Let Us Have A Moment of Silence For Our Brave Friend
Founding CEO of Evil Cult
The world is better off without him.
Play Evil Corp Video (note: some scenes may be disturbing to some people)
The Evil Corp portrays the functioning of crisis among upper management.
The Executive Vice President explains the situation.
The CEO, as her patron, explains to her why he can be so confident in the crisis.
CEO: I’m glad he’s dead — he was weak; the world is better off without him.
People may find the opinion of the CEO of Evil Corp concerning the crisis of losing $400 billion in one day, the confidence he had for the future and his perspective on his Executive Vice President of Technology puzzling, even disingenuous, but it is the result of the standard objectification used by those in the upper management of corporations who see others (and even themselves), as nothing but objects to be manipulated without becoming emotional about the choices they must make. Make note of the fact that though the Executive Vice President had a gambling and drinking problem, that was not the most important factor — the most important factor — and the one the CEO abhorred was that of weakness. A lot can be tolerated in the corporate environment, even adultery, but someone who is perceived as weak is doomed.
Herbert Armstrong — Evil Cult CEO detested the weak
Those who think that it is any different in the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia should be warned that Herbert Armstrong himself detested those who were weak. In fact, he saw himself as the strongest person and those under him were weak: He created those under him and gave them positions; as such they were far inferior to him. In fact, at the lowest levels, Herbert Armstrong had no enthusiasm for the church members and believed that none of them really had a shot at salvation except in the rare cases that they supported him enough [to be noticed]. The letter that Herbert Armstrong sent to Roderick Meredith, March 19, 1980, should dispel any doubts:
When you were made second Vice President, it became a standing joke among leaders at Pasadena, the saying, “Well, after all, I am the second Vice President.”
In fact, Herbert Armstrong often showed contempt for his evangelists in various ways: He saw them all as weak.
Fast forward to today: Herbert Armstrong has died, leaving a vacuum. The weak evangelists, pastors and local elders saw their chance to make their way free from the domination of those they could not previously rise against. Roderick Meredith was one of the first of these when he established Global. But he didn’t have the fortitude to keep his promises to submit to his own board: He rebelled, lied, broke his promises, bankrupted Global and established the Living Church of God to gather to himself those weaker than he was to submit themselves to him to make their cushy living.
Robert Thiel later left Meredith and Living as a prophet, but before he did, he was so weak that he had to have others in Living declare him as a prophet (there is some suspicion that he took some liberalities with quoting dead people he claims supported him as prophet). For heaven’s sake, if you are a prophet of God, you have the force of God behind you and you don’t need other humans to vouch for you.
Ah, the days of Victor Kubik sneaking around to find a way to support himself post Worldwide Church of God — he found someone he looked to: Dennis Luker. Though he was weak and did not have the faith to stand up against Joe Tkach alone (and if God is for you, who can be against you?), he found a champion to be his patron and the rest of two decades of history.
Just how weak is David Pack? He made a major failed prophecy that everyone in the churches of God would come flocking to Restored (not to mention that 3 major leaders of the ACoGs would die). It never happened. And it never happened again. How weak is that?
Some of us remember Gerald Flurry was relegated to quite a minor congregation in Quincy, Washington. Herbert Armstrong considered him weak. Quincy is really out in the boondocks. There’s just no respect for the weak.
Then there’s Ronald Weinland. He’s been weak from the beginning. And now he’s in prison for felony Income Tax evasion. How weak is that?
There is a whole cast of other weak characters skulking about. They’ve managed to eke out a niche and put up a shingle for the money and self-aggrandizement, but they really don’t have much and the world just isn’t listening to any of them. That’s pretty weak.
In the 1960s, Herbert Armstrong complained that there were no “men of character”. He was talking about prospects for those to support him in those days. Apparently, he finally found one worthy of his respect — Stanley Raider. Even that didn’t last. His last, final and disastrous search for the strong resulted in picking a psychopath to continue his legacy. It is fitting seeing that Herbert Armstrong himself was a weak man — morbidly obese, committing incest with his daughter for 10 years at the beginning of his ministry, having failed prophecies as a false prophet, basing his religion on British Israelism which can be scientifically disproved, having a donut and cup of coffee on the Day of Atonement to keep up his strength, never even finished high school and a boozing alcoholic with a violent temper — all of these are properties of a weak man.
In the end, we detest weak men.
Like the CEO of Evil Corp, we believe that the world is better off without them.
“The 1% of the 1% playing God without permission.”
Somewhere on the way to the season finale, a tragic event occurred which changed everything.
A very popular but very disturbing new series on the USA Network, Mr. Robot, is very topical and quite graphic. Those involved in making the series have made every effort to be as relevant as possible in portraying the world of The Evil Corporation and one man’s effort to “save the world” as a quite mentally ill delusional but highly proficient tech hacker. The stories themselves are quite surreal and we’re never quite sure what’s supposed to be real and what isn’t. Sometimes a production becomes a victim of its own success in unexpected ways.
The day of the scheduled season finale, an horrific event occurred: The fatal shooting of Alison Parker and Adam Ward on camera during a live broadcast:
Virginia TV News Reporter, Cameraman Shot Dead During Live Broadcast
Mr. Robot had scenes which were disturbingly similar to the actual shooting. Viewers expecting to see the season finale were greeted at the beginning of the show with a message that the season finale was postponed a week:
Mr. Robot Season Finale Postponed
The postponement represented a sensitivity for those affected by the shooting, demonstrating respect for both the public and those intimately connected to the TV station family. This was a rather rare event which can be appreciated by those who have suffered loss. There is little more important than respect within a social context.
In fact, respect is tremendously important for the functioning of a social group. Those who are in positions of power need to have sensitivity and concern for those who have a lesser position within a group so that the social order can have viability. Those who have power and privilege within a hierarchical bureaucracy who do not have respect for those of lower caste in their ranks define a dysfunctional organization: They are the 1% of the 1% playing God without permission. In their hubris, they show contempt for those they consider beneath them, and, often, as collateral damage, those in charge may totally ignore those they consider beneath them. By their attitude of superiority, narcissism and hubris, they become the caretakers of a cult, for, without respect there can be no truly viable group — they create chaos and dissatisfaction, misery and injustice.
I enjoyed your anecdote. It is very accurate. The implicit cast system you defined was a little different at AC Big Sandy. It went something like this:
Ordained Administrators
Ordained Faculty Members
Ordained Staff Members
Non-ordained Administrators
Non-ordained Faculty Members
Non-ordained Staff Members
Students
Staff Members and local church members
Feral dogs roaming campus
1-Ws
This can create dillemmas. At one time my boss was a non-ordained administrator. In fact, he was not even member of the WCG. (There was a hiring binge in pursuit of accreditation that resulted in may credentialed non-members showing up on campus.) Once a minister, who had nothing to do with our department, showed up and gave me instructions on what to do about a matter that fell within the purview of our department administrator. As a WCG member, you had to do what the minister required. This meant ignoring the non-ordained administrator who had responsibility for the department and its policies.. Even though AC received accreditation on the strength of its credentialed faculty, it was always clear that the ministry ran the show. My guess is that this “hidden government” was concealed for accrediting committee members. The fact that Don Ward was a cross-over and had a secular degree as well as an AC degree and was a minister probably kept some situations from escalating out of proportion.
I recall in a WCG congregation in the midwest years ago asking an almighty local church elder a question. He gave me an answer and I said that I agreed with what he had said. This was a big, big mistake. In an instant he was toe-to-toe with me and in my face yelling. This was at a crowded Sabbath service. I was taken aback initially but it emerged that he believed that I had no right to agree with him. I was supposed to listen to what he said and then just keep my mouth shut. Like the great Ozymandias, his decrees were above evaluation by lesser beings like myself. If I had disagreed with him, who knows what would have happened.
He later became a GCI pastor and recently retired. He had a serious anger management problem that probably needed professional therapy. But he seemed to prosper in GCI. I always felt sorry for the souls who had to be in his congregation. And I always felt that GCI Church Administration had no idea what was going on in their local congregations. I have other corroborating evidence of this latter statement.
The Armstrongist churches of God are heavily hierarchical bureaucracies unwittingly modeled on the structure of Fortune 200 corporations where those in the ‘management’ mid level and above deal in abstracts objectifying people as portrayed by “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall. They are not churches at all — they are soulless church cult corporate structures of power and privilege devoid of anything that approaches mercy, equity, compassion or respect: They exist solely for the ‘profit’ of the shareholders, which is, generally speaking, the Apostle, Evangelist, Prophet or some sort of General who is all powerful, autonomous and without any accountability within the group. His delusional ideas based loosely on the daft pronouncements of the very wrong-headed Herbert Armstrong become doctrine, administered harshly and narrowly upon the helpless, but liberalized for those within the organization who have status, rank and privilege. They are at the top of their dysfunctional fiefdoms as the 1% of the 1% playing God without permission. All sorts of immoral, unethical and illegal scenarios play themselves out, such as a minister recommending that a man with a disabled son leave his son in a shopping mall so someone could find him and take care of him. We have one of the worst examples of cult gone wrong with Ronald Weinland and the PKG where he respects no one and treats them with utter contempt. The same can be said of David Pack, Roderick Meredith and Gerald Flurry. Those who expect real respect from United or CoGWA need only to bring forth a proposition they don’t like and see what happens.
Respect is essential for a healthy functional social group. It is the cult which is defined by disrespect, neglect and contempt. Those who run a cult need to be warned because you never know when some tech may start working to take you down to “save the world”. At best, you will slowly sink into entropy where you are stagnated without growth because, let’s face it, you just aren’t a healthy place to be. And you never know: People could just become dissatisfied and leave and even if they don’t, there’s not going to be much energy or enthusiasm.
Unfortunately, those who have no respect for those they consider beneath them are not likely to change. Remember though, it is appointed once for all to die. In the end, if you have no respect for others, you will eventually become irrelevant.
The Roman Catholic Church should not have “leaders for life” in its ranks, otherwise it would risk being like a country under dictatorship, Pope Francis said on Friday.
“There should be a time limit to positions (in the Church), which in reality are positions of service,” he said in an address that was in part prepared and in part extemporaneous.
It is convenient that all (positions) in the Church should have a time limit. There are no leaders for life in the Church. This occurs in some countries where a dictatorship exists.
Elsewhere he said:
The Pope has issued a strong warning against those tempted by personal charisma to be authoritarian leaders in the Church, describing such leaders as “servants of the devil” … He warned against the temptation for leaders to believe themselves essential to all tasks and described such leaders as “peacocks”… Such people would be drawn by this temptation into considering themselves irreplaceable, and would draw power and domination over others to themselves.
He compared such abuse of leadership in the church to dictatorships.
He asked the crowd present: “Who is the only irreplaceable in the Church?” They responded en mass: “The Holy Spirit!” He repeated the chant: “And who is the one Lord?” They replied: “Jesus!”
The leader of the Roman Catholic Church has just proposed a mandate for expiration dates for those in religious power when their shelf life is exhausted.
Now this is not a problem for at least one of the Armstrongist churches which has as its charter the leader is to retire at 70 years old. The deadline is early October this year. We will have to wait and see if the charter is changed by that time to allow a convenient extension. Nevertheless, a term limit is an excellent idea for religious leaders. Unfortunately, though the Pope probably doesn’t know one thing about any of the 700+ Armstrongist churches (in spite of the claims of some of the Armstrongists), he has just made a proposition which will result in collateral damage to such people as Roderick Meredith, David Pack, Gerald Flurry and Ronald Weinland because these are the sort of people who want to retain control of the church cult corporate for their own purposes of power and money.
Pope Francis does not just criticize the excesses of global capitalism. He compares them to the “dung of the devil.” He does not simply argue that systemic “greed for money” is a bad thing. He calls it a “subtle dictatorship” that “condemns and enslaves men and women.”
He says that the poor have been tossed aside by a “throw away culture”:
Francis has such a strong sense of urgency “because he has been on the front lines with real people, not just numbers and abstract ideas,” Mr. Schneck said. “That real-life experience of working with the most marginalized in Argentina has been the source of his inspiration as pontiff.”
Francis made his speech on Wednesday night, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, before nearly 2,000 social advocates, farmers, trash workers and neighborhood activists. Even as he meets regularly with heads of state, Francis has often said that change must come from the grass roots, whether from poor people or the community organizers who work with them. To Francis, the poor have earned knowledge that is useful and redeeming, even as a “throwaway culture” tosses them aside. He sees them as being at the front edge of economic and environmental crises around the world.
In Bolivia, Francis praised cooperatives and other localized organizations that he said provide productive economies for the poor. “How different this is than the situation that results when those left behind by the formal market are exploited like slaves!” he said on Wednesday night.
In a previous post, The wonderful world tomorrow — what will it be like… under…, we described the life of Benjamin Dickmann as he demonstrated just what it’s like to be in an abusive corporation run by the Armstrongist leaders. What most people absolutely do not get is that the Armstrongist churches are corporations and are the very picture of the abuse Pope Francis is talking about.
While we covered Moral Mazes in The Corporation of God™, there is so much more evil to the modern corporation, particularly the modern church cult corporation of the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia. The underlying problems as touched on by Pope Francis are explored in much greater depth in The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan:
By exploring the material, we can see exactly what is wrong with the Armstrongist churches of God because they have chosen the worst of the Corporate Model and implemented it badly.
The first thing we learn is that the Corporation exists solely to make a profit. There is no social responsibility attached. There is no conscience attached. There is no empathy. The Corporation, though it is fictionalized as being ‘a person’, the Corporation is an ‘it’ — a ‘thing’. The Corporation is positioned to break the law, pollute the world, even kill people (as was the case with the Ethyl Corporation) as long as the maximized profit is more than any penalties. In an ideal world, the Corporation is beholden to no one. There is no real accountability and limited liability for the stakeholders. The Corporation as a ‘legal person’ is a psychopath with all that is attached to that appellation. Moreover, the Corporation externalizes costs to maximize profits, which means that the Corporation does as it can to make others pay for its operations. In many cases, this externalization pushes costs outward to tax payers. For the church cult corporate, the externalization of the costs of Herbert Armstrong’s divorce from Ramona in the amount of $5 million (and court fees) was laid upon the rank and file tithe payer.
People don’t get this is ugly stuff. People don’t want to get that this is ugly stuff. They want to believe that the leadership of their cult is the hero of a spiritual organization. This is sadly evident in the annals of the PKG as Ronald Weinland continues to con them from prison where he is incarcerated as a felon who committed felony Income Tax Evasion. Roderick Meredith externalized the expenses (both monetary and emotional) by wrecking the Global Church of God, yet people continue to follow him as their spiritual guide because he has the best (false) prophecy. We’ve already seen how callous David Pack was in his treatment of low level employees in the Restored Church of God. Gerald Flurry is a malevolent force creating havoc for members, particularly for single young women. There’s no accountability. The Corporate executives shrug off detractors because as far as they are concerned it just doesn’t affect their bottom line of profit and power. In that, there is little difference between their innate behavior and that of Enron.
Returning to Pope Francis, it is likely that the Pope is especially sensitive to insensitive corporations because of the incident in Bolivia:
It all began when the Bolivian government, under pressure from the World Bank to privatize water utilities, contracted with Aguas del Tunarim, the major shareholder of which is Bechtel subsidiary International Water Ltd., to run the water system of Chchabamba, a water starved region in central Bolivia. At the time, Chochabamba, was served by an old and decaying system that did not reach areas of the countryside where many peasants lived. Aguas del Tunari, when it took over the system, raised rates, to up the three times what they had been, and began charging peasants for water they drew from their own wells. The government, in compliance with its contract with the company, passed a law that prohibited people from collecting water from local lagoons, rivers, and deltas, and even rainwater. the company confiscated people’s alternative water systems, without compensation, and placed them under its control. All of these actions, including the rate increases — which imposed sever hardships on many people, according to Oivera — were justified by the company as necessary to meet contractually mandated profit levels.
People organized in the city and in the countryside, with the help of Olivera and others, and demanded that the compoany leave, which it did, eventually, byut only after bloody confrontations between citizens and the police and military. “We started to see many injured youths, young people at sixteen or seventeen years old who lost arms, legs, were left paralyzed, had brain and nervous system injuries, had one young man, Victor Hugo Daza, Killed … there had been five people killed in the countryside,” recalls Olivera. “It was a victory at a real great cost.
The Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia is a corporate entity, split between the two factions of the hierarchical patronage of the bureaucracy: The headquarters elite, represented by Roderick Meredith and the Regional Pastors, represented (originally) by Dennis Luker. If one understands the church cult corporate bureaucracy, the governance of the original WCG was irrational and chaotic at the regional level and above with contentious competition among and between the various centers of power and authority. The two major divisions left with the worst of the corporate model representing the preponderance of the philosophies of each of the entities respectively. This left each faction with severe problems with the ethics, morals and legality of its own.
Why should any of this be a surprise? It’s the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia after all.
The CoHAM has always attracted the evil, vile, the psychopath, the sociopath. Why wouldn’t it? It is the hotbed of all sorts of scams; an opportunity that is irresistible.
This should all so very clear after reading “Snakes in Suits” by Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Babiak, “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall (read the twentieth anniversary edition) and “The Corporation” by Joel Bakan.
Why should any of this be a surprise? It’s the Cult of Herbert Armstrong Mafia after all.
The CoHAM has always attracted the evil, vile, the psychopath, the sociopath. Why wouldn’t it? It is the hotbed of all sorts of scams; an opportunity that is irresistible.
This should all so very clear after reading “Snakes in Suits” by Dr. Robert Hare and Dr. Babiak, “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall (read the twentieth anniversary edition) and “The Corporation” by Joel Bakan.
Each of the sects of the CoHAM are corporations with the “middle management” (read regional pastor and above) living the lies of situational ethics, abstract morality, patronage bureaucracy, networked authority, self-promotion and abject compromise;
Each of the sects of the CoHAM is a cult replete with distorted perceptions and outrageous beliefs, not to mention the bootlicking devotion to “authority” where people are comfortable with letting others do their thinking for them;
Each of the sects of the CoHAM is high maintenance demanding an excess of resources from the ‘membership’ through great sacrifice;
Each of the sects of the CoHAM require absolute loyalty, no matter how immoral, illegal or unethical the leadership may be;
Absolute secrecy is required to cover up misdeeds;
There is constant internal chaos as various parties of the upper echelons of the bureaucracy vie for ascendancy — it is this instability that provides vast opportunities to the narcissist, sociopath and psychopath to scam and manipulate those in the CoHAM;
It is a dysfunctional environment of insanity where fantasy is sold as reality: Anyone remaining in the venue will not be able to be rational for very long;
The CoHAM screws with your priorities so that you do all the wrong things for the wrong reasons while causing you to believe that you are ‘holy’, ‘righteous’ and ‘doing a great work’;
The CoHAM fosters divisions, pitting members against members, often manifesting itself in spying (such as the recent revelations about “The Amazon.com Way” of management.
The structure is highly efficient to induce people to compromise their morals and ethics while making them believe that they are just fine.
It’s disgusting and repulsive.
Just ask yourself (seriously, in those rare moments of honest insight): “Do I really want to associate with members of a cult”?
And the answer to that is extremely telling by revealing what sort of person you are and how much crap you will tolerate to prevent the discomfort of perceived loss in terms of dysfunctional relationships.
It is also how attractive Armstrongism is to the marginal. Denis Michael Rohan was only one of many. David Ben Arial (Chuck Hoover) springs to mind: Apparently he didn’t cause the same damage as Rohan, but he was ejected from Israel and permanently banned.
It should give people pause to realize that by making the utterly ridiculous seem plausible, the stage is set to attract all sorts of darkly insane people.
And so it is, Pope Francis has declared corporations as “dung of the Devil” with a “subtle dictatorship”, decrying their enslavement of people for profit.
It should be clear that the Armstrongist churches of God fit this profile, and, what’s more, each of the fiefdoms have their very own dictator for life.
It isn’t just the doctrines that are worthless, it’s the social order.
