The Vanishing Collectors

On Tuesday, October 9,1990, a meeting of the city council of Sedona, Arizona convened at 7:00 p.m.  After the meeting was called to order and the Pledge of Allegiance recited, a brief moment of silence was observed.  Next the roll was taken and the floor opened for public comment.  Second to approach the microphone was a clean-cut young gentleman who introduced himself as Ben Porterfield and informed the gathering that he had submitted an application for the position of City Magistrate.  According to the minutes of the meeting, Porterfield “advised he wanted to give the Council an opportunity to match a face with a resume and that he would be available after the meeting for questions.”

As Ben Porterfield took his seat for the duration of the meeting, it is not known if he questioned the decision to use an alias on his application.  Perhaps a man who aspires to administer the law for a municipality ought to do so under his real name.  This might hurt his chances of getting the job, he possibly thought, especially if they do a background check which was certain to be the case.  Also, he may have wondered if managing a trailer park counted as relevant experience for issuing warrants and reviewing matters of law.  No matter, Ben Porterfield, or whatever the young man’s name was, had a number of ongoing projects in various stages of development.  Whether or not he got the City Magistrate position was of little consequence.  

Unsurprisingly, Ben Porterfield was passed over for the position of City Magistrate of Sedona, Arizona.  Months later, however, some who attended the city council meeting that night may have wished they’d taken a greater interest in the man at the microphone with the face and the resume.  Because Ben Porterfield was eventually going to become the subject of an arrest warrant, possibly issued by the newly appointed Sedona City Magistrate, and the target of a manhunt for absconding with an indeterminate quantity of Sedona residents’ precious bodily fluids.

Just a few months after the meeting, as the year drew to a close, concerned parents began presenting their teenage offspring at local medical clinics for examinations.  At the same time, the Sedona Police Department started receiving reports of a mysterious couple who were offering area teenagers ten dollars to draw a vial of their blood.  It took authorities a few weeks, but eventually they were able to zero in on a mobile home at the Windsong Trailer Park, located along U.S. 89A in west Sedona.  The trailer belonged to Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield, managers of the park.

Sedona Police Chief Bob Irish was at a loss to explain why these two individuals were collecting the blood samples.  “The possibilities of it are only limited by your imagination.  At this point, it is one of the most bizarre situations I have ever seen.”  At the time, it was thought that at least a dozen teens had allowed some of their blood to be extracted for money.  According to accounts, the teens were taken into a bathroom where a syringe was used to extract a sample of their blood.  “It looked okay to me,” said a 15-year-old who lived next door to the couple.  “They would unwrap each needle and put a brace on your arm and have you fill out a questionnaire.  You had to be 14 or over, and you could only give three times.  But the questions were really weird, like, ‘Did you use Clearasil…Are you on drugs or alcohol?’”  The young woman went on to reveal that her boyfriend and his friends had sold their blood numerous times to the couple and that the pair had taken more than 100 samples from at least 30 teen-agers.  Interviews with additional teens revealed the couple posed as representatives of the government and that the blood was needed for the testing of lasers.

Blood wasn’t the only thing the strange couple was collecting.  According to authorities, the pair had been collecting rent checks from Windsong residents and depositing them into their personal account.  This led to an arrest warrant being issued for a Benjamin and Sarah Birdsong on charges of child abuse, embezzlement, impersonating medical personnel, aggravated assault and operating a clinical laboratory without a license.  Apparently the age requirement and the questionnaire subjects were asked to fill out were insufficient to secure licensing for the couple’s blood drawing enterprise.  Investigators were also not entirely clear regarding the true identity of the individuals.  Chief Irish thought the couple’s names were possibly aliases and that they were known to have used the names Millett and Stewart when they lived in the Phoenix area.

On Monday, January 7, 1991, Sedona Police and an official from the Arizona Department of Health Services served a search warrant at the Camp Verde home of Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield.  The couple were not present at the time of the raid and had been last seen at the residence the previous Friday.  Items taken from the home by police included two handguns, two shotguns, a Mac-10 submachine gun with silencer, an IBM computer, a printer and computer storage disks – the standard items necessary to get a teen blood-buying business up and running.  Also taken in the raid were a book of satanic rituals, the Satanic Bible by Anton Lavey, photocopies, posters and banners containing occult logos and satanic imagery.  Satanism quickly moved to the top of the list of possible motives for the strange couple’s blood-buying activities.  “It seems to be the forerunner as far as theories,” said Chief Irish.  The chief further speculated the blood might be used as part of an “occult-type” ceremony, admitting that, “The worst-case scenario would be drinking it (the blood).” 

Meanwhile the search for the pair continued in earnest.  The couple owned two vehicles, a 1968 Ford pickup and a 1974 Volvo station wagon, that were now missing from the couple’s Camp Verde home.  Acting on a tip, authorities closed in on a motel in Mesa, Arizona, but missed capturing the pair by two hours.  Later, authorities admitted they could not confirm that the motel occupants were the fugitive couple.  Investigators now believed the actual identity of the pair to be Charles E. Stewart, 32, and Sharon M. Smythe, 23, who went by the aliases Benjamin and Sarah Porterfield while living in Sedona.  A number of town residents had encountered the couple, describing them as friendly but very private.  None interviewed were able to provide any worthwhile leads.  An 11-year-old neighbor of the Porterfield’s described how he was well treated by the couple who would buy parts for his bicycle and take him on camping trips.  He did admit, however, that they had some strange habits.  “I never saw any of that devil stuff.  But there was always weird, loud music in the middle of the night.  All the time, they would go camping in Boynton Canyon and then we would hear about animals that were sacrificed up there.”

Investigators continued to pore through materials seized from the couple’s home.  A computer specialist was called in to examine the contents of the Porterfield’s home computer.  At one point, the expert thought the couple may have booby-trapped the device to erase its contents if tampered with.  Eventually, however, the computer revealed little useful information about the Porterfield’s or their secret government research into blood lasers.  Occult experts brought in to examine the satanic materials concluded they showed nothing to indicate active occult involvement.  The elusive couple, who seemed to become more mysterious with every bit of information discovered about them, had seemingly vanished with potentially over a hundred vials of blood extracted from the town’s teen-age population, all while abandoning a cache of weapons and a computer.  Perhaps Chief Irish was wishing he’d introduced himself to Ben Porterfield when he had a chance.  “I remember at a City Council meeting, he went up to the microphone and said, ‘I’m Benjamin Porterfield, and I’m available to meet with you.’  He looked like a clean-cut, all-American kid,” Irish recounted.         

It should be noted that many residents and visitors to Sedona claim the city rests on a large energy vortex composed of a number of smaller vortices, the most significant of which is the Boynton Canyon vortex.  These swirling concentrations of energy are linked with any number of strange phenomena.  Perhaps a mystery couple collecting blood samples from local teens is a fairly mundane occurrence in an area where unexplained healing powers, strange spirits, ghostly hauntings, UFO activity, and Interdimensional Portals are part and parcel of the landscape.  And if two mysterious travelers conducting highly sensitive scientific research should suddenly be called to deliver their collection of samples back to their obscure corner of space and time, and if the pair of strangers should suddenly vanish through the interdimensional doorway from which they possibly emerged, perhaps it should come as no great surprise.

Biden campaign team to promote success of “Hunternomics”

White House officials today embarked on a nationwide television and social media blitz to promote the runaway success of their “Hunternomics” economic miracle.  The effort is designed to remind Americans ahead of next year’s elections of how unquestionably awesome their lives have become under the leadership of the Biden family.  

Administration officials expect the American media to snort up the news like a newly discovered line of blow and eagerly regurgitate the message with all the coherence and self-importance of a rambling cokehead.  

A hallmark of the Hunternomics miracle was the transfer of trillions to the richest corporations and individuals, while small businesses and families were crushed under the weight of Covid restrictions.  Average Americans watched their savings decrease under the pressure of high prices and the worst inflation in 40 years. 

“Hunternomics extorted trillions out of the Fed, a portion of which was doled out to struggling Americans who generously turned around and passed that money onto the richest Americans in the form of inflated prices.  That’s a win, win in our book,” said White House economic advisers Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey in a press release.   

“Hunternomics is real,” President Biden reminded a roomful of union reps at a luncheon in Washington.  “My boy is single handedly pressuring foreign companies to return millions right back here to the U.S.A.  Now how about showing your appreciation by casting your vote for the big guy.”

Less robot than robot

In a new study researchers claim AI generated social media text appears more human than actual human text.  Participants in the study were tasked with looking at tweets and identifying whether the tweet was composed by a human or AI.  The study found subjects were more likely to ascribe human origins to AI tweets than those written by actual humans.

“The most surprising discovery was that participants often perceived information produced by AI as more likely to come from a human, more often than information produced by an actual person. This suggests that AI can convince you of being a real person more than a real person can convince you of being a real person, which is a fascinating side finding of our study,” said Federico Germani of the University of Zurich, one of the authors of the study.    

Considering that Twitter has long been associated with humanity at its finest and most authentic, the study’s findings are startling.  Nowhere does every facet of human potential and excellence shine more brightly than on Twitter with users pouring every available shred of their being and complexity into the 280 characters that form a single tweet.  Indeed, it would seem that on a digital platform it is possible for AI models like ChatGPT to appear more human than humans.

However, while Federico Germani is stroking himself over his team’s finding that “AI can convince you of being a real person more than a real person can convince you of being a real person,” perhaps they are misinterpreting the results of their little experiment.  Maybe it’s the case that humans don’t operate all that well in a digital space.  Maybe it’s the digital realm itself that limits and compromises the human capacity to fully realize and reveal itself, enabling robots to plausibly mimic humans.  Maybe it’s just the case that humans suck at being robots.

The internet in general and social media in particular funnel users into producing a low resolution representation of themselves.  In many respects these platforms constrain human potential, dumbing down and fitting it into a neat little avatar, which is easy for AI to mimic and even manipulate.  Of course the tech gods, governments and corporate controllers would like us to migrate our lives as much as possible onto these platforms.  There in the digital realm humans are more or less just a shadow of the self that exists in the material realm, a shadow that can be more easily controlled by artificial intelligence, less robot than robot.

Another lost guru Part 4

MK-Ultra   

Adding to the barrage of allegations of drug use and drug trafficking coming from multiple sources aimed at the Church of Naturalism, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported the California State Franchise Tax Board was in the midst of a year-long investigation of the church at the time of the slayings.  The probe investigated allegations asserting drug customers wrote off their cocaine buys from the church as “donations” and subsequently claimed the transactions as tax deductions.  Anonymous sources alleged the cocaine buyers were able to purchase the drugs by check or credit card.  Reportedly, the church took both BankAmericard and Visa.  “They had one of those stamp-type machines like you see in a service station.  And they had all kinds of vouchers,” a source told the Herald Examiner.  Church secretary, Susan Shore, who claimed to be the sole surviving member of the Church of Naturalism, denied the allegations, claiming she had no knowledge of the tax board investigation.

People with stories to tell about the Church of Naturalism’s involvement in drug trafficking were seemingly coming out of the woodwork.  Missing from the narrative, however, were all the individuals they supposedly counseled, helped kick drug habits and trained for gainful employment.  Where were the recovering rock musicians, movie stars and sports celebrities with tales of how George Peters rescued them from the throes of drug addiction?  According to the Herald Examiner, their tax deductible donations, made in exchange for private “treatment,” involved “instruction in the use rather than abuse” of various drugs.  Indeed, one attendee at Church of Naturalism revelries told the Herald Examiner, “People spilled more coke on their shoes at one of George’s parties than they put up their noses anywhere else.”  

While surviving member Susan Shore attempted to put to rest rumors of drug use and narcotics trafficking, she dropped a bombshell of her own in the November 14, 1982 edition of the Herald Examiner.  In the article, Shore revealed that at the time of George Peters’ death the two had been working on a film about his involvement in the secret CIA program MK-Ultra.  “I was writing the story of his life prior to the founding of the church, when he was supposedly one of the people with whom the CIA was doing a lot of experimentation with drugs….The story involves espionage and experimentation with drugs to see how far you could make something go,”  Shore told the Herald Examiner.  “We were going to make a film that was going to expose what the government was doing back in the early 1960s.”

According to the Herald Examiner, Peters claimed he was a subject of LSD experiments while a member of the Navy in 1957.  He volunteered for these experiments and participated in two additional ones after he was discharged.  However, the newspaper conceded it could not verify if he ever served in the Navy.  

At least one of the experiments Peters described to his friends involved a program to abduct transients, drug them unconscious and deposit them at a new location.  The subject was then reprogrammed by Peters or another operative and given a new identity and life history, the Herald Examiner said.  

The Herald Examiner also reported that Peters had spoken of his connection to the MK-Ultra program during a July 1981 symposium at the University of California Santa Cruz where he delivered a talk titled The Social and Cultural Implications of Consciousness Research. 

As insane as the Herald Examiner’s account of Peters’ alleged involvement in secret experiments sounds, it pretty closely tracks with an experience he relates to his one-time ghostwriter, Lionel Rolfe, and also resembles the approach he would come to adopt as an LSD guru.  In Fat Man on the Left:  Four Decades in the Underground, Rolfe mentions that Peters had “an ‘enlightenment experience’ at the hands of the CIA” prior to reinventing himself as a guru.  Rolfe recounts a bizarre story Peters told him of an encounter with a mysterious man named David, who claimed to be an alien, but actually worked for the CIA.  David intended to use Peters as a subject in the CIA’s MK-Ultra program.  After drugging Peters, David relentlessly stalks him, trying to get Peters to give up the most intimate and closely held secrets of his life.  During these games of ‘Truth or Consequences,’ “Peters had to tell his life story over and over again, and if things didn’t mesh in a psychological profile, David would hassle him until he got what he wanted.”  Eventually, Peters confesses to David about a homosexual experience he had in high school.  The admission brought him great peace and caused him to have “a classic enlightenment experience.”

According to Peters’ former wife, Katherine Peters, it was this experience that led him to form the Church of Naturalism.  “‘George was so lonely and insecure when I met him that he felt he could only keep people around by buying their friendship,’” Katherine Peters told the Herald Examiner.  “All that changed, she said, when he recounted a homosexual affair at the age of 13 during a bizarre game of Truth or Consequences.”  

After the admission, Peters was transformed.  “I thought I could take over the world,” Peters wrote following the Truth or Consequences game.  “I thought I had the power and I knew what was right.  Then I thought of Hitler and remembered he thought he was right too….  So I thought of the sentence: ‘I will help anyone at anytime as long as it hurts no other.’  By this method, I could leave the world a better place than I had found it.”  This became the gospel of the Church of Naturalism.

Whether or not there was any truth to Peters’ account of being pursued by the shadowy David and forced to endure the Truth or Consequences game as a form of mind control programming, the story resembles in many respects the approach he would come to use in his life as a guru.  Additionally, whether or not he plucked transients off the streets at the direction of the CIA and gave them a new identity and purpose, it could be argued that as a guru this is more or less what he did.  The newspaper accounts at the time of his death could not confirm whether he had made any of his CIA claims prior to the MK-Ultra revelations in 1977, nor could they confirm whether he served in the Navy as he claimed.  However, a closer examination of the transformation of George Fitzpatrick to George Peters reveals that he almost certainly served in the Navy, and that the Navy did indeed conduct drug experiments.  Moreover, George Peters’ claims of being the subject of these experiments predates the MK-Ultra revelations by more than a decade.

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground by Lionel Rolfe  

Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande

West Wing Cocaine Cubby longtime gathering spot for DC power brokers

Facts continue to emerge regarding the discovery of cocaine in the West Wing of the White House.  Investigators are now saying that their investigation, which they initially thought would take two weeks, should be wrapped up by Monday, and it is unlikely a culprit will be found.  That’s good news for the American public who were hoping this incident could be quickly put to bed without a satisfactory resolution.

Additionally, former White House and executive branch staffers have come forward to provide some background on the location where the cocaine was discovered.  Historically, the West Wing entrance area between the foyer and the lower-level lobby has been referred to by those in-the-know as the West Wing Cocaine Cubby.  It’s a place where high-powered executive branch staffers gather to blow off a little steam.

Established during the Nixon administration, the Cocaine Cubby became a popular refuge for White House staffers at times of national crisis and during high-stakes negotiations.  It was temporarily discontinued when President Carter learned of its existence, but reopened under Reagan when the administration was rolling in blow and using the drug as currency to negotiate illicit arms deals.  

It is said that, back in the 70’s, Henry Kissinger brokered a number of international agreements out of the Cocaine Cubby.  The disco atmosphere, mixed drinks and hedonistic pleasures offered by the Cubby frequently caused the most stubborn diplomats to soften their hardline positions. 

Now that the Cocaine Cubby’s existence has been revealed to the wider public, West Wing watchers say its future is uncertain.  “This could be curtains for the Cocaine Cubby,” said one White House insider.

Retired 70’s cop brought in to “fingertip” identify White House cocaine

New information is emerging regarding the cocaine discovered in a White House storage closet Sunday.  Sources close to the situation are reporting that the Secret Service called in a retired 1970’s detective to perform a fingertip taste analysis on a “suspicious substance.”  

After licking his pinky, dipping it into the mysterious white powder and touching it to his tongue, the detective was instantly able to identify the substance as cocaine.

“Yeah, that’s booger sugar,” the detective told a perplexed group of Secret Service agents.  “Blow.  Cocaine.  That’s the good shit too.  Medical grade.  That ain’t no street coke.”  

According to officials, further analysis confirmed the substance to be cocaine hydrochloride, which is commonly used as a local anesthetic.

Discovery of the substance prompted officials to immediately evacuate the White House.  However, once the cocaine was determined to be of the “non-hazardous” variety, White House employees were allowed to resume their usual activities.

Investigators initially speculated that a White House tour group may have been responsible for bringing the substance into the building.  The 70’s detective immediately poured cold water on that theory.

“Oh sure, Mr. and Mrs. Wilson from Dayton, Ohio just decided to duck into a storage closet for a quick bump in the middle of their White House tour.  How the hell would they know about a secret room to pack their nose?” the detective barked at investigators.  “This involves somebody who works or lives here.  Check everybody who’s had access to the building for the last 72 hours.  That coke didn’t taste too fresh.  It could’ve been there for days.”  

The 70’s detective is part of a new program to repurpose retired narcotics investigators who are able to provide faster, more accurate and complete in-the-field information than drug sniffing dogs and expensive chemical tests.  This detective’s handling team refers to him as the Bad Lieutenant.  

“We’re looking for someone with an intimate knowledge of every nook and cranny of the White House.  Not to mention someone brazen enough to ride the old white train in the most heavily secured building in the country.  Now ask yourself, who would have the clangers to do something like that?  Hell, they were probably having sex in there, humping like a couple of jackrabbits,” the 70’s detective speculated.

Fauci Hears A Hu

Despite recent revelations identifying three scientists at the Wuhan Lab as the first suspected cases of Covid-19, Dr. Anthony Fauci is standing by his public assertions that U.S. funded gain of function research was not performed at the Wuhan Lab and that the Covid-19 virus was the result of zoonotic spillover.

“Information provided by U.S. intelligence reports indicates that the coronavirus outbreak was indeed zoonotic in origin and that the culprit was a wild Hu.  I believe officials are now saying that the wild Hu became loose inside the Wuhan Lab and that it infected other scientists, which eventually led to the massive outbreak infecting billions across the globe,” Fauci said in a statement.     

In the past Fauci and other public health officials have pointed to pangolins and racoon dogs as possible sources of the coronavirus outbreak.  The recent information identifying Wuhan scientist Ben Hu as patient zero has Fauci feeling vindicated.

“From the start we have maintained that no gain of function research was performed at the Wuhan Lab and that the virus was not man made.  Now that we know that this strange, exotic Hu creature was the cause of the pandemic, and that myself and my colleague, Dr. Francis Collins, were in no way responsible for a coverup relating to the origins of Covid-19, I think a huge apology is in order by Senator Rand Paul and others who have questioned our credibility and our reputations as scientists,” Fauci said.

Fauci further indicated that he is not done investigating Covid’s origins, and that he owes it to The Science to get to the bottom of this outbreak.    

“How this Hu creature came to be infected is anybody’s guess.  I’ve consulted with my colleague, Dr. Seuss, who has written a very good paper on this subject, but it is yet unclear what might have infected the Hu.  Perhaps a Sour Kangaroo or some other such exotic beast,” Fauci said.

Man still haunted by “unholy burrito”

A local man continues his recovery today after a frightening encounter Tuesday night with what he describes as an “unholy burrito.”  Still visibly shaken, the man recalled the incident for reporters.

“I’d just finished a workout.  I thought a carne asada burrito sounded good.  They asked me if I wanted red salsa.  I should have said no.  I should have turned and gotten the hell out of there!”

But he didn’t.  Instead, what followed was a night of merciless torment.  

“Like a fiend from hell, that burrito pursued me through the night.  It stalked me in my sleep and haunted my dreams.  Every time I began to doze off, that monstrous burrito would appear to mock and scorn me.  Sleep became an impossibility.”

After multiple visitations that frequently caused him to seek refuge in the lavatory, the man plucked up the courage to face down the unholy burrito.       

“Foul beast, I said, be gone!  I cast you back into the pit of hell from whence you came!  Back you go into the fire that cannot be quenched!”

Presently, calm returned to the man’s life.  Famished from the night’s adventure, he next set about securing a delicious plate of huevos rancheros.  

What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards the tortilla to be born?

Another lost guru Part 3

Supernaturalism                  

Within days, neighbors’ insistence that the Church of Naturalism was involved with drugs was validated by the revelation that four of its members were arrested on narcotics charges in June of 1981.  An L.A. County Sheriff’s raid of the church compound yielded two ounces of cocaine, 350 Quaaludes, 66.5 grams of maijuana, nearly a gram of hashish and $3200 in cash. As the Los Angeles Times reported, despite the large quantity of drugs confiscated, “all charges were subsequently dropped because the district attorney’s office said the investigators did not find the drugs on the individuals.”  

I’m no narcotics investigator, but this seems like a rather odd reason for not pursuing charges.  At the time of the raid, sheriff’s detectives must have held some suspicions regarding the occupants of that location, and surely would have acquired some evidence or information that led to the raid in the first place.  The presence of large quantities of drugs discovered at the location would surely have confirmed these suspicions.  It seems strange then that no one was subsequently charged.  How common is it that, after conducting a drug raid and finding the illicit contraband, no one is charged because the possessors of that contraband didn’t have it directly on their person?  This seems highly unusual.  However, as we will come to find out, this was a pattern for George Peters and the Church of Naturalism, as he was arrested for drugs and subsequently freed without charges on a number of occasions.

At this point, investigators still maintained that robbery remained the motive for the murders, while conceding that drugs may have been a factor.  “It appears to us the primary motive was robbery.  But, remember, a person  can rob for drugs too,” Hollywood Division homicide Detective Richard Kuster told reporters.  “It’s obvious they were involved in drug traffic in one form or the other.”

Strange that a group that billed itself as offering drug counseling services, indeed that was purported to have counseled addicted rock musicians, also may have been involved in drug trafficking.  One ex-employee of the church told the Los Angeles Times that he had purchased marijuana from the group and later warned an employment agency not to place applicants with the church.  The owner of the agency confirmed the man’s account.  “At one point we heard something about that place we didn’t like and canceled the job orders,” the owner said.  One of the church’s subsidiaries, Mentor Media, subsequently tried to recruit through the agency but was also denied.    

Additional odd facts about the group began to emerge.  According to the Los Angeles Times, author Nathaniel Lande wrote in a 1976 book, Mind Styles, Life Styles that the Church of Naturalism offered a three stage divinity training.  The first stage, called “group grope,” involved groups of 5-10 members living together, working and contributing 80% of their income to the church for “samaritan services.”  The second stage, labeled “rural setting,” required members to remove from society and spend an hour each day in hot tubs receiving massages.  According to the book, this stage causes members to “develop deep, honest personal relationships.”  The final stage is called the “Death Judgment Experience.”  Here the church member isolates in a black box for 40 days.  “During the experience, the person loses his self-concept and relives the events of his life,” Landes says.  The purpose “is that if you can gain sufficient strength and stamina to be yourself by isolating yourself totally, you can operate in society much more effectively.”

In 1998, Lionel Rolfe wrote extensively about his time working as George Peters’ ghostwriter in the memoir, Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground.  In the book, Rolfe describes a much stranger and darker version of George Peters and the Church of Naturalism than members and acquaintances revealed at the time of Peters’ death.  “Into his and his church’s philosophy, Peters had put a lot of thought – some genuinely humanistic, it seemed to me.  But he also had potentially evil ideas.  I believe he considered himself an enlightened human being who wanted to help others.  The trouble, the evil, the weirdness entered his philosophy with his belief that he had supernatural powers … .  George claimed he could glow in the dark.  He didn’t do it for me, but he did tell me the story of how Mr. X once walked into the room where he was meditating, and Peters was ‘glowing.’  Later I learned that Peters’ witness, Mr. X, would not directly contradict the story….  About this time I started getting concerned about being Peters’ ghostwriter.  The more I became familiar with his thinking, the more I found the notion of being his ghost ill-advised, if not plain dangerous.  Peters wanted me to undergo one of his sensory deprivation experiences so I would have greater knowledge of what I was writing about.  I declined the opportunity.”  Smart move.

At the time of Peter’s death, the Los Angeles Times reported on a Church of Naturalism document that alluded to Peters’ alleged supernatural powers.  According to the document, “Peters claimed he could read others’ thoughts and move objects through mind control,” the Times reported.  The newspaper made no mention of the guru’s ability to glow in the dark.

Despite George Peters’ apparent abilities to transcend the physical constraints of this world, he was also a man who enjoyed the finest comforts and pleasures the material world could offer.  Shocking to no one, the man who considered himself a messiah had expensive tastes and eschewed monogamy.  “To watch him sitting on the sectional bed-sofa that filled half of his large bedroom as he viewed the wall-size television set was to see how much he loved his toys, and his comforts.  It was a grand bed, one that could accommodate a dozen people at a time, and probably had,” Rolfe wrote. 

“George was a hedonist.  He liked sex….  At the time of our acquaintance, Peters didn’t appear to be heavily into drugs himself, although he certainly liked to smoke good dope.  What he really liked, and was obsessed by, were the good things in life.”

That a self-styled messianic guru surrounded himself with life’s finer material possessions, that he partook of mind-altering substances, that he enjoyed frequent sex and the occasional orgy, that he claimed magical powers and exerted a level of mind control over his followers was not shocking for 1982 and mostly lifted straight out of the How To Be A Successful Guru handbook.  (Note: George Peters literally taught a guru class.  More on that later.) But George Peters’ fascination with drugs stretched back at least as far as the mid-sixties and possibly earlier.  Because while George Peters was seemingly pushing forms of mind control on his followers, a week after his death, one of his followers, Susan Shore, revealed to the Los Angeles Herald Examiner that Peters himself had been the subject of CIA drug experiments dating back to the 1950’s.       

Sources:

The Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Herald Examiner

The San Francisco Examiner

The Chicago Tribune

Fat Man on the Left: Four Decades in the Underground by Lionel Rolfe  

Mind Styles, Life Styles by Nathaniel Lande

When your brain has taken too many wrong turns: pride and prejudice edition

Unless you just arrived by starship from the other side of the galaxy, then you undoubtedly know it’s pride month.  With all that’s taken place over the past few months, it’s hard to wrap one’s mind around what could shape up to be an exponential increase in pride and pride related activities.  It feels like the pride dial is already cranked up to eleven, but it’s surely about to go even higher.

What should be a surprise to no one is that some people are beginning to experience some pride fatigue and are even pushing back a little.  By pushing back, they’re mostly just refusing to participate while a few are also voicing their opposition.  This insufficient embrace of pre-pride pride has resulted in more than a few pairs of rainbow underpants working themselves into a tightly knotted bunch.  The following excerpt appears in USA Today under the headline “The right-wing is waging war on all things Pride. We can’t let them win.”

“In the past, the right often ignored Pride Month, and Pride events. Or just mocked them. That’s no longer the case. Now, we’re seeing a war on all things Pride. That word, war, is not used lightly. It’s accurate.

“It’s a war they’re playing for keeps. They like the viciousness of it. The idea of it. The power of it. The pain it causes. They like that it terrifies companies and people alike. There is no goal other than to bash the LGBTQ community and force companies to capitulate. If you don’t believe me, just look around.

“First, it was Bud Light after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney promoted a March Madness contest. Then it was Target that, well, I’m still not exactly sure what Target did other than sell some rainbow-themed merch.

“Now, it’s Chick-fil-A. And, again, I’m not sure exactly why the right is targeting them. It has something to do with the hiring of a DEI officer. One that got the job…in 2021. Not to mention the company is one of the most culturally right-wing in the nation.

“Then of course there was the attack on the Dodgers for inviting (then disinviting and subsequently re-inviting) the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a civil rights group. The right has spent months going after drag queens and are attempting to ban trans athletes.”  

What all these examples have in common is that consumers simply refused to buy what these companies were selling, which is a bunch of values with a product attached to it.  If you’re a Bud Light drinker, you couldn’t just buy a can of beer.  You had to also promote the likeness of a ridiculous, cartoonish social media clown with your purchase.  Target has been selling rainbow-themed merch forever.  This year they decided to set up a pride shrine and then were shocked when families turned down the opportunity to adorn themselves in coordinated pride wear.  Nobody’s boycotting Chick-fil-A.  Along with gold, Chick-fil-A is what you find in the pot at the end of the rainbow.  To Mike Freeman, the author of the USA Today piece, what is the appropriate amount of pride expenditures families should engage in before they are no longer guilty of bigotry?

As for the Unwavering Adherents of Unceasing Narcissism, if you want to honor a group of satanic clowns with their own night at the old ball park, go right ahead.  But are you really shocked when a large segment of the public takes offense and declines to support or participate in its mockery of Catholics and the Christian faith?  Is that what pride month is all about?