Yes and that is actually what made me question him. But thanks for facts. It did help. I just wanted to be sure no one was being manipulated by this evil cult.

🙂 Just sending a hug.

Aww man, what I wouldn’t give to have THIS superpower!!!! 🙂
“Monkey dear, I think Obs needed something, but while you’re here I’ve got a terrible crink in my neck, and would you go and figure out my new health insurance?? Thank you, what a good Monkey you are :)”

Well, you were my intended audience, so I’m glad it helped. Sorry it took so long to get tot he point, but that is the way it is dow this rabbit hole…

PS, you know Mike did burst into tears in one of the first two episodes..

Thank you. You answered the questions which is all I was wanting someone to do.

We’ll figure it out. I won’t be available to protest for a few weeks anyway. But we’ll definitely do it.

FWIW, I’ve been on this beat for a while, and consider myself a fair judge of character at a distance (the Internet’s favourite, fastest-growing, totally ridiculous and unscientific pastime), which is to say, I am an opinionated guy who cares about the subject and knows nothing about these people from personal experience, only what I have seen them say and do (as presented through media and the Net), what they have written, and what has been said and written about them.

I took a good deal of heat for a few years around these parts for my dogged insistence that Marty Rathbun may have left CoS, but Scientology had definitely not left him, as he seemed to me only worried about ‘crimes’ when they impacted himself (and arguably now, his family) personally, seemed more worried about threatening and dropping dark hints about David Miscavige, and above all else, concerned that Mark “Marty” Rathbun be treated with the respect and deference he felt he deserved as the ex-thug for a totalitarian cult bent on world-domination under the guise of Human RIghts and Religious Liberty for all. His repeated refusal to come clean, name names, etc in public, as well as his insistence that he had done so, apologizing to ‘those who deserved it” in Private and was not to be questioned onthe issue under penalty of seeing a grown bully sulk I found ridiculous in the extreme.

I questioned myself and even apologized to him directly in his blog when he finally (YEARS IN) began to publicly question Hubbard, because until that point I had presumed henahd been positioning himself within the risibly named ‘Independent Scientology” movement as heir apparent to L’il Davey after the coup. It seemed heahd reached the point of no-return with those intrepid idiots when he dared sytate the obvious: The nastiness and lies are baked-in features of Scientology, not the crimes of one midget riding heard on 19,999 innocent do-gooders. And the hand-on-their wallets (and cyst on their brains) was Hubbard’s, by design.

I belatedly questioned my own presumptions about the man, about our ability to change and began reading- his blog, faux-mysticism, unread book-title dropping and all.A nd even when he totally twisted the meanings of theories I have studied (indeed which I havre degrees in) I cut him a some slack, like a one would a caveman at a temp agency, and ex-con having trouble with social skills, or (dropping the misogyny) Dr Johnson’s Talking Dog (the point being that it is not that it does it well, but that it does it AT ALL that is notable). After all, he seemed to have come a long way from an enforcer who’s five favourite authors were, Hubbard, Hubbard, LRH, Hhbbard, and LRH by way of Miscavige.

This, if course first came crashing down for me with his insistence on treating CoS watchers who supported him, took his side on countless blogs, wished him and his wife and new child well often and publicly were first derided as “GROUPIES’ from the height of his success as an Ex-Destroyer of evidence in a Murder Investigation, paid liar, tracker, strong arm and thug cum Hubbard Rehabilitator and Man Who Sees the Path Forward from Miscavige’s Errors (but is NOT, NO NO NO NO Interested in Taking his Place (since revealed by himself to have been… erm.. not-entirely-true) to Champion of the Little Guy with the Power to Topple Davey to the Cheers of ALL OF US to– Meekly doing his A-E’s and realizing that everything he accused Miscavige of were in fact, his own acts and Crimes–

He asserts that he was shocked, SHOCKED that his experience in these areas entitled him not to be co-producer, director and writer ans Star of a film, but only its subject and consultant. This I can believe.

SO while i was shocked by the manner in which he dropped the lawsuit and turned on his supporters and erstwhile friends, I was not surprised in the least.

“It is not enough to have one or some of the same enemies” I repeated again and again on this blog and others and in varying forms.

What does this have to do with Mike RInder?

I was surprised to see the video a few years back of them fishing and dishing on Miscavige. I LOVED IT! But after a while I started to hear more and more “You know, WE HAVE A PROCESS FOR that…” WE. This was Marty, but Mike was nodding along.

Shit, I thought.

Then I heard Mike (and both of them) continue to disparage Gerry Armstrong as in, “Well, Hubbard may be wrong, and we did do some things wrong, but Gerry deserved what he got.”

As in “ASSHATS R US”.

YIPES!

And yet, much more quietly than Marty, and without seeming to demand recognition and strokes for each act of impressive “acting like a basically good person should”, Mike’s blog became more and more a place where opinons would differ, Under-the -radar Scilons could cool off, ask questions, and every other differing opinion did not seem to disappear 5 minutes after posting like chez Marty.

These past weeks have sen Mike come int his own in a big way, not only in Leah’s series (which I actually have found him to be quite expressive and feeling in– just not emoting and trying to make it about himself, which I personally find quite refreshing), but in a series of well-written and clearly thought-out blog posts on important subjects that he has addressed inthe past, without the clarity and passionate presentation (though he continues to refuse to inject himself if unnecessary scandals– Marty’s, for example).

All this to say, fallible as i may be, and as prone to overstatement, Mike long ago struck me as someone grappling honestly in semi-public with his own responsibility and demons, but without making it all about him or insisting that we care about his personal journey as front-page stuff. What is more, when he makes apologies and amends, he does so personally, specifically, and in public.

And he doesn’t expect that the Wog World should accord him the same respect and deference to which he was occasionally accustomed in the abusive cult heonce called home.

He seems to understand that that was not real, and while perhaps an understandable mistake to have made under the circumstances he (and many like him) came into it in, it remains just that: A Mistake.

And who knows?– With this show he may have even done more good than he helped do harm in the Cult.

BUKt I’l bet anyone here a cool mill that there will be no upcoming episode of Leah’s show where he and Leah recant, attack the producers, claim to have been misled and that all the crimes exposed by the series were really all about them and CERTAINLY not about CoB, the Mini-Mussolini with delusions of humanhood.

Any takers?

Motto early on, “success is the best revenge”.

Wow. That’s amazing. I can see forums like this are such a great support system for people who left. It’s great to hear how well you’re doing now.