Maui tragedy fans the flames of conspiranoia

It should come as no surprise to anyone who is even marginally in tune with contemporary culture that the tragic wildfires on the Hawaiian island of Maui have sparked an explosive round of conspiracy narratives by -- in no particular order of significance -- (1) climate change deniers; (2) anti-government keyboard warriors; (3) conspicuous contrarians who, like teenagers rebelling against Mom and Dad, automatically reject anything reported by the "mainstream" or "legacy" media; and (4) random worshipers at the Universal Church of Conspiranoia. Many if not most of these folks reside quite comfortably in all four groups.

You've no doubt heard some variation on the saying, "Never let a good crisis go to waste," an aphorism variously attributed originally to Winston Churchill, Niccolo Machiavelli, and several others. Today's cynics like to haul out that saying and brandish it like a weapon in the service of blasting pretty much any contemporary person or group (usually political) whose opinions or actions, in response to the crisis du jour, they oppose. (And many like to put the saying into practice themselves; witness the barrage of criticisms, most of them politically motivated, of President Biden regarding his administration's responses to the Maui disaster.)

In any event, while the identity of the individual who coined the phrase is a matter that will probably never be settled, what is certain is that the conspiranoid crowd will never, ever let a crisis such as a natural disaster or other tragic event go to waste. The moment the news breaks, the hysteria is flying around social media and blogs and chat forums.

DEWs and dont's
Some experts who have weighed in about the Maui disaster have indicated that extreme weather, driven by human-induced climate change, has contributed to the fires -- if not outright causing them, then making them far more severe than they might have ordinarily been. Others have said pish-posh to that, claiming instead that decades of poor land management and declining agriculture are to blame. I think it's reasonable to speculate that it's not an either-or situation and is very likely a combination of those factors. (Which is congruent with most credible analyses I've seen so far of the Maui fires.)

But that's not good enough for the conspiranoids, many of whom are stalwart climate change deniers and will reflexively argue against any explanation that even remotely suggests climate change. One of their pet narratives is that the fires were deliberately set though government use of Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs). And these folks are more than willing to share photographic "evidence," even if some of those photos are bogus.

This just raises the question of why the big bad gummit would be doing such a thing to the innocent residents of Maui. Apparently it's all part of a plot to turn Maui into a "smart island," and/or to transform the city of Lahaina -- which has been devastated -- into a "15-minute city." From Vice.com, August 15, 2023:

For the Maui wildfires, the conspiracy theorists have added a new twist to their claims, asserting baselessly that the fires were purposely started to fulfill the World Economic Forum’s goal of creating a smart island on Maui or a 15-minute city in Lahaina, depending on which conspiracy theorist you listen to.

Some social media users pointed to a conference that took place on Maui in January, where scientists discussed the idea of 15-minute cities—an urban planning concept where all amenities would be available within a 15-minute walk or bike ride.

While the claims about the government seeking to create a smart island or turn the fire-razed city of Lahaina into a 15-minute city are new, the idea that laser weapon systems developed by the government have been used to start the wildfires are nothing new, dating back to at least the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.

These claims merge two distinct conspiracy narratives: a deep distrust of governments, and claims that undermine the role of climate change in the dramatic increase in the number of wildfires raging across North America in recent years.

And, as noted above, the conspiranoids don't care about facts, and they'll share photographic or video "evidence" for their claims, even if that "evidence" is totally made up. Also from the Vice article:

On X, where much of the conspiracies have been spread, video claiming to show a “direct energy weapon” or DEW being fired in Maui was viewed 10 million times before a Community Note was added pointing out that the footage actually showed a transformer explosion in Chile earlier this year.

Another post on X showed what appeared to be a laser beam pointing at a burning church in Maui, but a review of the original image taken by an Associated Press photographer shows the image had been doctored. That post racked up 9 million views.

One claim made by the conspiracy-minded to reinforce their argument is that a "smart city conference" was held in Maui in January 2023, presumably in preparation for an attack later in the year. Another related claim is that the upcoming Hawaii Digital Government Summit, scheduled for September 25, 2023, will include the formulation of plans to make Maui the first "smart" island. Those claims have been debunked, but that has apparently done little to discourage the conspiranoids.

In a further attempt to validate their accusations, some of those embracing the DEWs narrative have shared links that offer valid information about the weapons, accompanying their posts with some comment such as, "See, Directed Energy Weapons are REAL!" But that's a straw-man argument, as nobody credible is arguing that these weapons are not real. The US government has been researching them for decades, spending billions of dollars on the research, but so far nobody has been able to get them out of the lab and into the battlefield (or onto Maui, as the case may be).

"That's what they WANT you to think," I can hear the conspiranoids and contrarians sniffing now. Unlike we the sheeple, they refuse to be placated.

One small book for Amazon, one giant leap to conclusions for the conspiranoids
The conspiracy buzz has only heightened with the publication of a "book" titled Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change, by someone (or something, if you lean towards the theory that it was AI-generated) going by the puckish pseudonym of "Dr. Miles Stones." (Milestones, get it?) So far the book has a one-star review average on Amazon, with some reviewers being indignant climate-change deniers who know beyond a doubt that this work is socialist propaganda. Nevertheless as I write this, Amazon lists it as the #1 bestseller under the category "Natural disasters."

Beyond their resistance to climate science, what has so many of the "netizens" up in arms is the fact that the book was generated so quickly, while the tragedy is still ongoing. To those folks, the work clearly had to have been prepared ahead of the (deliberately-set) fires. Typical of the responses I've seen to this book is a Facebook post where the poster asked:

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out four days after such a tragedy? Oh, the rulers.Guess what the angle is...

Who on Earth can write a book and get it out in four days? I think the answer is, pretty much anyone with an Amazon account and a valid payment method, due to something that is commonly called "technology." Currently this title is listed as being available in two formats: e-book (Kindle) and a paperback print version. Amazon’s well-oiled self-publishing machine allows for rapid publishing of an e-book, and print versions are print-on-demand, meaning that if there’s an order for a print copy, a copy will be printed and shipped. Even if there are no orders for the print book it will still be listed as an option if the author is willing to pay for that option. If the author of this book had been willing to spring for a hard bound print copy, that would have been listed as well.

And Amazon, of course, doesn’t care about the merits of a work. Even if it’s crap that was hammered out in a half hour and uploaded, as long as the writer also provides valid payment information to Amazon, a book is born.

Also worth noting is that, according to the product descriptions on Amazon, this particular title is a mere 44 pages if you print out the Kindle version, and only 86 pages in the actual print version. If you're a prolific or long-winded writer, writing that much in a day, or even a couple of hours, is NBD. It's also entirely possible that in creating this work, the author simply copied and pasted material he/she/it had already composed elsewhere since news of the disaster broke, and then cobbled it into something he/she/it could sell as a book, and then uploaded it to the big Amazon self-publishing machine. Or, as several folks have mentioned, AI could have been used to generate the content. These days you never know.

Is it exploitative to publish a book about a tragedy while it's still raging on? No doubt. But it doesn't take any paranoid conspiracy narrative to explain how this work could have gotten published so quickly.

Oprah did it! (Along with Bill Gates, Lady Gaga, et al.)
For various reasons, I'm not a big fan of Oprah Winfrey. But I'm not at all willing to believe, as some apparently do, that she was part of a conspiracy of "elites" who own property on Maui and were responsible for the fires, presumably in order to force indigenous people and other less fortunate folks to sell their properties. Nevertheless that's one of the other pet narratives that the conspiranoids are pushing. Their key "evidence" is their (false) claim that all of the properties belonging to the celebs has remained mysteriously undamaged, as reported on, among other sources, news.com.au (August 15, 2023):

Twitter user Matt Wallace, who has 1.2 million followers on the social media platform now officially known as X, claimed on Sunday that “locals in Maui were refusing to sell their land to the elites”.

“The part of the island mainly destroyed by the fires was prime area right next to lavish mega-mansions,” he wrote in the post which has been viewed nearly 12 million times. “Now, a lot of those locals are forced to sell their land and many tragically died in the flames.”

He claimed “Oprah Winfrey has a luxury mansion in Maui — it’s completely fine”, repeating the statement for Jeff Bezos, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith and Julia Roberts.

There have also been reports that investors have been calling victims who had to evacuate their land, with offers to buy that land. Now that is one claim that I'm willing to believe; unfortunately, these tragedies attract scummy opportunists. But the celeb-blaming? Just more conspiranoia fiction.

Into the fiery archives...
Of the various conspiracy narratives that are swirling around the Interwebs about the Maui fires, it's the celebrity-focused one that interests me the most, especially the suspicious harrumphing about homes of "the elite" mysteriously being untouched by the flames. That puts me in mind of a long-ago online conflagration ignited by none other than career huckster Joe Vitale, one of this blog's former favorite subjects, who years ago and apparently without irony took on the nickname "Mr. Fire."

Waaaay back in the autumn of 2007, back in the daze when the crassly materialistic new-wage moviemercial The Secret was still the rage, Mr. Fire, one of the "stars" of that big hit, wrote a controversial blog post about the devastating San Diego wildfires. His post generated so much heat, so to speak, that not long afterward he scrubbed all of the critical comments to the post, and has since wiped that post, and a followup, from his archives altogether. Since his original writings are long gone, you'll just have to take my Whirled's word for it, starting with this October 26, 2007 post (see the first item, "How to avoid getting your house burned down").

If you don't feel like following that link, I'll just quote myself, and quote myself quoting Joe, right here.

There has been an incredible amount of pain, suffering, and loss of life and property on the Left Coast this past week or so, what with those pesky wildfires. But much of this could possibly have been avoided if only all of the residents had been Law Of Attraction hustledorks. How do I know? I know because it’s all there in black and white on the blog of Mr. Fire himself. Apparently if you have a fire in your soul and are focused on that, your house won’t burn down. To me this sort of contradicts the "like attracts like" idea so popular with LOA-ers, but then again, it does fit in nicely with that whole concept of "fighting fire with fire." Or even with "like cures like," which is the basis of the well-respected science of homeopathy.

Mr. Fire tells us that while 45 homes burned near the home of Secret star John Asshat Assaraf, John’s home is safe! And so are the home and office of another Secret star, James Earl Ray…oops, I mean James ARTHUR Ray. (James EARL Ray is deceased, and so, because of him, is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Sorry; I keep getting my James Rays mixed up.) Furthermore, the manager of yet another Secret star, Lisa "Hairdo" Nichols also escaped the fires unscathed.

"Instead of wondering why they attracted a fire," writes Mr. Fire, "it might be wiser to wonder how they didn’t attract a fire." Mr. Fire says he has spent the last day or so with Lisa and John, who, he says, "are not focused on fires. They are focused on the fire in their soul." What sets them apart from others, apparently, is that they "spend their time working, making a difference, writing, speaking, and changing lives." Same goes with Dr. John Demartini, yet another Secret star and a friend of Joe’s for more than 20 years. Like the others, Dr. Demartini lives a life of passion and purpose.

"Fires," says Mr. Fire, "don’t stop people like this."

Given the content of his post, and in the context of Joe's many other declarations about the magic of the "Law of Attraction," it's hardly a shocker that the message most people took from Joe's words was that these Secret stars -- who were of course experts in the Law of Attraction -- were somehow able to lasso said law and keep it from damaging their homes. And lots of folks called Joe on that.

In an indignant and defensive followup post, which I wrote about in my own followup (but which, like the original Mr. Fire post, is long gone), Joe said that his post had been a sort of Rorschach test for his readers. He essentially declared that if people had a problem with his original post, that was purely a result of their own bias/limited vision/spiritual flaws. And he also explained that he had deleted most of the comments to that original post because too many of them contained "personal attacks, insults, wild claims, and dark negativity."

In retrospect, the old online battles over The Secret and the ridiculous hype by flopportunists such as Mr. Fire seem like such innocent times. Given the milieu of "alternative facts" and formerly-fringe-but-now-mainstream conspiranoia narratives in which we now live, I'm almost nostalgic for the good old daze when the ludicrousness of The Secret, and the foibles of its cast of hustledorks, were the most pressing issues on this Whirled.

Addendum, August 23, 2023: The other day I was discussing the Maui wildfires with a good friend who said she was sure that the rethuglicans would find a way to blame President Biden for the disaster (or for making it worse). I added that they would probably blame "wokeness" too. Both my friend's and my predictions were no-brainers, of course; Biden had already been catching flak from the reich, and it seems that the reich blame wokeness for virtually every bad thing that happens these days. Regarding the latter, on August 16, 2023 The New Republic ran a piece about -- yes, far-reich figures blaming the wildfires on wokeness. Or at least, they're accusing wokeness, specifically DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideas and policies of being responsible for a five-hour delay in diverting water to firefighters in Lahaina.

As Hawaii reels from devastating wildfires and considers how to rebuild, far-right figures are… blaming wokeness for the whole thing.

The conspiracy theory essentially goes like this: An Obama-backed Hawaii official delayed the diversion of water to firefighters during the wildfires in Maui, because that official is a native Hawaiian who respects how water is used...

...“[W]e’re learning that the official who delayed the approval is an Obama Foundation ‘Asia Pacific Leader’ & a climate activist,” [GOP presidential candidate Vivek ] Ramaswamy tweeted. He’s a “climate activist who believes water should be ‘revered’ first and foremost. The DEI agenda is literally costing people their lives.” 

Ramaswamy and his fellow fascists based their entire blame-DEI narrative on the fact that in 2022, as a member of a panel on sustainability, the official in question, M. Kaleo Manuel, had made comments about how native Hawaiians consider water to be one of the "earthly manifestations of God." Somehow this got twisted into Manuel declaring that water itself is more important than human lives. Just take a look at some of the recent comments on the YouTube video linked to in this paragraph. The same types of comments are littering Twitter/X too, with reich-wing hysterics blaming DEI and liberals and so forth for the fact that little children were burned alive. They're calling for imprisonment or even the death penalty for Mr. Manuel and other scapegoats.

As is very often the case, the real story is much more nuanced than reich-wing pearl clutchers tell it. Battles over water rights have been raging in Maui for generations, but access to water for firefighting is a priority even among the "woke." And in this case, there's no clear evidence that it would have made any difference even if the request for diversion had not been delayed for five hours. Other factors, such as melted pipes and powerless pumps, not to mention winds that were too strong to drop water from helicopters, made reservoir levels moot.

A series of blunders and miscommunications probably did hamper the firefighting efforts overall, costing people their lives. But to blame "wokeness" for this is either stupid or cynical or both. But that's the American reich for you.

Note: If you want to help the victims of the Maui fires, here is a list of resources.

Related on this Whirled:

• August 31, 2017: Harvey is bringing out the conspiranoids -- Wildfires are far from the only conspiranoid attractants; hurricanes bring 'em out too. In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey devastated my former hometown of Houston, Texas, as well as numerous smaller cities in southeast Texas. Even other states were affected. For their part, the conspiranoids claimed that Hurricane Harvey was engineered as a "weather terrorism" weapon, and they provided all sorts of "evidence" to prove it.
• August 9, 2019: Conspiranoid claptrap & manipulative manifestos cloud narrative about El Paso & Dayton shootings -- Mass shootings are also magnets for conspiranoids, and the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings, which took place in early August 2019, were no exception. From conspiracy-porn crapitalists like Alex Jones and Mike Adams to republican "leaders" including then-president Trump, the American reich was out in force with a variety of conspiracy narratives and targeted scapegoating. Many of them blamed "antifa" and/or "the Deep State" for the shootings, while accusing Democrats/liberals/gun safety advocates of exploiting or even engineering the tragedies in efforts to advance a nefarious gun-control agenda.
• September 11, 2011: Farces of nature -- Back in 2011, during a terrible drought and a plague of Texas wildfires, Ron and I experienced firsthand the awful fear that happens when fires hit much too close to home. We were fortunate that the fire didn't reach our house, but we and our multiple fur babies did have to evacuate, and it was a very stressful time. Many of the people around us fared much worse. Meanwhile, Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale was working his McSpirituality magick on his blog and other forums, offering spiritual explanations for the fires that were raging across Texas. He also invited his readers to help him stop the wildfires, the way they had previously helped him "stop" a couple of hurricanes (or so he claimed), using only the awesome power of their collective minds. Of note, he has so far not made a similar public invitation to help stop the Maui wildfires -- at least not that I've seen; perhaps he issued the invitation on more exclusive forums, having learned his lesson from being so soundly ridiculed for previous such missives.

Kevin Trudeau: keeping a low profile since release from prison, but still grifting, begging, cult-building (and yes, enabling fascism)

 

Earlier this month, someone wrote to this blog asking me if I'd seen a recent-ish video of formerly imprisoned and newly released serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie on this Whirled. Here's the link to the vid in question, which shows a July 16, 2022 interview on a show called "All Things Rex Worldwide," hosted by one Rex Sikes. Sikes, whom, I confess, I'd never heard of prior to the heads-up from my reader about this video, is self-billed as an "NLP Trainer and Authority on the Law of Attraction." (His Twitter handle is I'mRexcellent. Modest fellow.)

Rex may be an NLP trainer and an "authority" on the Law of Attraction, but his bread and butter, the area in which he truly appears to Rexcel, seems to be making videos of himself kissing up to far more successful Scamworld luminaries that people have actually heard of, such as mega-hustler "Dr." Joe Vitale, one of this blog's former favorite subjects. I say "former" because even I, who am so easily amused, get bored after a while. But clearly, Rex is not bored at all with Vitale. Quite the opposite: he seems utterly enamored.

He appears equally enamored with Kevin Trudeau, as you'll quickly see if you watch his interview with Katie. Here's that link again, but I warn you, as I often do with such offal offerings, that it will be time that you'll never get back, in this case, 1:20:52. Rex is in full-blown hero-worship mode on this one, beginning his intro by listing all of Katie's many "achievements" -- acclaimed best-selling author; worldwide media star; widely revered marketing genius; one of the foremost authorities on success and goal-setting and the Law of Attraction; and to top it off...

Today he is known as an enlightened spiritual leader, helping people attain a state of joy and happiness in addition to manifesting material success...

Rex fails to mention a few of Kevin's other major achievements, most notably: lifelong grifter who has scammed thousands of people out of millions of dollars; notorious liar; and several-times-convicted felon who recently completed a ten-year(ish) federal prison sentence.

The long conversation between Rex and Kev focuses mainly on "spiritual" stuff, in keeping with Kevin's efforts over the past few years to rebrand himself as "GuruKev," which I first wrote about back in December of 2019. It's also congruent with Kevin's apparent and reported longtime desire, and ongoing efforts, to become a true cult leader in the manner of the late L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the evil cult Scientology. I've mentioned that several times over the years, one of the more recent offerings being this March 2021 post, which links to previous Whirled posts on the topic.

In any case, I'm glad my anonymous commenter wrote to me about the video, which was also announced on a September 22, 2022 post on Katie's public Facebook page, The Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club. I hadn't posted about Trudeau in several months, in large part because I've been busy with other matters, such as concentrating on a very challenging book manuscript. Any energy I've had left over for blogging and social media engagement has been devoted more or less to political issues, particularly the very serious threats presented by the rise of fascism in various and insidious forms, in America and other parts of the world .

But I've certainly not forgotten Kevin Trudeau. For that matter, concerns about the rising tide of authoritarianism and fascism are not irrelevant to Trudeau and scads of other grifters who prey on gullible and unhappy people who are desperate not only for scapegoats, but for heroes. More about that momentarily.

We've detected a blockage in your social media pipeline
Anyone who still cares enough to follow the saga of Kevin Trudeau has probably noticed that he seems to be keeping a very low profile these days. This is likely because the terms of his release/probation dictate what he can and cannot do in order to avoid being thrown back in the clink. But he is still hustling, though in most cases making it appear that others are doing the hustling on his behalf while he occupies himself with humbly serving humanity. It's all in the service of lining Kevin's pockets so he can resume his formerly gaudy lifestyle as quickly as possible.

Trudeau has apparently been quite active on Telegram, that haven for scammers and far-right wingnuts, and no telling what all he's doing there. Sure, there's The Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club Channel, which is more or less publicly accessible, but he is reportedly on several other Telegram channels that aren't so accessible, as well as using deeply encrypted email services that are all but untouchable by US or any other authorities. I would assume that the judges who presided over both his criminal and civil cases are paying attention.

Previously, when I wanted to get an idea of what Trudeau was up to, I would check the aforementioned public Facebook page, The Official Kevin Trudeau Fan Club. That's a little more difficult now, though, because it appears that I have finally been thoroughly blocked from the page. It no longer shows up as an option for me in the Facebook search field, and when I click the link to the URL, I get a "content not available" message. I know that the site is still up there, and that the posts are still listed as "public," because I checked via another route. So it's still available to the public generally, just not my part of the public specifically.

I suppose that blocking me was the next logical step in the process of isolating the cult from the nefarious influence of what one faithful KT ally warned the fans is "that nasty woman" (according to another former KT ally, who told me as much on the phone a couple of years ago). Earlier this year the admins of the fan page blocked me from commenting or responding or doing anything but share posts from that page, but now it appears that I have been completely locked out. The blocking happened very recently, occurring only this month, which I thought was rather odd timing, as I hadn't even blogged about Fearless Leader since June 12. But maybe the admins are simply procrastinators.

Of course, they have every right to block anyone they want to block, and as I've noted previously, I can be rather annoying when trying to make or belabor a point, particularly points about scammers and grifters. But in this case, I suspect that something more than mere annoyance led to the blocking. I have to ask a largely rhetorical question I've asked before: what are Katie and the minions so afraid of?

Trudeau's fans (and Trudeau himself) are always talking about how brave and bold he is, how completely unafraid he is to face government tyranny and whatnot. But one little blogger, whose blog is read by almost no one... what threat am I? After all, I'm just one of those "rats in your head" that Kev has been warning the cult followers about for years. Or, to put it in other terms, I'm a "Suppressive Person."

Who, apparently, has to be suppressed.

(Right-wing) politix and Scamworld: more than ever, a match made in hell
Earlier in this post I mentioned a connection between Scamworld grifters such as Kevin Trudeau, and the rise of authoritarianism and fascism in America and other parts of the world. Notwithstanding the fact that Kevin has spent decades presenting himself as a fearless fighter for freedom and individuality, and against tyranny, his brand of hustle is actually taken from the propaganda playbooks of any number of historical and contemporary tyrants (and wannabe tyrants).

Over the years I have written many posts about the alliance of politics (mainly right-wing American politics) and Scamworld. In a September 2021 Whirled post titled Scamworld & politix: Eric Trump set to join alt-health/conspiranoid scammers in Nashville in October, one point I made was that the strengthening bond between alt-health hucksters and the American right is not only spreading misinformation that endangers public health, but is also endangering democracy. While Trudeau wasn't featured at the event discussed in this post, a couple of his alt-health/conspiracy-mongering/right-wing brothers-in-arms were, such as Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams.

Two of my original and most significant points of reference for the Scamworld/politix theme on this blog have been Kevin Trudeau and #NeverWasMyPresident Donald John Trump, for good reason. First off, the two have much in common, even down to a mutual disdain for "Mexicans" -- here's Trudeau, and here's Trump. As well, for years Trudeau expressed a fawning admiration for Trump, using that as a basis for unsuccessfully begging Trump to commute his sentence and pardon him.

All of which provided rich fodder for numerous blog posts. It wasn't long before I discovered that these posts had alienated a substantial base of my former readers who had been screwed to a greater or lesser degree by Trudeau's mega-scam the Global Information Network (GIN) and enthusiastically supported my endless critical posts about him -- but who turned out to be ardent Trump supporters, and were totally put off by my critical posts about Trump. This came out during the 2016 US presidential campaign, and I wrote about it in this October 2016 post, in which I pondered the curious fact that so many who had seen Trudeau's true colors seemed so blind to Trump's. I had come to realize that for many, their liberation from the KT/GIN delusion did not inoculate them against similar, or even worse, delusions.

It appears to me that these good ex-GINfolk simply cannot see that Donald J. Trump is an even worse -- and potentially more dangerous -- scammer than Trudeau ever could be (although granted, Trump and Trudeau have a few things in common). Though a few people have acknowledged that Trump is far from an ideal candidate, they insist that all of his shortcomings, wrongdoings, and deep character flaws pale in comparison to Clinton's alleged "life of crime."...

...None of this is really surprising, though. As my pal Salty Droid has both documented on his blog and has mentioned in private correspondence, quitting one manipulative scam or scammer doesn't cure one of the thinking pattern errors that got them sucked in in the first place. "Manipulation causes susceptibility to manipulation as a side effect," sez Salty. I know he's right, but I am still capable of being surprised by the phenomenon, especially when it occurs among folks whom I'd thought were friends, or at least allies.

But I digress. One of many examples, and a relatively recent one, of ruminations on the Trump-Trudeau connection, is a July 2021 post in which I compared Kevin's ridiculous narrative about the many sacrifices he had voluntarily and selflessly made in order to serve humanity; and the Trump crime family's equally ridiculous narrative about how they had voluntarily and selflessly sacrificed nearly everything in order to serve the American people. In both cases, the narratives owe their success and longevity to the support of various dodgy allies and a zealous fan base. I wrote:

None of these grifters could effectively spread their myths without the ready assistance of their respective armies of faithful enablers. Matter of fact, Trump and Trudeau share a significant fan base -- which is not surprising since the two inveterate hucksters have a lot in common.

And that brings me to a question that some may be pondering, and which I've actually been asked: why am I still going on and on about Kevin Trudeau after all these years? Isn't he kind of passe? Haven't I made the point, over and over, that he's a huckster? Can't we just move on? The simple answer to that has to do with the aforementioned point that Trudeau has so much in common with Trump, and that their respective and mutual fan bases are veering more and more towards existing in a universe of "alternative facts." In both cases, there's a big cult mentality going on. Trump is Trudeau, writ large, and while many of us may wish that both would just go away, that seems unlikely to happen any time soon. With Trudeau, the appeal to alt-reality may just mean that more people will get snookered out of their hard-earned money, to greater or lesser degrees. With Trump... well, as [the January 6, 2021] insurrection/day of rage demonstrated, those "alternative facts" -- and cult mentality -- could spell the death of American democracy.

Trump, unfortunately, is far from the only political figure threatening American democracy, as noted, among many other sources, in a July 2022 Brookings blog post.

One of the problems we have now is the rise of copycat candidates who parrot Trump’s moves and endorse his anti-democratic tactics. Possible presidential candidates Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley as well as dozens of congressional candidates spread the Big Lie about 2020 election fraud and some Republicans show a willingness to have electors chosen who do not respect the popular vote winner within particular states.

One of the worst things Trump has done is to show many other aspirants how to engage in power politics using unethical steps. Between his unorthodox behaviors challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 results and his continuing efforts to push Republicans in illiberal directions, he has become a role model for many candidates around the country. Rather than seeing Trump as a dangerous demagogue who threatens our democratic system, many Republican candidates are mimicking his tactics and pushing the country down the road towards illiberalism.

"Illiberalism?" Why mince words? Maybe a better word is "fascism." On the larger world stage, fascism and other forms of totalitarianism, both historical and contemporary, are built upon many of the same tactics used by the contemporary American right (or reich, as the case may be). Perhaps political philosopher and Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt's 1951 work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, is worth a revisit. From a September 2019 liberalarts.org.uk piece that discusses this work:

Fake news, people versus elected officials, trashing of democracy, ridicule of truth, relativism of values, nationalism with its love of loyalty and oaths and its aesthetic of self-sacrifice and violence, the hatred of internationalism and its humanist liberal values, accusations of international (Jewish) conspiracies, charismatic malevolent leaders shunning accountability and saying whatever would be popular one day, only to be reversed the next day, and supporters who don’t care at all about the behaviour of their leaders. These were fascisms then. Are they also fascisms now?

Spoiler alert: Yep.

Masses of people succumb to fascism, without realizing what is happening, due to a combination of factors, including gullibility, cynicism, dissatisfaction with their lives, a desire to find someone or something to blame for their unhappiness, and a longing for a hero.

And these are precisely the factors exploited by skillful hucksters such as Kevin Trudeau, whose longtime ticket to riches has been the scapegoating of an amorphous enemy he has repeatedly referred to as "They," while painting himself as the white knight who rushes in with the life-changing, life-saving information that "They" don't want you to know.

But Kevin Trudeau is no hero, no white knight. At the time of his sentencing in March of 2014, the sentencing judge, Ronald Guzman, noted that since at least the age of 25, Trudeau "has attempted to cheat others for his own personal gain." And prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo that Trudeau was...

...an unrepentant, untiring, and uncontrollable huckster who has defrauded the unsuspecting for 30 years. He is the type of person the Court should expect to defraud his fellow inmates while in custody, and to continue to commit fraud into old age. He appears capable of nothing else.

That just about says it all.

And Trump? Like Kevin, he has mastered the art of the neverending grift. Kevin is mainly doing it these days through his proxies, who are constantly begging for money on Kevin's behalf, using the false narrative (or outrageous lie, if you prefer) of Kevin as the self-sacrificing hero/martyr who has risked life and limb for all of us, despite the forces of evil that are out to get him. (Of course, Kevin is directing all of these propaganda campaigns, and very likely is writing a lot of the copy himself.) And Trump is currently doing it through his PACs, mainly in the form of relentless, aggressive fundraising emails that use pretty much the same false narrative (or outrageous lie, if you prefer).

And apparently that strategy is working, for both of these craven grifters.

But... fascism? Isn't that carrying things a bit too far?
Perhaps you're thinking that I'm being a bit histrionic (or hysterical), and that I exaggerate the threats to cherished freedoms posed by Trudeau and other scammers. Possibly you even think I'm overstating the threat of Trump and Trumpism. I'm not. Both Trumpism and "Trudeau-ism" feed into, and are fed by, many of the same base aspects of human nature, particularly the aforementioned need for scapegoats and the yearning for a hero.

And both Trumpism and Trudeau-ism rely -- and I can't state this often enough or forcefully enough -- upon the cult of personality: Kevin with the laughably transparent GuruKev shtick, among several other longer-standing ruses; and Trump with a Messiah-ish scam that has sucked in millions of gullibles. As progressive talk show host Thom Hartmann wrote in a September 23, 2022 opinion piece in Daily Kos:

Donald Trump has built a cult around himself. This is dangerous to America and dangerous to democracy.

Cults of personality in governance are broadly incompatible with democracy. They usually erupt in dictatorships where the Great Leader’s face and sayings are splashed all over public places. Think Mao’s China, Stalin’s USSR, Hitler’s Germany, Kim’s North Korea...

...Rational people know that messiahs don’t molest women and brag about it, don’t fleece people with a phony school who just want a college education, don’t encourage racial hatred, and don’t get crowds to try to overturn democracy and kill a policeman.

But Trump isn’t after the rational people. He’s a predator, and his prey are the psychologically and emotionally vulnerable, people crushed by 40 years of Reagan’s neoliberalism, now desperate for simple answers to complex problems.

We should have known when Trump said, in a Charles Manson moment, that he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and his followers would still support him.

Charismatic con men can make some people believe anything.

For example, nearly a third of all registered Republicans believe that top-level Democrats are running international child trafficking rings to torture and abuse kids before draining their blood...

Again, Trump is just Trudeau, writ large. Or, for anyone who needs to have the point hammered home, Trudeau is just Trump, writ smaller. Both are ruthlessly exploiting, and profiting from, the inherent irrationality of humans.

And ultimately, that's not good for freedom or democracy.

Marianne Williamson: still so wrong

Note: This post has been amended; see text in blue.
~ CC, August 1, 2019

Among reporters and pundits and people whose mouths are agape over the sh-t show that American politix has become, the consensus seems to be that McSpirituality/New-Wage guru Marianne Williamson, whose presidential run I lambasted earlier this month, did better than expected on last night's Democratic primary "debates." (I still can't seem to bring myself to use the word "debates" without quotation marks, given the insane number of candidates and the arbitrary formats for these gabfests. Even so, I think that my current favorite, Senator Elizabeth Warren, shone as the true star.)

I will concede that Williamson's performance during last night's lineup was stronger than her previous effort, mostly because the CNN mods called on her more. That performance arguably gave her presidential shampaign some momentum, leading some watchers and would-be influencers to declare her the unironic breakout star of last night's round (as opposed to being the ironic breakout star in the first round). And as with that previous round, her appearance led to a flurry of Googling; per GoogleTrends, she was the most-searched of the ten candidates during the debate in 49 of 50 states. (Montana was the lone exception; one wag suggested that it was because Montana Governor Steve Bullock was the number-one search in his own home state).

On stage, Williamson did seem to offer a couple of firm-ish policy ideas, controversial as some of them might be (e.g., her thoughts on reparations for descendants of African slaves), though invariably she would circle back to more abstract McSpirituality babble that sometimes didn't sound so different from fundamentalist hypoChristian talk about the devil -- such as when she warned of a "dark psychic force" in America. Despite this, or in some cases because of it, more than one of her utterances prompted some pretty loud and boisterous cheers from the live audience.

Not to mention the cheers on the Interwebs, as Williamson's online fans solidified her standing as the "orb queen" of the 2020 campaign. In the Washington Post, Avi Selk wrote:

In the few minutes she got to speak, Williamson did not disappoint the online fan club of professed occultists, liberal peaceniks and ironic memeophiles who have gathered around the 67-year-old New Age guru’s metaphysical campaign for the White House...

...Williamson has harnessed something from the body politic, whether love is the best term for it. Obsession might better describe her online community of devotees. Informally known as the “orb gang,” they celebrate Williamson’s mystical utterances with various levels of irony and earnestness — and a passion some of her rival Democrats might envy.

One person organizing what has been called "an occult task force" said that a group of 13 "chaos magicians," witches, and energy workers have been performing synchronized "gestures" to help their favorite candidate get airtime during the debates and throughout the race. Chaos magick, as Selk explains, is "a postmodern occult belief system that dates to the 1970s and bears similarities to the 'Course in Miracles' that Williamson preaches, insofar as both treat reality as a malleable thing that can be manipulated with ritualized thoughts."

Yup, sounds familiar. And Williamson does have quite the (religious) cult following, as evidenced by the fact that there are actually Marianne votive candles on the market. But let's put things in perspective. As Selk notes:

Magical thinking is not wholly alien to American politics. In “Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump,” the Blondie-bassist-turned-author Gary Lachman chronicles how a handful of Internet jokesters coalesced in 2015 to make ironic memes about Donald Trump somehow winning the presidency.

Yes, and as we've discussed previously on this blog, Trump has at least a small share of New-Wage/McSpirituality supporters, as well as wackadoodle fringe conspiranoid followers, who engage in their own kind of magical thinking.

But let's not forget "Christian" magical thinking, of which the very vocal majority of the magical thinkers working on behalf of Donald John Trump are practitioners. They're out there. Way out there. And Trump is busily pandering to them and sometimes even pretending to be one of them.

So Marianne Williamson is not alone in attracting a cult following of magical thinkers and random irrational folk. There's definitely a cult of Trump -- and even though I don't believe in fighting cults with cults (which Marianne and her army of airy-fairies appear to be trying to do), so far it appears that the Trump cult is the more dangerous and destructive force, because it is by and large a cult of hate, and it is the one now in power.

All of which raises a few disturbing questions about what would happen if it really were to come down to Trump versus Williamson -- with the irrational, hateful MAGAnoids and the fiercely self-righteous prayer warriors/theocraps/Christian Sharia law proponents on one side, and the irrational, love-and-light-infused "chaos magicians" and new-age ninnies on the other. First, where does that leave the rest of the citizens of the republic -- those of us who are clinging to what is left of our sanity and critical faculties, and who want to elect a qualified president (like Elizabeth Warren, for instance) who will try to deal with real-world problems in a realistic and practical way that will be inclusionary rather than exclusionary?

Secondly, might such a rivalry set a horrid precedent regarding Church/State separation? Even though I've previously said (and still think) that I find Williamson's brand of McSpirituality, and her willingness to thread it throughout her political rhetoric, to be marginally less offensive and concerning than the "Christian" theocrap-ic efforts to take over American politix, I am still a firm believer in secular politics.

And finally, would a Trump v Williamson ballot ultimately result in Trump's re-election? I'm afraid we already know the answer to that question. 

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Vox's Emily Stewart conceded that notwithstanding the new-agey babble, several of Williamson's statements last night made a lot of sense. Wrote Stewart:

One of her biggest moments was when she took aim at her fellow candidates on the issue of money in politics. “For politicians, including my fellow candidates who themselves have taken tens of thousands and, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars from these same corporate donors, to think that they now have the moral authority to say, ‘We’re going to take them on,’ I don’t think the Democratic Party should be surprised that so many Americans believe ‘yadda, yadda, yadda,’” she said, to applause.

Point taken. But if I may interject another plug, Elizabeth Warren is one of those who famously hasn't taken money from corrupt corporate donors either. Just saying.

Williamson also had some profound words last night about race and inequality, and unless you're totally in denial, you really can't argue with statements such as the one she made about the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, and the role that systemic racism has played in that horror. She said:

This is part of the dark underbelly of American society -- the racism, the bigotry...We need to say it like it is. It’s bigger than Flint. It’s all over this country. It’s particularly people of color. It’s particularly people who do not have the money to fight back, and if the Democrats don’t start saying it, then why would those people feel they’re there for us? And if those people don’t feel it, they won’t vote for us and Donald Trump will win.

Yet Williamson seemed to be veering dangerously close to Trump I-alone-can-fix-it territory when she declared, in her closing statement:

...I want a politics that speaks to the heart. Because the only way to fight — you keep talking about how we’re going to fight Donald Trump. You can’t fight dog whistles. You have to override. And the only way you can override them is with new voices, voices of energy that only come from the fact that America has been willing to live up to our own mistakes, atone for our own mistakes, make amends for our own mistakes, love each other, love our democracy, love future generations. Something emotional and psychological that will not be emerging from anything on this. It will emerge from something I’m the one who is qualified to bring forth.

Now, that's a steaming heap of abject McSpirituality narcissism if I ever smelt it. On the other hand, it could be argued that Herr Twitler's "politics" speaks to the heart -- the dark heart, that is. Which sort of gives credence to the declaration by some that Williamson is in a sense a "progressive" version of Trump. See all that stuff about cults, above.

And actually she may not even be all that "progressive," and certainly not a "leftist," according to at least one observer. Just ahead of part 1 of the second round of Dem "debates," Noah Berlatzky posted a critical piece about Williamson on NBC News' Think site, exploring an angle of the New-Agey "love and light" passive-aggressiveness and hypocrisy that I touched on in my previous post about Williamson's candidacy. Granted, Berlatzky went deeper into the issue than I did in my post, writing that Williamson's "supposedly empowering rhetoric masks a mean-spirited individualism." He explained:

Williamson, like conservative thinkers, often blames material problems on personal failures. Her ideology may sound airy and inoffensive, but it is ultimately one of neoliberal victim shaming. And it would lead to harmful policies if she were, by some miracle, to be elected to public office.

Over the 13 years that this Whirled has been spinning, I've written several times about the general theme of New-Age guilt myself, that is, about the New-Age "you create your own reality" mindset, which later evolved into the Law of Attraction dogma popularized by the atrocious New-Wage moviemercial The Secret. These seemingly empowering concepts have all too often been flipped, becoming just another excuse to blame people for their own misfortunes. Everyone from Secret creator Rhonda Byrne to Abraham-Hicks to Joe Vitale has jumped on that blame train. Marianne Williamson wasn't part of The Secret franchise, but much of her work is rooted in that same faux-empowerment mentality.

I do have a couple of minor quibbles with Berlatzky's piece. My husband Ron Kaye pointed out, and I agree with him, that Berlatzky's description of Williamson's current rhetoric as "hippie" is inaccurate. Historically the hippies were more benign than the calculating, crapitalistic manipulator that Williamson has become over the decades.

And I am not quite as sure as Berlatzky seems to be that the blame-the-vic/mean-spirited individualist mindset would translate directly to harmful policies in the unlikely event of a Williamson presidency, at least if the policy outlines on her Marianne 2020 web site are any indication. (Aside from various unscientific declarations on vaccines (on which she seems to have walked back a bit) and clinical depression and AIDS, she doesn't seem to be a complete enemy of science, at least where climate science is concerned. So in that regard she comes out ahead of the Trumpsters and that whole gang of GOP climate-crisis deniers. But then again, Trump et al. have set the science bar pretty low, so consider this faint praise.)

And where various other social and economic issues are concerned, ya never know. If she is like most of her fellow leaders in what my pal and blogging colleague Chris Locke of Mystic Bourgeoisie fame calls the "Spiritual Industrial Complex," a Williamson presidency would end up being as much of a disaster for the poor and struggling as the Trump reign is turning out to be. It would just have different slogans and music and caps.

This could all be moot, of course. After all, it's doubtful that Williamson's stage performances will really gain her much traction. Perhaps debate coach Todd Graham, whose piece on the CNN site I linked to earlier in this post (here it is again), and who gave Williamson a grade of D-minus for last night's performance, said it best:

The problem with Williamson in this debate is that for every legitimate criticism of our government she gave -- and there were several -- she lacked follow-up solutions. She derided the "political insider game and wonkiness and intellectual argument," without offering a clear picture of her practical alternative. And her closing statement was something about emotional and psychological gobbledygook that finished with a crescendo like she was singing the big finale of a Broadway musical.

Precisely.

And if you don't mind me citing myself, let's review the reasons that despite her claims in her closing statement about being uniquely qualified to beat Trump, Marianne Williamson is not the one to do it. Besides Trump himself, there are...

...[Trump's] base, too: a firewall of irrational, tenacious MAGA soldiers who stick with their leader through thick and thicker, through dumb and dumber. Included among these supporters are viciously hateful MRAs (men's rights activists) who fancy themselves "alpha males" and spend their social media lives raging against women, feminism, "SJWs" ("social justice warriors"), and all manner of "snowflakes."... Then there are the theocrats who still think new-age spirituality is the work of the devil. And of course there are the random racists, xenophobes, and garden-variety ignoranti who won't even consider anyone but Trump, because they see him as their only hope to save America from a host of real and imaginary (mostly imaginary) threats. The hatriarchy truly has Trump's back. And beyond Trump's base, there is a wide field of powerful Republicans who are bent on remaking America in their own image and that of their wealthy donors. That's a lot for one faux-accented, love-spouting guru to tackle, even if she is a bad-ass Jewish Texan.

However solid some of her ideas may be, Williamson's public persona and general flakiness, not to mention her utter lack of qualifications for the most powerful position in the world, overshadow all of those good ideas.

It's entirely possible that despite the spike from last night's gig, Marianne's momentum is slowing down, and that she won't be able to qualify for the September "debates" in her former hometown and mine, Houston. Regardless, she would be doing us all a favor if she would drop out of the race sooner rather than later. She can still continue to entertain us from the sidelines.

  Related on this Whirled:

• 5 July 2019: So wrong, Marianne -- Musings on Williamson's first debate performance in late June, on her history as a New-Wage icon, on the new-agey "love and light" mindset, and on why Marianne is the wrong choice to go up against Trump.
• 10 January, 2011: Snippets for a Monday afternoon (under "What's wrong with this (big) picture?") -- Marianne's weight loss book and the totally contrived marketing backstory that she cooked up with Oprah.

Off this Whirled but on a related planet:

• 12 August 2008: Brilliant, Gorgeous, Talented and Fabulous -- The above-mentioned Chris Locke at the Mystic B blog writes snarkily and cleverly about Marianne, A Course in Miracles (the source for her original cash cow), and more.

* * * * *

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Taking fakery to a new level: Kevin Trudeau misquotes fake Einstein quotation

Back in the glory daze of the 2006 New-Wage moviemercial The Secret, which dragged the decades-old New-Age concept of "creating your own reality" to new pseudo-scientific depths, the late Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein was paraded across the Internet in ways that most likely would have appalled him. He was repeatedly cited by "Law of Attraction" (LOA) hucksters as having scientifically validated their portrayal of "The Universe" as a mail-order catalogue or magickal genie, just waiting to grant all of our wishes if we only followed the advice of, and dropped our hard-earned money into the pockets of, any number of New-Wage con artists.

While all of this provided tons of blog fodder here and elsewhere on the Net and other media for years, you'd think it would all be old news by now, and only marginally relevant, particularly in light of all of the other crap that "The Universe" (or at least the White House) keeps flinging at us. Yet there is one person with too much time (in more than one sense) on his hands, and clearly too little money, who is still trying to exploit poor old Alfred and LOA. I refer, as I often have here, to imprisoned serial scammer Kevin Trudeau, aka KT, aka Katie. And Mama Mia, here I go again, plucking some very low-hanging fruit to share with you (I am still, after all these years, a lazy blogger, and I often go for obvious targets, even though it continues to surprise me that these targets are not at all obvious to many). Recently, like just the other day, I've blogged about Katie's attempts to get a pardon and release from Donald Trump.

On July 3, the same day I published my most recent Katie post, Katie was doing some posting of his own. He published, or caused to have published, this fake Einstein quotation on his Facebook page.

"Everything is energy. Energy is simply another word for vibration or frequency. That is all there is, there is nothing else. If you match the vibration of what you want with how you feel right now, the Universe must deliver it to you.
This is not philosophy; it is physics". Albert Einstein
Think about this. Much love, KT
Have a great 4th of July!

And the fans of flimflam fawned as they always do, not even questioning the authenticity of the Einstein quotation.

But the real fake quotation is a little bit different, though in essence it conveys the same specious message.

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

Unfortunately for true believers, there is absolutely no evidence that Einstein ever said this. Which will probably not come as much of a surprise to many of you.

Not that this will matter to Katie's fans, or to anyone else who, driven either by desperate longing or New-Wage crapitalism or a combination thereof, will continue to misquote and misappropriate greater minds and lofty concepts in any way that serves them. And certainly Kevin Trudeau has been crapitalizing for years on the whole "Law of Attraction" thing, pushing its articles of faith, which are based not only in faux quantum physics but also in a century and a half of "positive thinking." His 14-CD set, Your Wish Is Your Command, which was really little more than a come-on for his mega-scam GIN, is a case in point. The more things change...

* * * * *

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