"The Family"--Jeff Sharlet on "Real Time With Bill Maher"

I started The Family just this past week--it's creepy. What we have here is a religious group, but it's not a particularly moral one, even if it appears to be both successful and powerful. The most troubling thing about it is that the model seems explicitly to be "Whatever works." Do people get killed? Heads get broken? Do the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? Are people exploited?

So be it. So why not mere examples of adultery, or graft? Why not support for third world dictators? The goal?

Based on the historical background Sharlet provides, we're looking at a whole lot of capitalism, in the kind of "disaster capitalism" sense that Naomi Klein describes in The Shock Doctrine. In Jesus' name, of course. But it's also tied into militarism. Likewise in Jesus' name. The conception of Jesus in the eyes of The Family apparently is more like Caesar than the itinerant preacher and working-class fellow-traveller I seem to recall from the New Testament. Their version of The Beatitudes goes something a bit like: "Blessed are the meek, because they don't give the ruling class any grief. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for they never ask for pay raises."

Anyway, so far I'm liking the writing and the insight as much as I expected I would from Sharlet, whose stories like "Jesus Killed Mohammed" have impressed me as a non-believer fascinated by the religious "beat". Although I haven't finished it, I already do recommend this book for its glimpse into the theocon world.

(fixed vid link)