Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars,
the best way would be to start his own religion”
L.Ron Hubbard 

I’ve been feeling a little like reporter John Sweeney myself lately, and only today did something like this to a neighbor of mine, someone whose blithe inhumanity needed a good smackdown. Maybe the BBC should hire me, as I definitely scored more hits than this poor, hapless Brit.  

To be fair, he’d just sat through a video designed to destabilize people; to be fair to the Scientologist production crew, it’s obviously quite effective. But before they had a chance to move on to the “love bombing” phase of the experiment, the subject returned to the clutches of his profession and started asking questions.

Here is the full, just-under-a-minute rant when he snaps and goes apeshit on Tommy Davis, the blocker droid that L.Ron‘s minions sent to deal with him. Listen to the bot as he flawlessly repeats the same line for the entire duration of the verbal assault; it’s like the dilithium crystals got scratched and they’re skipping. THAT, my friends, is the truly scary part.

The rant is parenthesized by background reports from the BBC that explain, among other things, that prior to his outburst the reporter had been stalked for several days by Scientology operatives, and had just endured a 19-minute video designed to show that the Holocaust was the fault of psychiatry; this video included helpful scenes such as children getting needles in their eyes and other such light fare to set the tone.

One thing I’ll say for them; the Scientologists, for all that they’re psychiatry naysayers, understand psychology very, very well indeed.

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