else, so as long as I follow the proper format that legitimizes my con game.
 

Petey C

Silver Meritorious Patron
Well, this rant kinda confirms a few things for me. One, Marty deserves his place in the Top 25. Two, he typifies that withering, scornful, superior tone taken by so many dedicated scientologists -- saying, in effect, that unless one makes a lifelong study of scientology you poor fools out there will never understand it. (Actually, WRONG; it's easy to understand and Tony Ortega seems to have done just that.) Three, he's saying that it's OK for Hubbard to lie about his past because hey, who doesn't? Well, how about Nelson Mandela for starters?

The way I score it: Tony Ortega and the Village Voice 5; Rathbun and Scientology nil.
 

ClamSource

Patron with Honors
Standard Marty. Pompously posting an open letter instead of just writing a letter to the editor like all the plebs. Then he can't spell Little Lord Fauntleroy.
 

Free to shine

Shiny & Free
Well, this rant kinda confirms a few things for me. One, Marty deserves his place in the Top 25. Two, he typifies that withering, scornful, superior tone taken by so many dedicated scientologists -- saying, in effect, that unless one makes a lifelong study of scientology you poor fools out there will never understand it. (Actually, WRONG; it's easy to understand and Tony Ortega seems to have done just that.) Three, he's saying that it's OK for Hubbard to lie about his past because hey, who doesn't? Well, how about Nelson Mandela for starters?

The way I score it: Tony Ortega and the Village Voice 5; Rathbun and Scientology nil.

You said that so well! :biggrin:
 

lotus

stubborn rebel sheep!
b. Your repeated references to and quotes on the Hubbard Policy Letter Keeping Scientology Working:

In context, again as I explained to you, outside the culture of the church that policy letter, Keeping Scientology Working, means ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That was the meaning my wife summed up as gleaning from it. As you know she had never set foot in any “church” of Scientology, and therefore was uninfluenced by the culture of Miscavige that interprets virtually everything for people, when I asked her to read it. But, apparently her view doesn’t count, not when it might slow down a witch burning of L Ron Hubbard.

:shithitfan:

I like it

:lol:
 

Freeminds

Bitter defrocked apostate
So what?

The article that (quite rightly) identified LRH as being the #1 person crippling Scientology made references to Russell Miller's book. That's not journalistic laziness. It's the opposite: you acknowledge your sources and invite the reader to study them and make up his or her own mind.

Miller deserves the credit for his thoroughness, and any serious biographer of Hubbard is going to be referring to 'Bare Faced Messiah' a lot. He interviewed a lot of Scientology victims who worked in close proximity to Hubbard; the stories that they tell are highly relevant and explain a lot about the appeal of the cult... and its toxicity.

It should be borne in mind that the LRH article isn't expected to stand alone: it's the 25th chapter in the series, in which a great many other sources have been referenced. Marty seems to want to isolate and compartmentalize them. Some he likes; some he doesn't. Maybe that's why he's still a Scientology victim: because he operates a kind of doublethink where the failures of Scientology and its founder are consigned to a mental "here be dragons" into which he won't venture.

Well, good luck with that, Marty... but denial isn't exactly "knowingness", is it?
 

Infinite

Troublesome Internet Fringe Dweller
...



kid-crying.jpg
 

Sautez

Patron with Honors
A quick note I wrote today to Tony about Marty and LRH:

'Tony, Awesome job on LRH being number 1 and at the top of his own list. How funny is that? I loved the article you wrote!
I was however surprised at your pick of Marty for numero 3 as many old timer exes have suffered 100 times as much as him and have been in the trenches exposing the con for decades under heavy and constant fire. I am glad he is inspiring people to get out because once out the blinders can fall away and they can finally, after all these years, truly be free. We love your honesty, integrity and perspicacity. Thank you Tony.'
 

Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/an-open-letter-to-tony-ortega/#comment-151196

mrinder | September 29, 2011 at 1:18 am | Reply

Marty,

Thanks, and I agree with you 100%.

Tony has no subjective reality on Scientology, so it is not possible for him to see any forest. He is stuck on the trees, most of which are old and dead, that wood having been chopped a hundred times already.

The thing that cannot be denied is that while L. Ron Hubbard was alive, his ideas and writings (NOT his biography) spawned a movement that circled the globe. If you believe all the “anti-hagiography” statements, this all occurred despite his false war record, bigamy, not having a pilot’s license etc etc. Of course it did! Those are red herrings. Interesting biographical material, but irrelevant to the subject of Scientology. In 50 years I have never met a *single* person who got involved in Dianetics and Scientology or remained in it because of L. Ron Hubbard’s biography, hagiography or any other graphy. And I suspect not a soul has left the church for that reason either.

Tony seems to subscribe to the Tommy Davis school of illogic he so famously used with the New Yorker. As Tommy Two Tone so brilliantly posited it: “If his war record isn’t true, the Dianetics and Scientology are based on a lie and can’t be true either” Tony’s version: “Hubbard’s biographical whoppers are an integral and inseparable part of Scientology’s own history and public image, Scientology’s and Hubbard’s credibility are likewise forever fused together.” Now that is disappointing. Tony Ortega following in Tommy’s footsteps!

What Tony didn’t seem to notice or comment on is that what had grown through the mid 80’s has been being steadily dismantled by Miscavige NOT because he has lied about Hubbard’s biography, and not because he has been an abusive, power hungry megalomaniac, but for the much more fundamental reason that he has been systematically making what DID work, into something else entirely. A vulture culture that takes and delivers no results. But then, with no subjective understanding of the subject, I don’t expect Tony to see this.

Based on Tony’s logic, it would be Abraham that is the number one person crippling Judaism and Mohammed for the Moslem faith and Jesus (or God?) for Christianity. And if Tony were to argue that those are inapt comparisons, then it would certainly be Thomas Jefferson that is the number one reason for the decline of the United States society.

Somehow Tony also got the strange idea that “older” religions have changed with the times but Scientology has to “contend with Hubbard’s vast doctrinal output, much of which finds him dictatorially micromanaging in a much different, far away time and place.” Where his notion came from of how fast religions shed the past and adapt to new times is a mystery. Tony, when were African Americans even considered people and allowed to enter a Mormon Temple? Celibacy of the priesthood? How about the Christian radio commentators that cite Leviticus to proclaim that homosexuality is bad? If that’s keeping up with the times, then I doubt there is really a problem here.

And the final long-felled tree that Tony somehow found in the forest (apparently with the guidance of Jon Atack – not known for either his knowledge of Scientology or his balanced approach to life) is his assertion that L. Ron Hubbard “mandate[d] that the survival of Scientology be the most central, guiding principle in Scientology.” This is NOT the Scientology I am familiar with – I would go out on a limb and say the real mandate of Scientology is achieving personal survival, understanding and enlightenment. At least that’s the Scientology I know and have been involved in for 50 years.

But as you said Marty, my feeling about this is disappointment, not anger. In many ways Tony Ortega has shown a level of courage that you normally ONLY find in a “true believer” who has a reason to fight for what they know to be true. So, it sometimes comes as a bit of a shock to be reminded that he has no subjective reality on Scientology. And certainly with his readership, he has been criticized for being too “pro-Marty” and to not have LRH on his list would have caused way more screaming and protests than he will hear from Independent Scientologists (and the Kool Aid drinkers are thankful because now they can prove to their sheeple that *anything* Tony Ortega says can be ignored because he is “anti-LRH”).
 

namaste

Silver Meritorious Patron
Oh, for fuck's sake why can't any of those CoS-indoctrinated boneheads just let something like this go or at least chuckle about it instead of throwing a hissy fit at people and think that they are being “at cause” for doing so. That would have been a much more effective way of dealing with it.
Marty acts as if he has never left Int management.
That moronic diatribe indicates that either he is a complete retard or a scammer like those he has worked for prior to now. (I won't mention any names so he doesn't get thrown into another spin.)

Actually, Ortega went pretty lightly on the beloved founder as far as I'm concerned. It could have been much worse and still have been factual as Marty well knows.

This is the kind of behavior I would expect from OSA, not from someone who has supposedly left all of that behind.
 

Zhongjianren

Patron with Honors
http://markrathbun.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/an-open-letter-to-tony-ortega/#comment-151213
mrinder | September 29, 2011 at 1:32 am | Reply

Joy — I dont think Tony is not an ally. And I dont think he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, naive or greedy, I think he has no subjective reality on Scientology, Thus he can only observe it objectively. He said nothing new about LRH in his piece, It is pretty old and worn. Trying to be objective about something as personal as what Scientology provides to individuals and why it is so important and valuable. Tony Ortega isnt a religious scholar either. But he does have tremendous courage and he has stood up the monster that so many others have backed away from — and for that, he deserves a lot of credit.
 

lotus

stubborn rebel sheep!
scamology translation:

Tony is a punk - a poor blind wog
but he stood up against Miss and Osa so he ''deserves'' a bit of respect and thus is not a total degraded being.
:lol:
 
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Dean Blair

Silver Meritorious Patron
I thought the whole article was very well written, eye opening, and something that has been needed for a long time. kudos to everyone involved.
 

freethinker

Sponsor
I'm convinced now that marty is insane as well as much of his flock.

Now, for me, it's a matter of what kind of insane he is.

I don't get the reasoning of "That's old and overused stuff about Hubbard".

Does that mean if it's old and used too much it's not true or not true now because it's old and overused.

What the fuck do these people use to think with - e-meters?
 

Student of Trinity

Silver Meritorious Patron
That's a pretty good response from Rinder, actually. Coherent and well written, and he seems to have found the best arguments he could have found. Which is to say that he's playing the same Scientology PR role he once played in the Church, and doing as good a job as he can with it. He has polished his arguments as best he can, but they still don't hold water.

If Hubbard's biography is so irrelevant to Scientology, why do Marty and the Church alike spend so much time glorifying the man? Scientology is not supposed to be an abstract belief system — so it says. It's supposed to be a practically effective 'technology' for making the able more able. If Scientology's founder was a demi-god who achieved great things in many fields, then that hangs together: the guy who discovered how to make the able more able must have been pretty darn able to start with, and then he must have made himself even more able with his 'tech'. But if Hubbard was a mere mediocrity who only pretended to have done great things, then this casts Scientology itself in a pretty dubious light. If his tech really worked, why would he have to lie so much? Why would he want to lie so much?

Old major religions definitely have changed dramatically with the times. They're just so big, compared to Scientology, that their many factions and splinter groups cover a huge range of beliefs among them all. The sense in which Rinder may be right is that religions tend to change by splintering, rather than by adapting. The evolution of religion is Darwinian rather than Lamarckian. But evolution happens.

And when it fails to happen, it IS a problem. Priestly celibacy is an enormous problem for the Roman Catholic church, which is having a very hard time recruiting priests, worldwide — and is paying an enormous price for having had to draw priests, not largely but still disproportionately, from among people with little to lose in disavowing sex because expressing their sexual instincts was criminal anyway. Shackling Christianity to a legal code from the dawn of history may seem to be a winning plan in the American Bible Belt, but it makes the religion a laughingstock in much of the world. And I would think that even Rinder might have heard something about how the medieval 'closing of the gates of interpretation' in Islamic law has made the encounter of Islamic culture with western modernity a crisis that stretches agonizingly on through generation after generation.

If Scientology had the enormous momentum of an ancient world religion with a billion adherents, it could maybe afford to carry some millstones like this for a few generations. But you definitely do not want to wish this sort of liability on yourself, as proof that it's fine to uphold the letter of an outdated law. The Word of L. Ron Hubbard already looks hokey now, after just a few decades. Even if it holds some inner kernel of profound spiritual truth, that thick outer husk of bigoted 1950's conventional wisdom and gee-whiz pseudo-science is a serious impediment — a crippling burden for Scientology to bear.
 
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Captain Koolaid

Patron Meritorious
While Independent Scientologists might be inclined to howl, I can guarantee you one thing. They won’t investigate you, they won’t threaten you, they won’t attempt to intimidate you, they won’t threaten to sue you, they won’t sue you, and they won’t do much of anything to make you even slightly uncomfortable.

I’ve got news for your Tony. Those facts right there about how Independent Scientologist will conduct themselves towards you is living proof that your article was dead wrong.

Bottom Line: They're all out-ethics. The fat fraud would be howling with rage
 
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