Unification Church

Oh, yeah.

That was, I had such a similar experience to you when I was on my own, the beginnings of my deconstruction and deconversion journey, where I was trying to figure out what had just happened to me, 'cause I'd spent 40 years just about in, in Christianity, and the only things I found to read that felt familiar were by people who had left, like, recognized cults, like the, the Moonies or Children of God or whatever, but not people from, like, broader Christendom.

So like you, I was thinking, "I wasn't in a cult, so how come this is hitting home so much for me?"

Wait a minute.

There's a good opening statement.

And you say, if you're in the Krishnas or the Moonies, three to six months later, you'll probably be okay.

If you're in Scientology, for you to recover.

12 and a half years for you to recover.

And this is what I want to really ask you about.

Because Steve Hassan would never have gotten into the Moonies and became a right-wing fascist, but this identity got put inside of me where I believed that was my true self, my higher self, my God self, and suppressed my values, my conscience, my family, my education, my writing, poetry.

But it never erased the real me, and that's how I woke up.

I would love to hear your opinions about this brainwashing phenomenon.

We need overwhelming numbers in every state for people who care about rule of law and civil rights and such.

But, Doc, I want to throw something at you also that was on my mind when I read your book and when you just said we are multitudes of identities.

So when I got out of the Moonies, I became a mental health professional, but I was in therapy trying to figure out how the hell did this happen to me? Like, I'm a nice Jewish boy from Flushing, Queens, you know, intact family.

My parents, you know, never divorced.

It's such a hard position to analyse where we are because as I said, going forward, we do look like we are, we are creating chances.

You know, Bob had a few, there was the Moonies chance towards the end, but it's just that the backs is so diabolically bad.

But I think a lot of that then also stems from the line-up.

Like, if you're going to play like this, I just don't think you can have a Wobbe playing central midfield because then it is just Shea Charles as your only kind of player who's kind of helping the defence.

I think it was the 70s or 80s.

And the people were called, they used to call them the Moonies.

The Moonies, yeah, for sure.

There's a new docker coming out

about that as

Stossel's not there for that one.

Stossel did do the one about flirty fishing in the Moonies, though.

And I remember him doing one about, like, bootleg stereos you buy in Times Square.

And I was like, yeah, obviously.