--- In [email protected], turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: <snip> > Have you noticed, Vaj, that (as far as I've been able > to tell) zero attempts to deal with the actual *content* > of the things LordKnows posted about Sunnyside? The > suicide attempts,
Notice the calculated multiplication here. Only one suicide attempt was mentioned by Lord Knows. the "confrontations" that resulted > in psychic distress or trauma to those they were aimed > at? It's as if there is a total silence among the Robin > Groupies about this. What does Barry imagine "dealing with" this content would involve? Because Barry has scrupulously avoided reading Robin's posts, he isn't aware, it seems, that Robin himself has already told us--long since, in fact--that he had created psychic distress and trauma among his followers. It's old news. > Instead, they've been focusing on either "Bu..bu...but > he's *changed*," Yes, that he's changed would be the most significant point to make in this context. > or on playing Shoot The Messenger. If the messenger brings a false message, he deserves to be shot, as I've pointed out to Barry before. To claim Robin has not changed, as Lord Knows has insisted, is a false message in the view of those of us who are doing the shooting. > I find this behavior in the present almost scarier than > LK's tales of the past. Again, what would Barry consider appropriate behavior? It appears that Barry is painfully disappointed that LK's tales of the past have not caused those of us who like Robin to turn from him in horror. > *Especially* with regard to Ann, who after all is in > the fairly unique position of being able to dispute LK's > claims, were they false. The fact that she hasn't seems > to reinforce them as true. Not even Robin has denied LK's claims about what happened in the past. To the contrary, he has acknowledged that they are true. Just for example, in a post to LK two days ago he wrote of the "good and innocent persons who have suffered the trauma and confusion of having been confronted in this awful way by the person I was during those ten years." And as noted, he had already acknowledged this long before LK came on the scene. > The fact that she seems to > be focusing on doing anything she possibly can to suck > up to Robin and get him to notice and interact with her > again in the present, 25 years later, is even scarier. It would be interesting for Barry to attempt to cite examples of things Ann has purportedly done to this end. She hasn't even addressed Robin. > The "baggage" created as a result of "investing" in a > charismatic naricssist is heavy, and dangerous. Is it > *really* that hard for people to say, "I was wrong?" Typically shallow and simplistic observation from Barry. In Ann's case, she told us early on that she had been branded an "evil being" and expelled, and that she went to the local newspaper and exposed what had been going on, which led to the collapse of the group and Robin's disgrace. So she's been through the acute "I was wrong" stage. But over the course of the next 25 years, her reflections on what she had gone through led her to a different conclusion, and she now puts great value on the experience, as harrowing as it had been toward the end. Interestingly, this seems to have been the same progression Barry himself has reported with regard to his former guru Frederick Lenz, whose followers apparently experienced similar trauma and distress (including at least one actual suicide). Now Barry feels no regret about his association with Lenz. But somehow Barry is shocked, shocked that Ann's perspective on her time with Robin would have undergone this type of development. This is especially interesting given that Barry's guru committed suicide, whereas Robin embarked on a grueling 25-year course of self-rehabilitation, emerging as a person many of us here find sane and admirable.
