Opinion by Kyle A. Lohmeier
I don’t watch a lot of television – which I know always sounds pretentious but it’s true – outside of The Walking Dead and Detroit Lions Football, I don’t have much in the way of “appointment viewing” and the former typically sits on my DVR until I get around to watching it later that week owing to the fact I’m shocked and horrified enough by the latter on a Sunday afternoon that the ambulatory deceased will have to wait their turn.
Due to a recent change in providers, I now have a rather large DVR and so decided to load it up with every episode of “Leah Remini: Scientology and The Aftermath” and then binge them all in order in rapid succession. For those unfamiliar with the show and its host, Leah Remini spent decades in the Church of Scientology and left a few years back. Beginning in 2016, she started a show documenting the abuses of the church and the second season recently wrapped up.
The detailing of the church’s beliefs and practices by a series of high-ranking apostates was as macabrely fascinating as the personal stories shared by victims were heartbreaking. While every episode of both seasons was excellent, if I were to recommend just one episode to a marginally-interested viewer, it would have to be Season 2, Episode 4: “The Bridge to Total Freedom.”
In that episode, Remini and several other apostates detail the teachings of the church, beginning with on-the-street “free stress tests” through “Dianetics” to the state of “Clear,” and then onto the “Operating Thetan” levels that make up the top part of the “Bridge to Total Freedom.” As fascinating and, at times hilarious, as all that was – it was the cognates between the practices of the Church of Scientology and beliefs of its parishioners and those of the members of what many like to call the Cult of Statism that really struck me. And, after that long-winded introduction, it is those I’ll be detailing below.
As Remini’s co-host and former high-ranking member of the church, Mike Rinder points out, most people who aren’t born into Scientology come to it first via a free “stress test” conducted by Scientologists that aim to “find a ruin” in your life and then sell you a program based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard that can “fix” it.
All members of the Cult of Statism are born into it, and so one would think Statism doesn’t need such programs. But, if ever there was a cult with more money than Scientology, it’s Statism, and so the State offers all sorts of programs that the members have all already paid more than they’re worth for, but which members of the cult will still claim are vital. These are things like Welfare and WIC, Social Security and things like Department of Education, Food and Drug Administration, Housing and Urban Development, FBI, ATF, DEA, muh roadz, etc. Nobody needs any of those things. One only barely ever “benefits” from any government program as whatever “service” it provided was rendered in the most inefficient, violent and ineffective way imaginable because that’s the only way the State does anything. Likewise, any “good” that might be gleaned from a program based on Scientology could have easily been realized some other, more efficient, less expensive and less insane way.
One of the things that makes the continued existence of Scientology amazing is the fact it’s 2017 and the Internet has made it pretty much impossible to keep anything secret. Scientology fixes this by forbidding parishioners from reading the “suppressive” news media and by eliminating all access to it at their massive sprawling headquarters in California where many members of the “Sea Organization” live and work. As such, most of what most Scientologists know about what the church is doing comes from the five big mandatory galas each year where a series of exaggerations and outright lies are presented to the members that tell them what great work the church is doing in saving the planet.
The Cult of Statism, like any cult, must too keep secrets of its actual activities and aims away from the lay members. While the church must rely upon indoctrination and leveraging personal relationships to keep its members toeing the line, the Cult of Statism has a better time of it – it controls the mass media of the United States. Why else would the New York Times have sat upon the Ed Snowden story – only the biggest one in anyone’s living memory – for more than a year? Of course, all those on both sides believed that in keeping the story quiet they were doing some greater good and preventing some massive evil harm from happening.
Likewise, Church members who’ve attained the secret knowledge only gained at the OT III level will lie to anyone who describes that knowledge to them and say, “no, that’s just crazy.” They do this because L. Ron Hubbard literally said that to tell the secret knowledge to anyone who hadn’t attained at least OT III level would kill the listener. In both cases, the cult tells its parishioners and victims that it alone has the ability to handle the world’s various secrets. Today, Scientologists consider Remini, Rinder and other apostates to be the lowest of the low, people to be destroyed because they told the secrets of the church’s activities to the world. Today, a great many Americans – including the President of the United States – believe Edward Snowden should be destroyed for telling the secrets of the State’s activities to the world.
One interesting reversal between the Church of Scientology and the Cult of Statism is the difference between the things they keep secret and the things that are lies. The Church of Scientology keeps secrets that are laughable lies, whereas members of the Cult of Statism believe laughable lies and the Cult keeps the truth secret. The aforementioned, lethal, secret OT III knowledge was detailed years ago in South Park’s “Trapped in the Closet” episode (S9:E12) and no one died. The government gives us laughable explanations for sixteen years of endless war and death, yet members of the Cult of Statism want to persecute Ed Snowden for telling them the truth.
Of course, the pureness of his intent aside, Edward Snowden broke the rules – and that’s another cognate between Scientology and the Cult of Statism, both groups love rules. The Church of Scientology runs via a massive series of policy directives penned by L. Ron Hubbard himself that cover everything from how to properly wash a window (use newspaper) to how to properly deal with a critic of the church (destroy them personally and professionally, always attack, never defend).
The State runs on more than 23,000 pages of federal laws that outline more than 4,450 federally prosecutable crimes – 452 of which were created between 2000 and 2007 alone. There are more than 20,000 laws that only govern the ownership and use of firearms. The Internal Revenue Code runs some 3.4 million words. Rules are ostensibly very important to cults. Every single day I see people coming to full stops at stop signs in residential neighborhoods where they can clearly see there is no one coming from any other direction, cops included – but they shorten the life of their brake pads anyway and waste gas getting back up to 25 miles per hour because that’s the rule.
The final and most revealing cognate between Scientology and Statism is found at the top of each organization. Following the death of L. Ron Hubbard, David Miscavige moved swiftly to cement himself as the “pope” of the church and has enjoyed unquestioned control over it ever since. Likewise, with the creation of the federal government, powerful people sought to turn the republic into an oligarchy, beginning with the Federal Reserve Act and going on unabated ever since.
The operations of the Church of Scientology are much like those of the State: entirely self-serving. Yet, while Miscavige and the church drives its members deeper into debt so they can build big, gaudy buildings that sit mostly vacant – the parishioners pay up happily and attack critics of the church. Scientologists are taught that anyone who’d dare criticize the church only does so because they are guilty of crimes they are hiding, and you’ll hear Scientologists berating protesters or critics, asking over and over “what are your crimes?”
Likewise, while the State fundamentally ruins the lives of everyone living in it, members of its Cult consider their fleecing as “paying their fair share” and attack anyone who dares question the necessity of the state. How familiar does the above Scientologist’s refrain sound to those of us who oppose the NSA or any system of firearm registration? How much alike does “If you have nothing to hide, what are you worried about?” and “What are your crimes?” sound? A lot. Why? Because cult-speak is eerily similar across all cults.
For me, the single biggest revelation of “Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath,” was how susceptible homo sapiens sapiens still are to cult programming even in the Information Age. There appears to be some vestigial part of our primate brain that makes us vulnerable to such indoctrination. As homo sapiens sapiens in the Information Age, we would do well to keep this susceptibility in mind and be very cognizant of whether someone is using that known fault of humankind to manipulate us.
The most uplifting parts of Remini’s show were those that showed the ex-members getting on with their lives afterward, despite losing nearly everything – friends, family, homes – by leaving Scientology. A few ex-members of the Sea Organization shared their harrowing escape stories and how the Church’s “blow drill” to find and capture escaped Sea Org members works. Thanks to the show, an increasingly-large support network is waiting, eager to help anyone escaping the church. At the beginning of the aforementioned episode, Leah and Mike joke about things using the church’s own terms; Leah asks Mike if he’s “suppressing himself.” That they’re able to look back at what had previously so consumed their lives, and to do so with such 20/20 clarity, humility and now even mirth is simply amazing to me, and inspiring.
When people like me escape the Cult of Statism, there is no such support group. Those still in the Cult don’t “disconnect” from us the way Scientologists are required to from apostates, they just regard us as fringe loonies. We’re the nut-jobs, daring to question the necessity of endless foreign wars, endless taxation, endless regulation and endless government interference into our lives – and that’s all we’re doing is questioning them. That’s the one major difference between the Cult of Statism and the Church of Scientology: how critics are handled.
In the Church, if you criticize it, or complain that you didn’t achieve the gains from going up the Bridge that you were told you’d get, you’re kicked out and then “declared” a “suppressive person” and an enemy of the church; there’s no refund, but you don’t have to pay any more. If you criticize the State, you’re derided as a looney, but forced at gunpoint to keep funding the State that the Cult serves. Sadly, whereas one can free their mind, body and property from the Church of Scientology, we can only ever free our minds from the Cult of Statism; the State still controls our bodies and steals our property.
Having the ability to now, however, to look back and laugh at the absurd things I used to believe in regarding the “good and necessary” work of the State much the way Mike and Leah joke about “Xenu” and “Douglas DC-8 Space Planes,” makes being a “fringe looney” totally worth the hassle.
Maybe, in the future, Leah and company’s work will pay off and the Church of Scientology will cease to exist. If enough of us free our minds, at least, from the Cult of Statism, might we someday see the end of the State? Probably not in my lifetime. But, if A&E brings Leah back for a third season, I know I’ll be setting my DVR to record all of it.
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