Quick Hitts

Note: This is a longish post written for ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. It probably won’t interest anyone else.

There are three phases to escaping Jehovah’s Witnesses. The first happens while you’re still in the cult but having doubts, doubts that are accompanied by the fear of what will happen if you leave and are suddenly cut off from all your family and friends.

Phase two is when you leave, either abruptly or with a carefully planned fade. You are now an ex-JW, working on clearing your head of a lifetime of fear and bullshit designed to leave you an emotional cripple. This phase usually takes 3-5 years for born-ins, less for those who converted as adults. During that time you define yourself as an ex-JW, which colors everything.

The final phase is being an ex-ex-JW, where it simply doesn’t matter much any longer. You don’t think about it very often. It’s something in your past that you’ve put behind you as you continue to build your life in the real world.

But many people never reach the ex-ex phase. I have a theory about why they don’t, and would like to suggest a solution that might solve their problem.

I offer my own experiences as an example.

I escaped when I was about twenty. It was a difficult decision I took a long time making. When I did, used their “two or three witnesses” doctrine against them, so they couldn’t disfellowship me.

My whole family was in deep, but because I hadn’t been disfellowshipped they were still allowed to associate with me.

I spent a year unemployed, in a ratty apartment, surrounded by as many books as I could carry from the library, books that covered all kinds of subjects. If anything interested me even a little I took books out and learned about it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was deprograming myself.

I got a job, fell in love, and worked on building a life. My girlfriend, Nona, and I occasionally visited my sister and her new JW husband, and my father and his new JW wife. (My mom, who was also a JW, died just before I escaped.) We all got along well. We simply avoided subjects like politics and R-rated movies.

When I went to tell my father that Nona and I were engaged, he had something to tell me first. There was a New Light, and they had been informed that people who were dissociated, like me, had to be shunned as if we had been disfellowshipped. I told him about our engagement, and said it would be a shame he’d miss the wedding.

This upset Nona more than it upset me. She’s always been very close to her family and just couldn’t understand how mine could be so hateful. It bothered me, of course, but not as much, as it wasn’t entirely unexpected.

Life went on. We got married, and eventually decided we wanted kids. Soon we were expecting twins.

It was a Monday night. We were scheduled for our first Lamaze class on Wednesday. Nona was a little more than six months pregnant. Her water broke, and we rushed to the hospital.

She gave birth to our twin daughters the following night, just before midnight. (They missed being born on different days by one minute.) Jill weighed about three pounds. Emily was a little over two. They were smaller than most of the dolls in a toy store.

We were scared, the kind of scared that leaves you numb. Would they survive? Would they be OK if they did? We visited them every day in the baby intensive care units, where they were kept in incubators, getting oxygen and food through tubes. The joy of being parents was mixed with the endless worry over them.

And then my family showed up. My father and stepmother, his mother (my grandmother, a really nasty piece of work) my sister, and her husband all came to the hospital en masse, all smiles and sweetness and light, volunteering to help and pitch in and be part of our lives again. Well, not our lives. The lives of Nona and the kids. They still refused to speak to me. They even avoided looking in my direction.

Now the stress of having very premature babies was compounded by the stress they added with their nonsense. I put up with it for about two weeks, which was about a week and a half longer than I should have, before I decided to put an end to it.

Nona made some pretty blue and lace dresses for the girls, so they would look as cute as possible, and we invited all of my family to the Infant ICU. They doted over the kids and held them a little and made all the cutesy little comments and noises people always make around babies. I let them enjoy themselves for an hour or so, and then I dropped the hammer.

I told them this was the last time they would ever see my daughters. The stress they were adding to the situation was unbearable and we wouldn’t put up with it any longer. We were done with them.

Shortly afterward I felt like a weight I hadn’t been aware of was lifted from my shoulders. It was almost a physical sensation.

I had Reverse Disfellowshipped them, although it would be decades before I heard that term.

I knew that if we’d allowed them into our lives the stress would never end. While growing up I’d seen several instances of JW relatives “building a fire under the kids” to suck parents back into the cult. Sometimes it worked. Although I was sure I was impervious to such attempts, I couldn’t allow them to put my family through that. I wanted them to have normal lives.

And so we did. We celebrated birthdays and holidays and did all the fun things normal people do while raising a family. The absence of my JW family was more than made up for by the attention my kids got from other relatives. They spent time with the few non-JW relatives on my side of the family and a lot of time with Nona’s parents and relatives. They never knew any of the JWs, and their lives were better for it. As for me, I seldom thought about my JW past – it was over and no longer mattered much. I was an ex-ex, and life was good.

Somewhere along the way I’d thought a novel about a Jehovah’s Witness who becomes a vampire would be funny, but none existed, so I had to write it myself. Blood Witness took a long time to write, and even longer to edit and polish into something worth reading. I shopped it around to some agents, but none of them were even remotely interested, so it sat on a hard drive for years, having only been read by a few friends.

In the mid-nineties podcasting was invented and I got involved by creating my own show. Shortly afterward authors started doing podcasts of their books – podiobooks. After enjoying a few I decided to dig out Blood Witness and record it.

I had been active on-line since the days of dial-up BBSs. I was aware of ex-JW web sites and forums but never spent any time on them. It was great that people could get help and support from other escapees, but as an ex-ex they didn’t interest me.

Blood Witness changed all that. I went on to several sites to promote the podiobook. Not wanting to be a spammer, before posting about the book I got involved in some of the conversations. And I got sucked in. There were so many people out there, hurting so badly, that I couldn’t resist trying to help.

I quickly discovered that people who have been out for a while are divided into two camps. There are those who are happy and who have moved on with their lives, mostly unencumbered by their past. But there are others who have been out for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty or more years, who are still haunted and obsessed by it.

The reason, in almost every case, is that they are still in contact with their JW family, especially their parents. Just as they start feeling good about themselves their parents pull some passive-aggressive crap that rips open old wounds and makes them miserable all over again.

They let their kids visit their JW parents, always wary of the indoctrination they know grandma and grandpa will try to sneak into every conversation. They walk on eggshells, hoping their kids won’t mention a birthday party or a Christmas present. They are miserable.

This, my friends, is why I’m such a huge fan of Reverse Disfellowhiping.

One of the recipes for a happy life is learning to identify toxic people, realize they’re making your life suck, and get rid of them. Few people are more toxic than JW relatives whose only goal is to pull you back into the cult by making you as miserable as possible as often as they can. If you have kids, they will use them as weapons in their holy quest.

Some of you are thinking “But they’re family!”

So? If someone in your family was a molester, or physically violent, or horribly abusive, would you still stay in touch with them? Would you let your kids see them? Is the emotional abuse they’re heaping on you and your family really all that different?

Some of you have been able to maintain a healthy relationship with your parents – they’re not hardcore JWs, will treat you well and respect the boundaries you set. That’s rare, but if you’re fortunate enough to be in that situation, great.

But for most of us the only way to be completely free is to get away from them. Reverse Disfellowship them. Tell them you’re done with them, completely and forever. Then block their e-mails, ignore their phone calls and refuse to have anything at all to do with them, ever. It may be the second hardest thing you’ve ever done. (The first, of course, was leaving the cult.) It will hurt at first, but the pain will fade and you can become truly free – an ex-ex-JW, someone who has put their miserable past behind them and is now moving forward and enjoying their life.

Despite earning world-wide scorn for his plan to outlaw large sodas in New York City, little mayor Bloomberg evidently plans on going through with it. (P. J. O’Rourke said he wants to outlaw any drink that’s taller than he is.) And although thinking people are appalled, there are plenty of slobbering sycophants cheering him on.

The NYC Department of Health (aka DOH!) is also making noise about restricting popcorn and milkshakes and large specialty coffee drinks. Nannies never sleep – there’s always some new decision they insist on making for you.

There is only one way to stop any kind of tyrant – someone has to stand up, look them in the eye, and say, “No.” In this case they need to say, “No, I will not stop serving my customers what they want. I will not pay any fine for serving my customers. Now get out of here, and don’t come back again.”

If one or two or three business owners do this it will have no effect. They’ll be crushed by Big Brother and held up as an example of why everyone else should comply. But if a majority, or even a sizable minority, join forces they could do it successfully, as long as they are willing to use the powerful weapon they have at their disposal.

These restrictions will be enforced by the DOH who has the power to shut down a business that refuses to comply. The businesses need to respond by refusing to shut down. Period. This will lead to the DOH resorting to violence: calling in the police to enforce their draconian policies. And this is where the restaurant owners can take the upper hand: They must declare that any establishment subjected to such force will, forever, refuse to serve police officers. Bad Cop = No Donut.

They should also refuse to serve DOH employees.

Chains need to do this city wide. Call the cops on a McDonald’s in Brooklyn, and suddenly all MickyDees are off limits to the police in all five boroughs. Sic the police on one Starbucks, and suddenly every Starbucks in NYC refuses to serve cops.

The cliché of cops in donut shops is based on a very simple reality – people who work on-the-go make regular stops for coffee and snacks. I’ve worked on the road, and a refreshing pause makes the difference between getting through the day alert and competent and dragging ass and doing a lousy job. It’s not an treat or a luxury – you need to recharge your batteries to keep going.

Imagine the effect if shops all over the city suddenly refused to serve police officers. Cops would be angry at first, but then their thirst (and perhaps their common sense) would lead them back down very quickly and refuse to harass more shop owners.

It’s unlikely this will happen, because most corporations are too gutless to do it. But if they grow a pair they could stop this right here, right now. And they better, because if they don’t they’ll soon find nearly every item on their menu is under attack from the diminutive nanny mayor and his DOH.

It usually requires some time and research to determine the crazy/evil level of any particular cult, and most people don’t care enough to put in the effort. Fortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses just made it a lot easier to assess their crazy/evil level with the release of two cheesy videos designed to indoctrinate their children.

They both feature Caleb, a kid who is tortured by his parents. They were  originally posted on YouTube, but the Watchtower, Bible &  Tract Society forced them to take it down.  However, you can now watch them on the JW’s own site.

In the first video, “Obey Your Parents,” Mommy does the housekeeping. Of course. And she does it on her hands and knees, probably because she can’t afford a mop. A little background info might be helpful here. JWs are strongly discouraged (almost forbidden) to seek higher education, because when someone grows a bullshit meter they leave the cult. As a result most of them have menial jobs. The most common businesses run by entrepreneurial JWs are window washing and commercial floor cleaning, which can be started cheaply and be run without much brain power.

Kids track dirt in the house. It’s part of being a kid. A good parent will hand the kid a mop and say “clean up your mess.” A bad parent, like Caleb’s dad, uses it as an opportunity to browbeat the kid and make him feel like crap. And yes, many JW women are so emotionally crippled that they will break down and cry at the slightest provocation.

When Dad says, “That was a lot of work, right?” Caleb should have said, “Gee dad, it would have been easier if you had used a sponge instead of your bare hands. Or if you’d saved up for a mop.” But no, Caleb just bows his head and gets more indoctrination. Poor kid, I know just how he felt. Been there, put up with that.

Next we see Caleb playing alone, again, which is sadly appropriate. (Anyone who is not a JW is considered “worldly” and a bad influence, so JW kids have very few friends.) Mom is obviously disgusted that her son is being a kid and calls him to “family worship” with a stern command to first pick up his toys. (When I was being raised in the cult it was called “Family Bible Study.” It consists of studying Witness propaganda in excruciating detail.) Then comes the most entertaining and informative part of the video. We learn that JW homes are so poorly built, and in such dangerously unstable neighborhoods, that an adult slipping on a toy can case an earthquake and destroy most of what’s in the house, including the stuffed bear made of incredibly flammable gun cotton. Perhaps if daddy had gone to college he could have afforded to get his family a nicer, safer place, stocked with less dangerous toys.

Caleb picks up his toys while mommy changes into a skirt for their “family worship.” (God forbid she should be comfortable in her own house.) Then she kisses him, not for doing his job, not for helping around the house, not for being considerate, but for obeying.

The primary rule in this or any other cult is “Obey!” Don’t think, don’t question, just “Obey!”

The second video, “Obey Jehovah,” reveals even more about the JW cult.

Is mom happy her lonely kid finally made a friend?  Hell no. She uses it as another opportunity to browbeat and indoctrinate him. If Caleb were older and more knowledgeable the conversation could have gone like this:

Mom: “Magic is bad. Jehovah hates it.”

Caleb: “I know Mom. Except for turning Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt and tunning Aaron’s rod into a snake and making it rain frogs and blood and parting the Red Sea and making a donkey speak and knocking down the walls of Jericho and stopping earth’s rotation and saving Daniel in the lion’s den and Jona in the belly of the fish and Jesus curing the blind and the lame and the lepers and turning water into wine and walking on water and raising Lazarus from the dead and then being resurrected himself then floating up to heaven, and a hundred other things I left out, Jehovah hates magic.”

Mom would have smacked him hard enough to break her own hand, but it would have been worth it.

If Mom wasn’t a complete bitch she could have at least let Caleb return the gift to his friend, but no, that wouldn’t be devastating enough – she makes him throw it away.

Posters and insta-memes of Sparlock are popping up all over Facebook, ex-JW forums and other ex-JW online communities. He even has his own Facebook fan page. We’ll have to wait to see if this spills over into the general public and becomes a true Internet meme. It is so bad, so completely appalling, that it just might.

Ex-cult members often warn people about the group they escaped from. Their stories can be interesting or tedious, but most folks have heard it all before so they pay scant attention. It’s far more effective when a cult does it themselves by inadvertently showing everyone just how awful it is to be sequestered in their group.

Few things are as satisfying as watching evil people shoot themselves in the foot. In public. With a shotgun.  Followed by a blowtorch.  I wonder if they have any idea how much damage they’ve caused themselves.  Damn, it’s fun to watch.

We’re going to take a vote on what we’ll have for dinner.

Your first choice is a giant, steaming plate of dog turds.

Your second choice is a different giant steaming plate of dog turds.

As Americans, you are encouraged to debate before voting. You can point out that one stack leans a bit more to the left while the other leans a bit more to the right.  You can argue about the origin and history of each plate. You can debate which one has a better consistency. You can offer points and counter points about which steaming stack is the least disgusting. Your debate can be polite or nasty or anywhere in between.

There is also a third plate you can vote for. It contains a thick juicy steak, nicely grilled, a perfectly baked potato and some vegetables you can push around the plate a bit.

But know for a fact that no matter how you vote, you’re going to get one of the turd plates, because that’s how most voters will cast their ballot. The steak dinner has no chance of winning the election. None. After the election you will be served a plate of turds.

Most people will insist that voting for the steak is a wasted vote. They will even complain that voting for the steak will lead to everyone being served the wrong turd plate.

But if enough people vote for the steak, that steak, or a similar one, will be available for the next round of voting, and maybe it will win that election. If not, maybe it will be chosen the next time, or the time after that and eventually, finally, you’ll get that steak dinner.

Maybe.

Choose carefully, and know that the only wasted vote is one cast for a plate you don’t like. Picking one pile of turds over the other won’t change anything, ever. Picking the steak won’t change anything today, but it will help the steak stay on the ballot for the next vote.

Or you can hold your nose and vote for one of the turd plates. Your choice.

Yesterday the local newspaper, The Times Union, printed my letter to the editor. They subjected it to some slightly clumsy editing. They mucked up a couple sentences, added a pair of spurious quotation marks and changed my signature “for the childreeeeeeeen” phrase to the less interesting “for the children.” But they didn’t alter the essence of it. (I’m guessing the amount of time they spend editing such letters can be measured in minutes.) I was delighted they published it.

But if they hadn’t and I responded by screaming, “They CENSORED me!” and “They don’t want you to hear the TRUTH!” you’d think I was an idiot.

You’d be right.

This is exactly what happened with a TED talk about taxing the rich, given by entrepreneur Nick Hanauer. TED didn’t release it because because it was dumb, poorly presented and partisan. The outraged author manufactured a controversy, screaming censorship, and lots of dumb bloggers and newspaper columnists took the bait and helped his tantrum spread.

A half dozen of my Facebook friends joined the fray. They posted links to articles with titles that included: “Nick Hanauer’s TED Talk On Income Inequality Deemed Too ‘Political’ For Site,” “Too controversial: Why TED won’t post Nick Hanauer’s talk about taxing the rich,” “The ‘Tax the Rich’ Talk TED Deemed ‘Too Political’ to Post” and “The TED talk TED doesn’t want you to hear.”

I try not to visit TED unless I’ve got at least an hour, because their talks are so enthralling I am compelled to watch another, then another, then another until I look at the clock and say “damn, I’m late.” Their feature talks are inspiring, thought provoking and wildly interesting. I came away from one of them thinking fungus was just about the most interesting thing in the world. Seriously. (I got over it.) In the context of TED, Hanauer’s presentation was embarrassingly bad.

He starts out with the incredibly trite, “people used to think the earth was the center of the universe” bit. Really? That’s the best you can do? Then he claims that people who create jobs…don’t really create jobs. Sorry, that’s Just Plain Dumb.

He comes across as a lefty who’s embarrassed by his wealth and success and is trying to salve his conscience. He’s not completely wrong about everything he said. He just didn’t offer any of the insights that TED is famous for.

The curator of the TED web site explained all of that very clearly. They decided it simply wasn’t good enough. Nick’s whining about that would be akin to me whining about the Times Union ignoring my letter to the editor.

But he didn’t just whine. He created a fake controversy which took in a lot of gullible people who, had they thought about it for more than thirty seconds, or researched it for more than sixty, would have known better. They all need to recalibrate their bullshit meters.

BTW, here’s the mushroom guy. Compare the quality of his talk, on fungus, fer FSMsake, with the one by Mr. Lamo. (Warning: Do not click that link unless you’ve got an hour to spare, because after this 18 minute presentation you’re going to go to another and another…) This is the quality that TED requires before getting on their site.

Free clue for anyone who makes it to TED’s stage: If they didn’t select your presentation for the TED site, come up with a better one. Don’t whine to the world. Don’t manufacture a fake controversy. Yes, it will get you more attention in the short run, but in the long run it will simply highlight the weakness of your arguments, the triteness of your presentation, and the childishness of your personality. If TED doesn’t think it’s worth watching, they’re probably right.

We stopped SOPA/PIPA, a bill that would have broken the internet, with a huge effort that included shutting down major sites and minor ones (like this one), creating an uproar that congress was afraid to ignore. But we know it was only a temporary victory and some new version if it will be back with a new name, probably with even more onerous restrictions. And if we beat that one, there will be another, and another, and another, until it becomes law.

TestPac was formed on Reddit to make the victory permanent by sending a message to every member of congress: Screw with the internet and you will lose your cushy job.

Here’s the plan, and how you can be an important part of it.

Help Wipe That Smarmy Smile Off His Face

Lamar Smith was the author and primary cheerleader of SOPA. He’s been in congress since 1983. If wins the Republican primary he’ll almost certainly get his seat back for yet another term. TestPac’s goal is to defeat him in the primary. He’s running against two other people. TestPac isn’t endorsing either of them, we’re just working on defeating Lamar.

Imagine the reaction of the rest of congress if we succeed. This powerful member of congress, thought to be a permanent fixture, gets smacked to the pavement by people from all over the country working to defeat him because he tried to screw with the internet. It will chill every congress weasel to the bone. It will make their blackened shriveled little hearts quiver in fear. It would send shivers up their spines if they had any. Whenever one of them proposes something that messes with the internet they will be quietly reminded by their fellow weasels, “Remember what the internet did to Lamar.”

We’ve only got a couple of weeks until the primary, and this kind of thing takes money. Lots of money. Got lots of money? Me neither. But you’ve got some money you can afford to donate. You spend around $50 a month for internet access. Spend another $15 or $25, just once, to keep it open and free. If you honestly can’t afford that, give $10, or even $5.

You don’t get many chances to exercise this kind of leverage. If we can defeat this one guy, just this one, it will send ripples, hell it will send a tsunami, through congress. Be a part of it. Don’t think about it, don’t hem and haw and intend to do it when you get around to it and forget it until it’s too late. Do it now. Right now. Right here.

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