Fleur-de-lisa, so glad you posted about this. I had seen a post a couple weeks ago about it, and was disappointed that I had missed the program. I've always been interested in cult-like organizations.
Hoping it would re-run, I was checking the program listings. I took 2 hours out from putting in my garden to watch.
Re another poster's comment about critical thinking skills, I was amazed at the comment one person, who had been in it for 30 years made: He said that in all that time, he'd never read about Scientology to see if there was anything critical written about it.
Anything that would demand that much of my time and money would get a critical look very early in the game.
Another thing that struck me was how they got their way by simply being nasty people to deal with. Very effective technique. I was horrified when they showed the part where the IRS director made the deal to make all those lawsuits go away. That is the deal that made them a nonprofit. Sickening.
In NJ, at one of our schools, we have a teacher's union president who operates like this. Anyone who criticizes her feels the repercussions. She tracks them online and gathers a dossier about them. She has been able to get some teachers fired. Imagine that: you're taking dues from teachers to operate in their best interest, yet behind the scenes, pulling strings to make them lose their jobs. I could go on, but you get the point, which is that no one wants to put up with this type of harassment. That is the strategy that made Scientology such a rich organization.
One other item: L. Ron Hubbard was such a head case. In fact, one of the people who knew him well even commented how Scientology was essentially his inner quest for some type of resolution to his mental anguish.
The part that chilled me was when they said Scientology turned its followers into L. Ron Hubbards. 
Cher
Edit history
= new reply since forum marked as read
