Batman Colorado Theater Shooting - Story vs. Reality

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Batman Colorado Theater Shooting - Story vs. Reality

Everybody is talking about the horror by now. Last night in Colorado, a person, James Holmes, acting out his dark fantasies, killed 12 and injured many more at a screening of the movie, “The Dark Knight Rises." See here for just one report.

In his mind, Holms was pretending to be the Joker. He didn't have a real beef. He was living in a friggen' fictional story!

What does the mainstream media do? Sermons and politics, as usual. God punishes America for being godless. Obama prays. Holmes was a member of the Tea Party (oops, that was too soon), He was a registered Democrat (maybe oops, who knows?). We need gun control. Violence in the media is to blame. Yada yada yada.

In other words, instead of the journalistic ideal of Who What When Where Why and How, we are getting intellectual Jokers trying to kill our perception of reality. Trying to bend reality to fit their own storyline. We call it an agenda, but an agenda is actually a story in the head of the agenda-bearer.

In other words, mainstream journalists are selling us fictional stories instead of narratives of observed facts. What's worse, I believe in their minds, they have been lying so much that they believe in their own lies. They simply can't discern reality long enough to correct themselves.

That's not a good thought. Give me the old bare-faced liar who knows he's lying any day.

It's hard, I admit. We all live in 2 realities, not just one. There is the outer reality that will not change for anyone. And there is the inner reality of how we perceive and interact with the outer reality.

A romantic in Rand's sense (at least as I understand and practice it) knows this and tries to change things in the outer reality to fit the inner one by first trying to understand and obey the outer one. People like this tend to create far more than they destroy and they know that they have to learn and accept the identities and laws belonging to outer reality if their inner vision is going to have a shot at making it there.

Another kind of person, one who I believe is like James Holmes and weaned on the sweet poisoned milk of modern mainstream media, simply blends outer reality with his inner one and literally starts living a fiction. And why shouldn't he? Isn't that the process--the epistemological frame or scaffold or context or whatever you want to call it--that is bombarded into his skull 24 hours a day everywhere he goes?

Some people have the ability to see and internalize the patterns, not just the surface content. They see the frames and want to play, too.

They start thinking if those guys (the media) can do it, so can I. Why should they be the only ones to live as if their fantasies were real? And preach it that way? They obviously do it because that's the way it's supposed to be. And it works. The proof is they keep doing it every day and there they stay. Whoopie! Just think. I can do it, too. Except I'm not a media person. I'm the Joker!

I know, I know, this looks like I'm reaching and philosophizing. But consider this. James Holmes was not a loser basket case. He was studying to become a PHD in neuroscience. He dropped out (or was dropping out), but he was still at that level. See here:

Colorado theater shooting suspect was neuroscience Ph.D. student

by Liz Goodwin

Yahoo! News

The Lookout

July 20, 2012

From the article:

Colorado shooting suspect James Holmes was in the process of withdrawing from a doctorate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver, according to university spokesman Dan Myers. Holmes began the program last year.

...

Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates said Holmes' apartment is booby-trapped with a "sophisticated" maze of flammable devices. It could take hours or days for authorities to disarm it. Five nearby buildings have been evacuated. Oates said Holmes had no criminal record in the state.

This was a very intelligent person who was able to operate perfectly with outer reality to achieve his goals. It takes brains and real skill to do all of those things he did. The only thing out of whack is Holmes placing his fantasy world over the outer unchanging one to frame where he was living, thus frame his goals.

Instead of taking his story to outer reality and making a vision become real, he tried to bring outer reality into his inner story. But nobody sees his vision and they never will. He screwed it up--just like the mainstream media does every single day.

And he hurt a lot of people doing that--just like the mainstream media does every single day.

I don't even want to imagine what Holmes will feel like if he ever realizes his mistake. Even if he realizes he blew it, there is no way to wash off the kind of evil he did. But, one way or the other, he will now learn what happens when you ignore the "storyline" of outer reality.

Unfortunately, I don't believe the powers that be in the mainstream media will learn that for a long, long time--if ever. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would bet that the mainstream media will eventually disappear over it eventually becoming a serious source of objective information.

So false stories are told and sold. That's how the Jokers play it--make reality a game. People die. And the beat goes on.

Michael

[Mikee]

Michael Ramirez take (from IBD): http://news.investor....aspx?id=619045

I wonder if, given the kids neuro studies, if he hadn't experimented on himself with some kind of mind altering drugs. I hope they investigate thoroughly any chemicals in him. Hopefully he'll be straightforward in revealing any kind of fooling around of this kind he was doing.

[syrakusos]

New technologies can identify when an intention is formed. They can reveal whether or not a place or a face is familiar. They can expose structural deformities that impede rational judgment. “Neuroscience, it seems, points two ways: it can absolve individuals of responsibility for acts they’ve committed, but it can also place individuals in jeopardy for acts they haven’t committed — but might someday (Rosen).” That is the most obvious dilemma. These same technologies also reveal that some (or many; or even perhaps most) of our laws themselves truly do not reflect how we actually judge moral responsibility. In addition, the machines that expose our thoughts are only more sophisticated polygraphs or electro-encephalographs. Neither of those comes with a legal mandate. Today’s courts do not compel you to take those tests. However, tomorrow’s courts may, on the same theory that says that you agreed to alcohol blood tests when you signed for your driver’s license.

These issues are not new, having been argued for 150 years. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909) is considered a pioneer in criminal justice and law enforcement for his theory of “anthropological criminology.” According to Lomboso, criminals are born. They are atavistic throwbacks, genetic miscreants, whose degenerative traits measurably differentiate them from us. Lombroso’s theories were the best of their time, founded on close measurement of many specimens, collected not only by Lombroso but by other scholars all over Europe. In Lombroso’s own words: “It has meant even more, namely that our theories are based on a mass of facts that are there for all to see; it has proved that despite the opposition from distinguished men, our school has attracted and convinced the best scientists in Europe who did not disdain to send us, as proof of their support, the most valuable documents in their collections.”

"The Brain on Trial" class paper for Abnormal Psychology here.

[Mark]

You are your brain -- it's the latest trend, as in "trendy." For an exposé of these exaggerated claims, what Raymond Tallis -- a British neurologist -- calls Darwinitis and Neuromania (they are separate issues but go together), see his book Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity.

Dr. Tallis is also on YouTube, for example

.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Mark,

I'm going to look into Tallis. He looks very interesting.

I have been doing a lot of reading and listening to recent interpretations of the advances in neuroscience and one thing keeps popping up all the time that is bothering me. Several authors (Dawkins, Dennett, etc.) treat ALL human urges and desires, in fact, consciousness itself, as an evolutionary response to survival from an inferior state. And they tend to call any other approach "nonsense." They get quite aggressive about it, too. In fact, some of the stuff I have read is identical to religious faith in treating the evolutionary premise as an incontestable primary like the religious people do with God.

I agree with them that higher forms do arise (or "emerge") from the bottom up, but I also hold that there is a top pulling it all up. Not as two separate forces, but as one. Both exist.

This is clearer by analogy. Where does a circle start and end? It always starts where you end it--and it always ends where you start it. What's more, you can start/end it at any point along the circle. The start does not exist without the end. Ditto for top and bottom in the manner I am talking about.

I am loathe to call the top down form God, though. I believe it is a part of the universe our brains are not capable of sensing yet, except for vague mental glimpses, so I think it is a bit arrogant to identify it as if we know it for sure (at our level of development), or to deny it is possible and call speculations about it "nonsense."

I do agree with the bottom-up folks about one thing. Our brains greatly influence what our minds can and cannot do. It's like an airplane and wings. The pilot is operating the plane, but he cannot contradict the limitations of the wings. What he can do with the plane is limited by what the wings can do.

In the shooting case at the start of this thread, I don't believe Holmes said to himself, "I want to be an evil scumbag who shoots people for no reason." I do believe he was seeing reality through a basic fundamental storyline similar to religious creation stories, or even the ghost-of-evolution storyline of the modern scientists. And then he adopted a role in that storyline.

The part that gets me is the total triteness of it. Batman? Really? Dayaamm!

But then, look where he got it from, which is my beef with mainstream media. Not the Batman story, but the patterns that led him to be able to internalize that story so deeply. What is more false, that Batman exists, or that Obama is not a socialist, or that USA wars in the Middle East are not over oil, etc.? Once something is false, it doesn't get falser or truer. But the mainstream media keeps playing lies as if they were true. Thus, the pattern.

Our brains are wired to think in stories and, as religion, the recent scientific folks and this lunatic show, we can shove a story into our subconscious down to the premise level where it becomes the primary frame for pontificating about all that exists and why. I believe people do that with irrational storylines because it makes them feel certainty and certainty feels awfully good to them.

They can also be tempted to do that by sheer repetition. It's physical. Synapses that fire together wire together. Neural pathways in the brain literally get thicker over time and repetition is one of the main ways to make that happen. It's like learning a language or a skill. You automate certain knowledge so much that you are not even aware of it anymore as you use it. Who thinks about counting numbers with their fingers as they get change for a purchase, for instance?

When you frame ALL of reality with a story like that, to the point you don't think about it anymore--the story elements are just there when you think consciously--that can make things get weird and even dangerous. And that's the problem.

Every time you dig into these primary stories, you see that any certainty they may provide is undermined by loopholes all over the place. It's false certainty. And generally the people who believe in them get really nasty when you point the loopholes out, especially if they get close to doubting. Their "certainty" dopamine blasts stop coming and, if there is one thing I understand from my previous experience with addiction, it's the craving for dopamine blasts.

As an aside, I want to mention one thing. I talked about "two realities" in my opening post. I did this on purpose as a form of challenging the mind-numbing jargon of thought systems (like Objectivism) while keeping the concepts. I believe it is a good thing to change our words at times. This makes us reexamine our concepts and make sure they have not become automated into weird limitations.

But a few words about my "why" are useful. When an Objectivist says there is only one reality, he is talking about the "two realities" I mentioned. But many Objectivists would kneejerk on my choice of words, too, and get snarky or whatever. And that's the part I am countering. I want (where possible) people to read my words with their minds turned on, not turned off by a conditioned response.

Conceptually, I seriously doubt any Objectivist would claim that consciousness and outside reality are the same thing from a subjective perspective. I do believe most would agree with me that, from a universal or "God's view" perspective, each of us is merely one small part of reality. In fact, that is the only view they see this with. So my term "two realities" was to highlight the way we perceive existence (the "in here" to the "out there" view), not to distinguish two separate metaphysical systems (the "out there" to the "in here" view).

The fact is, we imagine stuff in consciousness so, in that "reality," we can change everything at will if we choose. Instantly. No problem at all. But we can't do that in outside reality. For that, we have to link our imagining with effort and action. Only then can we change things.

But even when that happens, there is the limitation like I mentioned with the pilot and the wings. So we can only modify outside reality up to a point, like creating new forms, destroying existing forms, moving stuff around and so forth. That we can do. But we don't zap into and out of existence that which is already there, like we can in our imaginations.

And this is where I believe Holmes went off the rails. I also believe modern mainstream media encourages this error. (But that still doesn't absolve him from his responsibility as an evil monster. He, like all of us, may have a programmable mind, but he also has a free will.)

I am pretty sure they won't do brainscans on Holmes, but that would be really valuable.

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I do agree with the bottom-up folks about one thing. Our brains greatly influence what our minds can and cannot do. It's like an airplane and wings. The pilot is operating the plane, but he cannot contradict the limitations of the wings. What he can do with the plane is limited by what the wings can do.

Yes he can. The result is structural failure.

--Brant

gotcha! (I've been waiting for years to getcha)

[Selene]

Here is a question for our astute group.

How is it that an unemployed PHD student was able to acquire what I am being told is in excess of $20,000.00 in military grade equipment?

Adam

[Mikee]

Subsidized student loans?

[Selene]

Subsidized student loans?

Now that was funny!

[Brant Gaede]

Subsidized student loans?

Now that was funny!

And that was real. I know a lot of student loan money goes to drugs.

Would this mean he has student debt that he won't be able to discharge in bankruptcy?

--Brant

[Selene]

Here is another critical and major reason why so many of our fellow citizens were either killed or wounded by this scumbag:

"Gun advocates say the movie theater where a Colorado gunman opened fire Friday, killing 12 and wounded 58, has a strict policy against firearms on its premises – even for patrons with concealed handgun permits.

Cinemark Holdings Inc. owns 459 theaters and 5,181 screens in the U.S. and Latin America – including the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colo., scene of the mass shooting.

The company does not appear to post its firearms policy on its website

. WND’s after-hours calls and emails to Cinemark had not been returned at the time of this report.

Dudley Brown, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners,

told ABC News

the Aurora Century 16 movie theater’s policy prohibits firearm carry.

Since 2006, some pro-gun bloggers have complained about their own experiences with Cinemark gun policies.

On the Defensive Carry blog, one Alaskan moviegoer posting under the name “SubNine” claimed Cinemark managers asked him to put his firearm in his vehicle if he wanted to see a movie. According to his post, the managers showed him a cardboard sign near the ticket counter that said, “No firearms allowed."

http://www.wnd.com/2012/07/colorado-theater-called-gun-free-zone/

I will not be patronizing any of their theaters and will be telling everyone in my network to consider doing the same.

Adam

[Brant Gaede]

If you prohibit firearms in your place of business then you search everybody going in, just like the courthouse. Otherwise I'm likely to violate your policy out of contempt for your so-called property rights. I mean the SOB had a backpack. BTW, what weapon did he use? I've yet to read about that. It's going to be interesting to find out what if any drugs were in his system. If I were in that theater with a .38 Special snub-nose, I'd have had a very difficult time, unless very close, stopping him and with no advantage. He got up on stage in front of the screen. Some thought he was part of the movie. I think in that case you'd need one in five patrons packing. Maybe in Alaska, outside Anchorage. Statistically this means nothing in terms of "gun control" yes or no. Look what that asshole did in Norway a year ago today. 77 killed. That killer out-classes everybody not employed by a government, except a few historical serial killers. In Cambodia Nov. 1966, a major in the army Special Forces crashed his airboat over a paddy dike and machine-gunned 18 VC dead with one continuous burst from a .30 cal. machine gun mounted on the bow. I once saw around 250 bodies of South Vietnamese soldiers decimated in an ambush (50 survived) cleaned up and prepared for relatives to claim laid out in rows in the hospital yard. I walked up and down those rows, they were all killed by bullets. It was strange to see a man with half his face caved in and no blood. All the American advisors were killed, cut in two by a .50 cal. machine gun. Maybe 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were buried in the sand by U.S. soldiers consequent to operation Desert Storm in 1991 using bulldozers. I don't think there was an official body count and that was deliberate. Maybe 40 million babies have died from malaria because of 40 years of war against the manufacture and use of DDT by the U.S. government. Half a billion people are living today infected with the malarial parasite for the same reason. God bless America?

--Brant

search me, search he, search thee

we now return you to your normal reality

[Mikee]

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120722/DA05UT980.html

"Holmes had recently withdrawn from a competitive graduate program in neuroscience at the University of Colorado Denver, where he was one of six students at the school to get National Institutes of Health grant money."

[Selene]

I mean the SOB had a backpack. BTW, what weapon did he use? I've yet to read about that.

"...carrying three weapons, including an AR-15 assault rifle, which can hold upwards of 100 rounds, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, and a .40 Glock handgun. A fourth handgun was found in the vehicle." I am assuming that the 12 gauge was a semi auto, but I have not seen any info on it.

I believe the other weapon found in the car was also a Glock.

It is alleged that he bought the four (4) guns and six thousand (6,000) rounds of ammunition in the last six (6) months.

This of course is, whether it is true or not, intended to make a causal connection to banning and controlling the purchase of weapons and ammunition.

If he bought one (1) gun and five hundred (500) rounds of ammunition, the outcome would have been roughly the same.

Adam

[Jerry Biggers]

You didn't think that the Rand-haters would let commentary on the Colorado shootings tragedy go by without trying to connect it to Ayn Rand, did you? Well, of course not. So what's the connection? Why, it's "Rand's love for serial killer William Hickman",,,,yup, there it is... pops right up on the very first page of a Google news search on the perperator, James Holmes....http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981490303#comments

And I'd like to take this opportunity to "thank" ARI "scholar," David Harrimann for dredging-up Rand's notes on Hickman, previously unknown even to her closest confidants, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, until Harrimann decided, in a spectacular example of poor judgement, to add it to his edited collection her previously unpublished "Journals".

None of the contents of that volume had been published when Rand was alive (with the possible exception of an article on individualism from the early nineteen-forties). She showed no hesitation in publishing many volumes of her non-fiction articles after Atlas Shrugged had brought her views to national attention. Peikoff and ARI showed no such reticence. I think it is safe to say that Rand never wanted that excerpt from her private diaries published.

With guardians and friends such as these.......

[Selene]

You didn't think that the Rand-haters would let commentary on the Colorado shootings tragedy go by without trying to connect it to Ayn Rand, did you? Well, of course not. So what's the connection? Why, it's "Rand's love for serial killer William Hickman",,,,yup, there it is... pops right up on the very first page of a Google news search on the perperator, James Holmes....http://news.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981490303#comments

And I'd like to take this opportunity to "thank" ARI "scholar," David Harrimann for dredging-up Rand's notes on Hickman, previously unknown even to her closest confidants, Nathaniel and Barbara Branden, until Harrimann decided to add it to her previously unpublished "Journals". I think it is safe to say that Rand never wanted that excerpt from her private diaries published.

Jerry:

I think it was Freud, who, nearing death, asked his best friend, "To please protect me from the neo-Freudians!"

[Jerry Biggers]

Selene,

Right! I think that Marx had made a similar comment that he was embarrassed by the Marxists. And, of course, Rand referred to Marx's comment, expressing her similar disapproval of "Randians."

[Frediano]

My first reaction to this, before the TeaParty/Democrat/OWS/Black Bloc parade, was based simply on the pHD Neuroscience candidate/drop out description. It is 2012. Today's youth have been living with the current economic malaise and have heard the same hollow 'jobs, jobs, jobs' speechs in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and now 2012. During this period, young folks like this James Holmes have been stressing themselves out in school taking on curricula like 'Neuroscience' ... with only news of decreasing opportunities awaiting them. If 99.999% of America bucks up under the current pressure and does not wig out, that is not yet 100%. The current economic stress is making everyone edgy, which means, those already on the edge are getting pushed right over.

Consider this. Compare the graduates of 2012 with the graduates of 1962. In JFK's early 60's, his federal government was spending $100B/yr, over half of which was for defense at the peak of the Cold War, in a nation of 180million people, a little more than half our present size. We can inflation(x7.5) and population(barely x2) adjust that $100B to $1500B/yr today, and we are at $3800B/yr today. That America paid for SS. That America was going to the Moon. That America was building the Interstates. That America was righting old civil rights wrongs. That America was sending its youth to the best schools in the world.

And that America was sending out a generation of young Americans with enthusiasm and more importantly hope for the future.

If there was any credence at all to the theory of federal spending stimulus with a positive dollar multiplier, then our current $2.3T above and beyond JFK's level of federal spending should have American economies on a tear. Paul Krugman wants to sing the praises of JFK's America and its high marginal tax rate, paid by six rich guys with lousy accountants, while the broad American middle class labored under a payroll tax that was half of what it is today. I say, if Krugman wants to bring them both back, then no problem, as long as we are also going to cut federal spending back to JFK's adjusted $1500B/yr, which is the real killer of the engines that drive our economies. Public spending is not priavte spending; public debt is not private debt. What human on earth wakes up tomorrow with fresh, new incentive to go out and create new value in order to ... pay off public debt? Nobody.

The evidence is irrefutable, this aint working, and fringe 'going over the edge' like this pHD Neuroscience candidate in Colorado are the canaries in the coal mines. What species does this to their young? If we stay on our present political course of ever bigger government, then we are going to see ever more of this fringe violence from every corner of the political spectrum.

[Frediano]

Here is a factoid that illustrates how out of control federal spending is.

In 1966, Medicare started out at $3B/yr. If we apply that same conservatrive factor for inflation and population of x15, that adjusts to $45B today. And we are spending over 10 times that inflation and population corrected amount.

And yet, imagine this; if we were to eliminate 100% of defense, and 100% of MEDICARE/MEDICAID in some kind of latest 'grand bargain' less guns and less butter deal, we would -still- barely be half way trimmed between the current $3800B/yr in spending and JFK's fully adjusted $1500B/yr in spending...

... and that essentially counts defense twice, because over half of JFK's adjusted $1500B was for defense.

Do we understand the enormity of how much federal spending overbloat is out of control since JFK's America?

[9thdoctor]

So far we know nothing about Holmes’ ideas, what is favorite books are, that kind of thing. Both Loughner and Breivik listed Rand books among their favorites, though neither could be classed as Objectivists, not even close. I wonder, and worry a bit, whether Holmes is going to have some degree of a Rand connection too, enough to amplify the Rand serial killer meme the lefty echo chamber likes so much. If he read the Cliffsnotes for Anthem in 10th grade that'll be enough for the likes of Thom Hartmann.

[Selene]

[Mark]

Jerry Biggers wrote:

"... Rand referred to Marx's comment, expressing her similar disapproval of 'Randians.'"

"God, I can look out for enemies on my own, so please protect me from my friends." is a saying in Romania.

"Lord, protect me from thy followers." is a popular criticism of some Christians.

The only Internet source for the alleged Ayn Rand quote seems to be from N. Branden, where he mentions it in a review of "Therapist" by Ellen Plasil:

"... there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend ... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!'"

Alas? NB was the motor or at least enforcer behind that cultishness. Does anyone know of a more reliable source for the quote?

I don't know what's in the ellipsis after "trend." NB seems to imply that AR was wrong to say "protect me from my followers" -- that she was overly suspicious -- which is not the way Jerry uses the quote.

[syrakusos]

Criminologically, free will is an irreducible primary. You can only look at the action. All of these ideological inferences are pointless self-aggrandizement. Speculating on the shooter's motives is fruitless. By contrast to this tragedy, I offer the recent case here in Shiner, Texas, where a man beat to death the alleged molester of his daughter.

http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-14/us/us_texas-abuser-killed_1_abuser-father-daughter?_s=PM:US

As reprehensible as the alleged assault against the child is (and it is), we give a monopoly on retaliatory force to the state so that we can live in civilization. In the TV series "West Wing" the liberal president Josh Bartlett played by the liberal Martin Sheen is asked whether or not he would want the death penalty for a man who raped his daughter. "Of course I would.... which is why the fathers of victims do not get to make that decision..."

Statements about liberals and the NRA and the Second Amendment are defenses against empathy. The horror and grief are what they are.

[Ellen Stuttle]

[....]

The only Internet source for the alleged Ayn Rand quote seems to be from N. Branden, where he mentions it in a review of "Therapist" by Ellen Plasil:

"... there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend ... Rand had often protested, 'Protect me from my followers!'"

Alas? NB was the motor or at least enforcer behind that cultishness. Does anyone know of a more reliable source for the quote?

I don't know what's in the ellipsis after "trend."  NB  seems to imply that AR was wrong to say "protect me from my followers" -- that she was overly suspicious -- which is not the way Jerry uses the quote.

I think that NB gives that quote in his memoir also, but, if he does, I don't recall offhand where.

The full paragraph from the review of Therapist is:

Of course not all enthusiasts of Objectivism manifest this foolishness; the majority of them are independent, decent, clear-thinking human beings. But there is an irrational, cultish tendency in many intellectual movements, and Objectivism, alas, is no exception. Ayn Rand's personal obsession with loyalty did little to discourage this trend, even though she doubtless would have been horrified by Dr. Leonard's practices. Rand had often protested, "Protect me from my followers!"

The entire review can be found here, copied by and with interspersed comments by me, although posted by MSK.

What happened is that there was a hacker attack fairly early in OL history and unbacked-up stuff was lost, including the original post by me. After the site was in operation again, Michael caught me just before I was leaving for a conference in Budapest asking if I'd kept a copy of the post. I sent a copy to him for posting.

Nathaniel says in the review, in the paragraph before the one about which you inquired, "In Objectivist circles, Leonard enjoyed a God-like status. Plasil did not feel safe in discussing her growing anxiety and doubts. She would have been accused of treason."

Note my interjection "among his [Lonnie's] clients, not amongst all Objectivist circles." Nathaniel talked as if Lonnie had high status generally. That's incorrect. Lonnie had a subgroup which pretty much kept to itself. Allan Blumenthal had stopped referring clients to Lonnie in late '70 or early '71. Lonnie was considered not quite respectable in the wider Objectivist circles.

Also, something I was told fairly recently -- a little more than two years ago -- by a couple of women who had been among Lonnie's clients is that Plasil didn't keep secret her relationship with Lonnie and rather lorded it over other clients because of her special status. So although it's true that "She would have been accused of treason" if she talked about "her growing anxiety and doubts" -- she was accused of treason and other crimes when she filed suit -- she wasn't keeping so silent about the relationship as one might think from the book.

If you have any interest in the Lonnie Leonard story, you can find material by searching my posts.

Ellen

[George H. Smith]

Interesting video. A different ending than the Colorado Theater Massacre....

Ghs