The Cult of Beauty part 1
The Cult of Beauty:
Part one
Lately, I’ve watched documentaries on cults. There have been several on YouTube and Bitchute. Documentaries on The People’s Temple, Children of God, Order of the Solar Temple and most recently NX1VM.
Cults hold an ominous fascination. In my thinking, I can’t imagine why one would surrender their mind to another? Who would give up facts for a fiction spun by someone no matter how charming?
If I look at the profile of people who join cults, I might have fit in, if it weren’t for what my father declared about me in frustration. “What do you get when you raise your children to think for themselves? Independent kids!”
My father said this after he had asked me, in October of 1972, if I had made any decision in the upcoming presidential election. He wasn’t asking me who I was voting for, just if I had made a decision. I declared, “I’m not voting for Nixon.”
This was to be my first presidential election in which I could vote. Richard M. Nixon (R) was running against George R. McGovern (D). It was Nixon’s second term and he was up for re-election. But by my view, his administration was embroiled in all sorts of hushed up criminal activities.
As my father was a diehard Republican he about blew his top. He said I shouldn’t believe everything in the papers. This whole Watergate break-in thing was a non-issue. That Woodward and Bernstein were a bunch of cub reporters trying to impress by blowing things out of proportion.
In June of 1972 there was a break-in at the Watergate Hotel. Five burglars were caught hiding bugs and cameras in the Democratic National Convention Headquarters. Turned out one of the burglars was James McCord, an employee of The Committee to Re-Elect the President, fondly known as CREEP. (What more to you need to know? The committee labeled itself creep?) That seemed shady to me.
And Watergate was only one of the many nefarious scandals within the Nixon Administration. If you want to learn about the deviant activity of Spiro Agnew, Nixon’s Vice-President, listen to the podcast Bagman. It gives new meaning to the quote “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
As I said, it wasn’t just Watergate, I had seen Martha Mitchell, the beautiful charming southern belle wife of Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, on television say that “Mr. President,” (Nixon), “is trying to make my husband the fall guy.”
As I watched that clip, I believed her because she looked too frightened to be lying. Soon after that spot was aired on television, Martha was in her apartment in New York City and phoned a close friend. While they talked, the friend heard Martha scream, “Get out. Leave me alone!” She heard a tussle, suddenly, the phone cut off.
The friend was worried and tried to reach Martha. But the phone to her apartment was dead. She called the front desk only to be told by the doorman that Mrs. Mitchell was indisposed and unable to talk.
The ‘official’ report was that Martha had had a drinking problem and was taken to a hospital for round the clock care. Only through the dogged determination of her close friend, Martha was found upstate New York. Visiting her, she saw the bruises on her face and arms.
It took four years for the truth to be revealed. Martha had been attacked, beaten, drugged and taken to a sanitarium to be guarded 24/7. In an interview with David Frost, Nixon said that there wouldn’t have been a Watergate if it weren’t for Martha Mitchell. She was a distraction to her husband John and he didn’t do his job to protect the presidency.
Nixon was saying, John Mitchell should have protected Nixon, fallen on the sword so to speak. Not withstanding Mitchell was the Attorney General, his job was to protect and serve the American people, not Nixon’s private guard dog.
Nixon passed the buck even to the end. Some men never learn character, integrity and grace.
Martha Mitchell was a whistleblower and paid the price of speaking truth to power.
So what does this have to do with cults? Everything.
More next week