secretiveoldfag
Silver Meritorious Patron
This story is disturbing. Scientology is gradually getting overt influence politically. It has long had covert influence through secret deals , bribes , blackmail and espionage but now in politics Scientology is openly interacting with higher and higher politicians. Very troubling . DM may like a two pronged strategy of having Scientology look like a goofy new religion that is persecuted for being new and an internal view that is quite different . If they can get on the sane page as any elected officials that can give an appearance of being socially acceptable and accepted for DM to parade out as proof for whales . And as PR for outsiders to confuse them when they hear of the horrific crimes and abuses Scientology commits.
A very , very old PR theory is that if you can bury a topic with contradictory statements from equally trusted sources MOST people get confused , do not like the feeling of cognitive dissonance and AVOID the topic as much as possible . Completely if the topic is not a needed part of their life ..
This benefits sociopaths tremendously. Think about it , most sociopaths know most people are not like them and would object to their conduct IF they understood the intent behind them . So by getting people to avoid them it gives sociopaths a free pass to keep abusing people.
Hubbard and Miscavige both employ this method . Getting even marginal social acceptance gets played up by the cult so it is their way to confuse the uninformed. The best thing about Scientology is that it has drawn in very few people. It probably never has had more than one hundred thousand members at any time . That is tiny in a world of perhaps six billion people . But the bad news that goes with that is that perhaps a few hundred thousand people worldwide bother to learn the truth about Scientology .
As Scientologists we were in a small club . As people who put in a serious , and hopefully effective , effort to understand Scientology we are also in a small club.
DM has other plans for us but he wants to neutralize the majority of people and control a needed minority. For him a governor is a prize to be sought , much like a movie star . The main thing TC and JT do is not recruitment , that is almost impossible now . The main thing they do is make the cult seem possibly acceptable. Even if just enough to confuse most people.
FIFY
Yes, but DM wants social acceptance, not negative publicity. And he cannot avoid well-informed negative publicity.
Google already picked this up yesterday and sent it out to a waiting public ('Today's best CoS foot-bullet') and as I went to bed there were already pages of comments on local sites including of course prepared statements by the OSABOTS all about public rights (exactly as Birdie predicted) but also informed statements by critics and exes, and this morning the expected thread on ESMB and more informed comments.... It's beautiful, really
So we may be a small club but I think we are a more effective small club than Scientology.