Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  “He’ll be all right,” she said. But she was lying. Her eyes always got darker in the middle when she lied. She was a Spokane Indian and a bad liar, which didn’t make any sense. We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we’ve been lied to. “He’s really sick, Mom,” I said. “He’s going to die if we don’t take him to the doctor.” She looked hard at me. And her eyes weren’t dark anymore, so I knew that she was going to tell me the truth. And trust me, there are times when the last thing you want to hear is the truth. “Junior, sweetheart,” Mom said. “I’m sorry, but we don’t have any money for Oscar.” “I’ll pay you back,” I said. “I promise.” “Honey, it’ll cost hundreds of dollars, maybe a thousand.” “I’ll pay back the doctor. I’ll get a job.” Mom smiled all sad and hugged me hard. Jeez, how stupid was I? What kind of job can a reservation Indian boy get? I was too young to deal blackjack at the casino, there were only about fifteen green grass lawns on the reservation (and none of their owners outsourced the mowing jobs), and the only paper route was owned by a tribal elder named Wally. And he had to deliver only fifty papers, so his job was more like a hobby. There was nothing I could do to save Oscar. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. So I lay down on the floor beside him and patted his head and whispered his name for hours. Then Dad came home from wherever and had one of those long talks with Mom, and they decided something without me. And then Dad pulled down his rifle and bullets from the closet. “Junior,” he said. “Carry Oscar outside.” “No!” I screamed. “He’s suffering,” Dad said. “We have to help him.” “You can’t do it!” I shouted. I wanted to punch my dad in the face. I wanted to punch him in the nose and make him bleed. I wanted to punch him in the eye and make him blind. I wanted to kick him in the balls and make him pass out. I was hot mad. Volcano mad. Tsunami mad. Dad just looked down at me with the saddest look in his eyes. He was crying. He looked weak. I wanted to hate him for his weakness. I wanted to hate Dad and Mom for our poverty. I wanted to blame them for my sick dog and for all the other sickness in the world. But I can’t blame my parents for our poverty because my mother and father are the twin suns around which I orbit and my world would EXPLODE without them.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  SA: It’s going to happen. And also in the Native American world, the Internet has made the tribalism and the tribal peer pressure even greater. The movie is going to become a big thing, a big cultural moment. And I can’t even imagine the ways in which it’s going to be judged harshly by the Native American intellectual world, who are going to be nitpicking it. I think of Thunder Boy Jr. , my picture book which was published, and one page was about a kid dreaming of a powwow and there were critiques that it wasn’t an accurate representation of a powwow because there were three drums and animals were drumming. There’re not three drums at a powwow. JW: Do you know how hard it is to teach an animal to drum, to keep the same rhythm? SA: [ Laughs ] So at readings, I’ve been mocking those Native American critics, those fundamentalists, by saying, “I have to speak to all you non-Natives in the crowd that if you do happen to attend a powwow expecting—because of my picture book—to see a bear, a coyote, and a snake drumming, it’s not going to happen. Now, you might see three drummers nicknamed Bear, Coyote, and Snake, but you’re not going to see the actual animals, so I’m sorry for that cultural misrepresentation. I’m sorry if I’ve given you a stereotypical racist example of what could happen at a powwow.” True Diary got some of that also ten years ago, but the culture has changed so dramatically in terms of not just judging non-Native representations of Native-ness, but harshly judging Native representations of ourselves. This is my story, this stuff actually happened to me, and I get judged for telling the story of the real-life decisions I made. JW: I wondered about that, that’s another thing in the last decade, if Native American representations in films and books have changed in some way, or if those battles are still fought in the same way. SA: We’re still underrepresented in every art form. You know, I was in New York recently and doing an interview, we’re in MoMA, that was part of the interview, and I was walking through MoMA, and I said every museum in the country could also be called the Museum That Excludes Native American Thought. That could be the subtitle of every museum in the country. So the fact remains that we are not seen as contemporary. And the sneaky thing about colonialism is that I think far too many indigenous peoples don’t think of themselves as being contemporary. In fact, they all too often romanticize their own past. I think nostalgia is a terminal condition among the indigenous.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  But I figured I’d just look like a terrified idiot having an arm seizure. “Hey, Chief,” Roger said. “You want to hear a joke?” “Sure,” I said. “Did you know that Indians are living proof that niggers fuck buffalo?” I felt like Roger had kicked me in the face. That was the most racist thing I’d ever heard in my life. Roger and his friends were laughing like crazy. I hated them. And I knew I had to do something big. I couldn’t let them get away with that shit. I wasn’t just defending myself. I was defending Indians, black people, and buffalo. So I punched Roger in the face. He wasn’t laughing when he landed on his ass. And he wasn’t laughing when his nose bled like red fireworks. I struck some fake karate pose because I figured Roger’s gang was going to attack me for bloodying their leader. But they just stared at me. They were shocked . “You punched me,” Roger said. His voice was thick with blood. “I can’t believe you punched me.” He sounded insulted. He sounded like his poor little feelings had been hurt. I couldn’t believe it. He acted like he was the one who’d been wronged. “You’re an animal,” he said. I felt brave all of a sudden. Yeah, maybe it was just a stupid and immature school yard fight. Or maybe it was the most important moment of my life. Maybe I was telling the world that I was no longer a human target. “You meet me after school right here,” I said. “Why?” he asked. I couldn’t believe he was so stupid. “Because we’re going to finish this fight.” “You’re crazy,” Roger said. He got to his feet and walked away. His gang stared at me like I was a serial killer, and then they followed their leader. I was absolutely confused. I had followed the rules of fighting. I had behaved exactly the way I was supposed to behave. But these white boys had ignored the rules. In fact, they followed a whole other set of mysterious rules where people apparently DID NOT GET INTO FISTFIGHTS. “Wait,” I called after Roger. “What do you want?” Roger asked. “What are the rules?” “What rules?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just stood there red and mute like a stop sign. Roger and his friends disappeared. I felt like somebody had shoved me into a rocket ship and blasted me to a new planet. I was a freaky alien and there was absolutely no way to get home. Grandmother Gives Me Some Advice I went home that night completely confused. And terrified. If I’d punched an Indian in the face, then he would have spent days plotting his revenge.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The political disorder of Europe affected the church and paralyzed its efforts for good. The papacy itself lost all independence and dignity, and became the prey of avarice, violence, and intrigue, a veritable synagogue of Satan. It was dragged through the quagmire of the darkest crimes, and would have perished in utter disgrace had not Providence saved it for better times. Pope followed pope in rapid succession, and most of them ended their career in deposition, prison, and murder. The rich and powerful marquises of Tuscany and the Counts of Tusculum acquired control over the city of Rome and the papacy for more than half a century. And what is worse (incredibile, attamen verum), three bold and energetic women of the highest rank and lowest character, Theodora the elder (the wife or widow of a Roman senator), and her two daughters, Marozia and Theodora, filled the chair of St. Peter with their paramours and bastards. These Roman Amazons combined with the fatal charms of personal beauty and wealth, a rare capacity for intrigue, and a burning lust for power and pleasure. They had the diabolical ambition to surpass their sex as much in boldness and badness as St. Paula and St. Eustachium in the days of Jerome had excelled in virtue and saintliness. They turned the church of St. Peter into a den of robbers, and the residence of his successors into a harem. And they gloried in their shame. Hence this infamous period is called the papal Pornocracy or Hetaerocracy.275 Some popes of this period were almost as bad as the worst emperors of heathen Rome, and far less excusable. Sergius III., the lover of Marozia (904–911), opened the shameful succession. Under the protection of a force of Tuscan soldiers he appeared in Rome, deposed Christopher who had just deposed Leo V., took possession of the papal throne, and soiled it with every vice; but he deserves credit for restoring the venerable church of the Lateran, which had been destroyed by an earthquake in 896 and robbed of invaluable treasures.276 After the short reign of two other popes, John X., archbishop of Ravenna, was elected, contrary to all canons, in obedience to the will of Theodora, for the more convenient gratification of her passion (914–928).277 He was a man of military ability and daring, placed himself at the head of an army—the first warrior among the popes—and defeated the Saracens. He then announced the victory in the tone of a general. He then engaged in a fierce contest for power with Marozia and her lover or husband, the Marquis Alberic I. Unwilling to yield any of her secular power over Rome, Marozia seized the Castle of St. Angelo, had John cast into prison and smothered to death, and raised three of her creatures, Leo VI., Stephen VII. (VIII.), and at last John XI, her own (bastard) son of only twenty-one years, successively to the papal chair (928–936).278

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The Council of Toledo, held in 675, declared in the preface to the Confession of Faith, that Christ is the Son of God by, nature, not by adoption.648 But about a century afterwards Elipandus, the aged Archbishop of Toledo, and primate of that part of Spain which was under Mohammedan rule, endeavored to modify the orthodox doctrine by drawing a distinction between a natural and an adopted sonship of Christ, and by ascribing the former to his divine, the latter to his human nature. He wished to save the full humanity of Christ, without, however, denying his eternal divinity. Some historians assert that he was influenced by a desire to avoid the Mohammedan objection to the divinity of Christ;649 but the conflict of the two religions was too strong to admit of any compromise. He may have read Nestorian writings.650 At all events, he came to similar conclusions. Having little confidence in his own opinions, Elipandus consulted Felix, bishop of Urgel651 in Catalonia, in that part of Spain which, since 778, was incorporated with the dominion of Charlemagne. Felix was more learned and clear-headed than Elipandus, and esteemed, even by his antagonist Alcuin, for his ability and piety. Neander regards him as the originator of Adoptionism; at all events, he reduced it to a formulated statement. Confirmed by his friend, Elipandus taught the new doctrine with all the zeal of a young convert, although he was already eighty years of age; and, taking advantage of his influential position, he attacked the orthodox opponents with overbearing violence. Etherius, Bishop of Osma or Othma (formerly his pupil), and Beatus, a presbyter, and after Alcuin abbot at Libana in Asturia,652 took the lead in the defence of the old and the exposure of the new Christology. Elipandus charged them with confounding the natures of Christ, like wine and water, and with scandalous immorality, and pronounced the anathema on them. Pope Hadrian, being informed of these troubles, issued a letter in 785 to the orthodox bishops of Spain, warning them against the new doctrine as rank Nestorianism.653 But the letter had no effect; the papal authority plays a subordinate role in this whole controversy. The Saracen government, indifferent to the theological disputes of its Christian subjects, did not interfere. But when the Adoptionist heresy, through the influence of Felix, spread in the French portion of Spain, and even beyond the Pyrenees into Septimania, creating a considerable commotion among the clergy, the Emperor Charlemagne called a synod to Regensburg (Ratisbon) in Bavaria, in 792, and invited the Bishop of Urgel to appear, that his case might be properly investigated. The Synod condemned Adoptionism as a renewal of the Nestorian heresy. Felix publicly and solemnly recanted before the Synod, and also before Pope Hadrian, to whom he was sent. But on his return to Spain he was so much reproached for his weakness, that, regardless of his solemn oath, he yielded to the entreaties of his friends, and re-affirmed his former opinions.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Not reconciliation; internally each kept the hatred for the other, but it was absolutely necessary for the moment to end the scene in some way, and life began again as before. These scenes, and even worse, came now once a week, now every month, now every day. And invariably the same incidents. Once I was absolutely resolved to fly, but through some inconceivable weakness I remained. “Such were the circumstances in which we were living when the man came. The man was bad, it is true. But what! No worse than we were.” CHAPTER XXII. “All that day I did not speak to my wife. I could not. Her proximity excited such hatred that I feared myself. At the table she asked me, in presence of the children, when I was to start upon a journey. I was to go the following week to an assembly of the Zemstvo, in a neighboring locality. I named the date. She asked me if I would need anything for the journey. I did not answer. I sat silent at the table, and silently I retired to my study. In those last days she never entered my study, especially at that hour. Suddenly I heard her steps, her walk, and then a terribly base idea entered my head that, like the wife of Uri, she wished to conceal a fault already committed, and that it was for this reason that she came to see me at this unseasonable hour. ‘Is it possible,’ thought I, ‘that she is coming to see me?’ On hearing her step as it approached: ‘If it is to see me that she is coming, then I am right.’ “An inexpressible hatred invaded my soul. The steps drew nearer, and nearer, and nearer yet. Would she pass by and go on to the other room? No, the hinges creaked, and at the door her tall, graceful, languid figure appeared. In her face, in her eyes, a timidity, an insinuating expression, which she tried to hide, but which I saw, and of which I understood the meaning. I came near suffocating, such were my efforts to hold my breath, and, continuing to look at her, I took my cigarette, and lighted it. “‘What does this mean? One comes to talk with you, and you go to smoking.’ “And she sat down beside me on the sofa, resting against my shoulder. I recoiled, that I might not touch her. “‘I see that you are displeased with what I wish to play on Sunday,’ said she. “‘I am not at all displeased,’ said I. “‘Can I not see?’ “‘Well, I congratulate you on your clairvoyance. Only to you every baseness is agreeable, and I abhor it.’ “‘If you are going to swear like a trooper, I am going away.’ “‘Then go away. Only know that, if the honor of the family is nothing to you, to me it is dear.

• From Manhunt (2022)

  In the park around the amphitheater’s tiered concrete bowl, a flock of mourning doves swept from one maple to another in a rush of iridescent feathers. A few of the boys looked up at the disturbance, but most kept their eyes on Teach. A few mothers sat in the audience. More waited back at the trucks. This was something for the sissies, the ladyboys, the not-quite-men who were all that remained of the patriarchy. Ramona had seen Teach speak to them before, in Philly and in Baltimore and once in Long Island, across the Sound from the haunted wreckage of the city, and the mothers seldom came. Maybe they didn’t like it, thinking of what else their sons might have been. “A male body is a time bomb,” she continued. “The male temperament inclines you to toss that bomb from hand to hand, to take foolish risks, to behave without thought to the greater consequences. No matter how real your girlhood, if you tell yourself you’ve had one, may feel, you have been raised as men. You have been raised to brutalize, to steal, to disregard the women who raised you and sacrificed their own lives to protect yours.” Her breath plumed in the cold air. She leaned forward over the podium. “You may think that you’ve remade yourself, that believing in your own womanhood makes you a woman, but between your legs is a weapon of war that has terrorized us for a hundred thousand years.” Some of them were getting up and leaving now. The Legion women at the exits would note their names. Ramona remembered doing that in Rockaway, making sure the kids who left saw her with her notepad. Making sure they knew that they were being watched. She scanned the faces of the crowd, thinking back on those other boys, frightened and angry and resentful as they fled the movie theater where they’d held the rally. Acne and baby fat. Greasy hair and blackheads. They might have been the same crowds, unstuck from time. Just make a list, Molly had told her that morning over trail mix and instant coffee in the ruined lobby of a Marriott. Most of them wise up, check in with our people, take the deal. What about the rest? They know the stakes, kid. You want something to be sad about, think what the ones we don’t get do to your sisters. “You can go, of course,” said Teach, her deep voice mild. “You can tell yourself, ‘What does this transphobic cunt know?’ and walk out of here.

• From Between Us

  In my cultural context, being angry is acceptable under these circumstances. Communicating to my husband that I am angry may not be pleasant in the moment, but it tells him to respect me, and ultimately may result in a more honest and satisfying relationship between us, one in which both of us get our needs met. The act of nonacceptance can be “right” when the relationship goal is that both partners express their own needs, and that each makes sure that their individual goals are met. Anger is considered a useful and normal, if not pleasant, emotion in many Western European and American contexts. In adolescence, anger and conflict are often accepted as necessary steps towards the important developmental goal of independence (see chapter 3). Even beyond adolescence, anger has a good role to play in a variety of relationships, private and public: it sets clear boundaries in both. It is the “normal” response to goal-blockage or frustration: a representative study of middle-aged U.S. Americans reportedly acted angry more often, the more frustration they met. Anger has not always been an acceptable emotion, not even in the United States. In the nineteenth-century Victorian era, women’s selfless love was the cornerstone of marriage. Had I been a Victorian woman, I would have shouldered the inconvenience of my husband being late without ever becoming angry. My dignity would have consisted of meeting my role obligations and serving my husband selflessly. I would have had no reason, but also no justification, for being angry. And the slightest reference to anger might have prompted condemnation. Before the end of the seventeenth century, Western diarists had difficulty describing themselves as angry; they lacked the entitlement that is foundational to anger. Roger Lowe, a seventeenth-century shopkeeping apprentice who kept a diary, described many situations that were noxious and arousing, but he never described himself as angry. Some of his most difficult interactions were with his master, who did not do much to teach him the art of shopkeeping: “I thought it sad for me to be ingaged 9 yeares . . . to sell my Master’s ware . . . and get no knowledge.” When his master promises and then refuses to give him a new set of clothes, he also describes his feelings as grief: “soe I would have none and parted with grieve.” Grief is also his go-to emotion in situations with equals: A woman starts some malicious gossip about him, and he is “in some greefe” about it. Lowe does not see himself as angry, because anger was not “right.” God could be angry, but ordinary citizens could not. Entitlement and nonacceptance were not acceptable relationship acts. Instead, Roger Lowe and his contemporaries pray to the Lord to help them “walk humbly.”

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  “I had a flight booked, Senna. On Christmas Day. I was supposed to leave that morning and go home to see my family. I was on my way to the airport when I turned my car around and went home. I don’t fucking know why I did it. I just felt like I needed to stay. I went for a jog to clear my head and there you were, running out of the trees.” I stare at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Would you have believed me?” “Believed what? That you went for a jog instead of hopping on a plane?” He leans forward. “No. Don’t make me feel stupid for thinking that there is purpose. We aren’t animals. Life isn’t random. I was supposed to be there.” “And I was supposed to get raped? So that we could meet? Because that’s what you’re saying. If life isn’t random then it was in someone’s plan for that bastard to do what he did to me!” I am out of breath, my chest heaving. Isaac licks his lips. “Maybe it was in someone’s plan for me to be there for you…” “To keep me alive,” I finish. “No. I didn’t say—” “Yes, that’s exactly what you’re saying. My savior, sent to keep the pathetic, sniveling, Senna from killing herself.” “Senna!” he slams his fist on the table, and I jump. “When we found each other we were both pretty dead and defeated. Something grew despite that.” He shakes his head. “You breathed life back into me. It was instinct for me to be there with you. I didn’t want to save you, I just didn’t know how to leave you.” There is a long pause. Not even Nick did that. Because Nick didn’t love me unconditionally. He loved me so long as I was his muse. So long as I gave him something to believe in. “Isaac…” his name falls flat. There is something I want to say but I don’t know what it is. There is no real point in saying anything at all. Isaac is married and our situation leaves little room for anything but survival. “I need to go get some wood,” I announce. He smiles sadly, shakes his head. I cook dinner that night. Red meat; I don’t know what kind it is until I smell it in the skillet and know it’s some type of game. Who took the time to hunt these animals for us? Bag them? Freeze them?

• From Going Clear (2013)

  It’s also a crime.” “I think you’re really missing the issue, Ted, because my point is this: that man represents himself as an objective reporter. Here he is on record a full three years before he wrote this article, stating that he felt Scientologists should be kidnapped to change their religion. “Second of all,” Miscavige continued, “let’s look at this article, and let’s not fool ourselves. It wasn’t an objective piece. It was done at the behest of Eli Lilly,” the pharmaceutical manufacturer. “They were upset because of the damage we had caused to their killer drug Prozac.” “I’m sure you have evidence of that,” Koppel said. “You have affidavits?” “Let me tell you what else I have—” “You have affidavits?” “From them? Of course not. You think they’d admit it?” Miscavige said. “We put in a call to Eli Lilly. Their response was, ‘We can neither confirm nor deny.’ ” 1 In Sawyer’s report there was a brief clip of Hubbard telling his followers, “I was up in the Van Allen Belt. This is factual. And I don’t know why they’re scared of the Van Allen Belt, because it’s simply hot. You’d be surprised how warm space is.” Koppel observed, “When I hear about a man talking about having been taken out to the Van Allen space radiation belt or space ships that were essentially the same thing as the DC-8, I’ve got to tell you, I mean, if we’re talking about this man’s credibility, that certainly raises some questions in my mind.” Miscavige said that Hubbard’s quote had been taken out of context. “Take a minute, if you would, and see if you can put it into context for us so that it does not sound ridiculous,” Koppel said. “Okay,” said Miscavige. “I want you to take the Catholic Church and take right now and explain to me, to make sense that the Virgin Mary was a virgin, scientifically impossible, unless we’re talking about something ...” He trailed off, then said, “Okay, I’ll be like you, I’ll be the cynic. If we’re talking about artificial insemination, how could that be? If you’re talking about going to Heaven, except we have a space shuttle going out there, we have the Apollo going out there, you do that.

• From The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007)

  I felt inspired. Of course, my parents and grandmother were in shock. They thought my sister and I were going absolutely crazy. But I thought we were being warriors, you know? And a warrior isn’t afraid of confrontation. So I went to school the next day and walked right up to Gordy the Genius White Boy. “Gordy,” I said. “I need to talk to you.” “I don’t have time,” he said. “Mr. Orcutt and I have to debug some PCs. Don’t you hate PCs? They are sickly and fragile and vulnerable to viruses. PCs are like French people living during the bubonic plague.” Wow, and people thought I was a freak. “I much prefer Macs, don’t you?” he asked. “They’re so poetic.” This guy was in love with computers. I wondered if he was secretly writing a romance about a skinny, white boy genius who was having sex with a half-breed Apple computer. “Computers are computers,” I said. “One or the other, it’s all the same.” Gordy sighed. “So, Mr. Spirit,” he said. “Are you going to bore me with your tautologies all day or are you going to actually say something?” Tautologies? What the heck were tautologies? I couldn’t ask Gordy because then he’d know I was an illiterate Indian idiot. “You don’t know what a tautology is, do you?” he asked. “Yes, I do,” I said. “Really, I do. Completely, I do.” “You’re lying.” “No, I’m not.” “Yes, you are.” “How can you tell?” “Because your eyes dilated, your breathing rate increased a little bit, and you started to sweat.” Okay, so Gordy was a human lie detector machine, too. “All right, I lied,” I said. “What is a tautology?” Gordy sighed again. I HATED THAT SIGH! I WANTED TO PUNCH THAT SIGH IN THE FACE! “A tautology is a repetition of the same sense in different words,” he said. “Oh,” I said. What the hell was he talking about? “It’s a redundancy.” “Oh, you mean, redundant, like saying the same thing over and over but in different ways?” “Yes.” “Oh, so if I said something like, ‘Gordy is a dick without ears and an ear without a dick,’ then that would be a tautology.” Gordy smiled. “That’s not exactly a tautology, but it is funny. You have a singular wit.” I laughed. Gordy laughed, too. But then he realized that I wasn’t laughing WITH him. I was laughing AT him. “What’s so funny?” he asked. “I can’t believe you said ‘singular wit.’ That’s sounds like fricking British or something.” “Well, I am a bit of an Anglophile.” “An Anglophile? What’s an Angophile?” “It’s someone who loves Mother England.” God, this kid was an eighty-year-old literature professor trapped in the body of a fifteen-year-old farm boy. “Listen, Gordy,” I said. “I know you’re a genius and all. But you are one weird dude.” “I’m quite aware of my differences. I wouldn’t classify them as weird.” “Don’t get me wrong. I think weird is great.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  I'd complain no more; the unique consolation which may remain to the luckless one bred up in this den of savage beasts, his one comfort is the hope of leaving it soon. The next day I heard nothing and resolved to abandon myself to Providence, I languished and would touch no food. The day after that, Cardoville came to question me; I could not repress a shudder upon beholding the nonchalance wherewith that scoundrel walked in to execute his judiciary duties Ä he, Cardoville, the most villainous of mortals, he who, contrary to every article of the justice in which he was cloaked, had just so cruelly abused my innocence and exploited my misery; it was in vain I pled my cause, the dishonest man's artfulness devised more crimes than I could invent defenses; when all the charges had been well established in the view of this iniquitous judge, and when the case was made, he had the impudence to ask me whether I knew in Lyon one Monsieur de Saint-Florent, a wealthy and estimable citizen; I answered that I knew him, yes. "Excellent," said Cardoville, "no more is needed. This Monsieur de Saint-Florent, whom you declare you know, also has a perfect knowledge of you; he has deposed that he saw you in a band of thieves, that you were the first to steal his money and his pocket- book. He further deposes that your comrades wished to spare his life, that you recommended they take it from him; nevertheless, he managed to escape. Saint-Florent adds that, several years later, having recognized you in Lyon, he yielded to your importunings and permitted you to come to pay him a call at his home upon condition you would give him your word to behave well in future and that, while he was delivering a lecture on manners to you, while he was seeking to persuade you to persist along the paths of righteousness, you carried insolence and crime to the point of choosing these moments of kindness to steal a watch and one hundred louis he had left lying upon the mantel...." And, profiting from the resentment and anger such atrocious calumnies provoked in me, Cardoville ordered the court clerk to write that my silence and my facial expressions were ample acknowledgment of my guilt and were tantamount to a confession.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  11 “I’d like to start a religion”: Eshbach, Over My Shoulder , p. 125. Hubbard allegedly made this remark in 1948 or 1949. Arnie Lerma, a former Scientologist who maintains an anti-Scientology website, compiled a list of nine witnesses who said that they heard Hubbard make similar claims; www.lermanet.com/reference/hubbard-start-a-religion.htm . Hubbard’s son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr., said, “He told me and a lot of other people that the way to make a million was to start a religion.” Allan Sonnenschein, “Inside the Church of Scientology: An Exclusive Interview with L. Ron Hubbard, Jr.,” Penthouse , June 1983. Sara Northrup recalled that Hubbard “kept saying ‘If you want to make any money the only way to do it is to make a religion so the government wouldn’t take it all.’ So he thought he could make a religion out of Dianetics.” Sara Elizabeth Hollister (formerly Sara Northrup Hubbard) tapes, Stephen A. Kent Collection on Alternative Religions. 12 “To keep a person on”: Revised Declaration of Hana Whitfield, Church of Scientology v. Steven Fishman and Uwe Geertz , US District Court, Central District of California, Apr. 4, 1994. 13 “Perhaps we could call”: Hubbard letter to Helen O’Brien, “RE CLINIC, HAS,” Apr. 10, 1953. 14 Hubbard incorporated three different churches: Wallis, The Road to Total Freedom , p. 128. 15 The Church of Scientology of California: Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah , pp. 220–21. 16 “many, many reasons”: James Phelan, “Have You Ever Been a Boo-Hoo?” Saturday Evening Post , Mar. 21, 1964. 17 “The goal of Dianetics”: Hubbard, Science of Survival , p. xxxviii. 18 “injected entities”: Hubbard, Scientology: A History of Man , p. 20. 19 “In the bivalve state”:” Ibid., pp. 40–42. 20 “pragmatic, cold, cunning”: Hal Holmes, personal communication. 21 She had flinty blue eyes: Ken Urquhart, “Friendly Recollections of Mary Sue Hubbard,” marysuehubbard.com/ken.shtml . 22 Hubbard was prospering once again: Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah , pp. 226–27. 23 “so knock off the idolizing.”: Interview with Philip Spickler. 24 “It should be taken daily”: Hubbard, All About Radiation , p. 113. 25 much of their time unsupervised: Interview with anonymous former Sea Org member. 26 extensive household staff: Anderson, Report of the Board of Inquiry into Scientology , p. 42. 27 The headline in Garden News: Quoted in Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah , p. 235. 28 “mapping out the bank”: Interview with anonymous former Sea Org member. 29 School was, as usual: Ibid. 30 “What is this ‘Scientology’?”: Ibid. 31 “little old English lady”: Ken Urquhart, “My Friend, the Titan,” IVy 60, Jan. 2003. 32 “Your friends”: Ibid. 33 It was rumored that: Miller, Bare-Faced Messiah , pp. 215–16. 34 “My attention wandered”: Ken Urquhart, “My Friend, the Titan,” IVy 60 (Jan. 2003). 35 “all mental and nervous disorders”: Malko, Scientology , p. 76; Miriam Ottenberg, Evening Star , January 1963. 36 The IRS began an audit: The IRS audit began in 1965.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  On the other hand, the provocation seemed too gross, too flagrant not to give me some thoughts of revenge; the very start of which idea restored me to perfect composure; and delighted as I was with the confused plan of it in my head, I was easily mistress enough of myself to support the part of ignorance I had prescribed to myself; and as all this circle of reflections was instantly over, I stole a tip-toe to the passage door, and opening it with a noise, passed for having that moment come home; and after a short pause, as if to pull off my things, I opened the door into the dining room, where I fund the dowdy blowing the fire, and my faithful shepherd walking about the room, and wistling, as cool and unconcerned as if nothing had happened. I think, however, he had not much to brag of having out-dissembled me: for I kept up, nobly, the character of our sex for art, and went up to him with the same open air of frankness as I had ever received him. He stayed but a little while, made some excuse for not being able to stay the evening with me, and went out. As for the wench, she was now spoiled, at least for my servant; and scarce eight and forty hours were gone round, before her insolence, on what had passed betwen Mr. H.... and her, gave me so fair an occasion to turn her away, at a minute’s warning, that, not to have done it would have been the wonder; so that he could neither disapprove it nor find in it the least reason to suspect my original motive. What became of her afterwards, I know not; but generous as Mr. H.... was, he undoubtedly made her amends: though, I dare answer, that he kept up no further commerce with her of that sort; as his stooping to such a coarse morsel, was only a sudden sally of lust, on seeing a wholesome looking, buxom country wench, and no more strange than hunger, or even a whimsical appetite’s making a fling meal of neck-beef, for change of diet. Had I considered this escapade of Mr. H.... in no more than that light and contented myself with turning away the wench, I had thought and acted right; but, flushed as I was with imaginary wrongs, I should have held Mr. H... to have been cheaply off, if I had not pushed my revenge farther, and repaid him, as exactly as could for the soul of me, in the same coin. Nor was this worthy act of justice long delayed: I had it too much at heart. Mr.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  The defectors we were discussing had not only risen to positions of responsibility within the church; they had also ascended Scientology’s ladder of spiritual accomplishment. I suggested that Scientology didn’t seem to be effective if people at the highest levels of spiritual attainment were actually liars, adulterers, wife beaters, drunks, and embezzlers. “This is a religion,” Davis responded movingly. “It aspires to greatness, hope, humanity, spiritual freedom. To be greater than we are. To rise above our craven, humanoid instincts.” Scientology doesn’t pretend to be perfect, he said, and it shouldn’t be judged on the misconduct of a few apostates. “I haven’t done things like that,” Davis said. “I haven’t suborned perjury, destroyed evidence, lied—contrary to what Paul Haggis says.” He spoke of his frustration with Haggis after his resignation: “If he was so troubled and shaken on the fundamentals of Scientology … then why the hell did he stick around for thirty-five years?” He continued: “Did he stay a closet Scientologist for some career-advancement purpose?” Davis shook his head in disgust. “I think he’s the most hypocritical person in the world.” He said he felt that he’d done all he could in dealing with Haggis over the issue of Proposition 8. He added that the individual who had made the mistake of listing the San Diego church as a supporter of the initiative—he didn’t divulge his name—had been “disciplined” for it. I asked what that meant. “He was sat down by a staff member of the local organization,” Davis explained. “He got sorted out.” Davis thought I was making too much out of the issue of Suppressive Persons in the piece. “Do you know how many people, grand total, there are in the world who have been declared Suppressive?” he asked rhetorically. “A couple of thousand over the years. At most.” He said that in fact many had been restored to good standing. “Yet again, you’re falling into the trap of defining our religion by the people who’ve left.” Hubbard had said that only 2.5 percent of the human population were Suppressive, but one of the problems I faced in writing about Scientology, especially its early days, is that the preponderance of people who had been close to Hubbard had either quietly left the church or been declared Suppressive. Some, like Pat Broeker, had gone underground. Many others, like David Mayo, had signed non-disclosure agreements. Those who remained in the church were off-limits to me.8 We discussed the allegations of abuse lodged by many former members against Miscavige. “The only people who will corroborate are their fellow apostates,” Davis said. “They’re a pack of sanctimonious liars.” He produced affidavits from other Scientologists refuting their accusations. He noted that in the tales about Miscavige, the violence always seemed to come out of nowhere. “One would think that if such a thing occurred, which it most certainly did not, there’d have to be a reason,” Davis said. I had wondered about these outbursts as well.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  “I’m interested in the truth.”) The meeting with the Scientology delegation lasted all day. Sandwiches were brought in. Davis and I discussed an assertion that Marty Rathbun had made to me about the OT III creation story. While Hubbard was in exile, Rathbun said, he wrote a memo suggesting an experiment in which ascending Scientologists might skip the OT III level—a memo Rathbun says that Miscavige had ordered destroyed. “Of every allegation that’s in here,” Davis said, waving the binder containing fact-checking queries, “this one would perhaps be, hands down, the absolutely, without question, most libelous.” He explained that the cornerstone of the faith was the writings of the founder. “Mr. Hubbard’s material must be and is applied precisely as written,” Davis said. “It’s never altered. It’s never changed. And there probably is no more heretical or more horrific transgression that you could have in the Scientology religion than to alter the technology.” But hadn’t certain derogatory references to homosexuality found in some editions of Hubbard’s books been changed after his death? Davis agreed that was so, but he maintained that “the current editions are one-hundred-percent, absolutely fully verified as being according to what Mr. Hubbard wrote.” Davis said they were checked against Hubbard’s original dictation. “The extent to which the references to homosexuality have changed are because of mistaken dictation?” I asked. “No, because of the insertion, I guess, of somebody who was a bigot,” Davis replied. “The point is, it wasn’t Mr. Hubbard.” “Somebody put the material in those—” “I can only imagine,” Davis said, cutting me off. “Who would have done it?” “I have no idea.” “Hmm.” “I don’t think it really matters,” Davis said. “The point is that neither Mr. Hubbard nor the church has any opinion on the subject of anyone’s sexual orientation.…” “Someone inserted words that were not his into literature that was propagated under his name, and that’s been corrected now?” I asked, trying to be clear. “Yeah, I can only assume that’s what happened,” Davis said. “And by the way,” he added, referring to Quentin Hubbard, “his son’s not gay.” During his presentation, Davis showed an impressively produced video that portrayed Scientology’s worldwide efforts for literary programs and drug education, the translation of Hubbard’s work into dozens of languages, and the deluxe production facilities at Gold Base. “The real question is who would produce the kind of material we produce and do the kinds of things we do, set up the kind of organizational structure that we set up?” Davis asked. “Or what kind of man, like L. Ron Hubbard, would spend an entire lifetime researching, putting together the kind of material, suffer all the trials and tribulations and go through all the things he went through in his life … or even with the things that we, as individuals, have to go through, as part of the new religion?

• From Going Clear (2013)

  IN THE SHIP’S LOG of December 8, 1968, Hubbard mentions an organization he calls SMERSH, a name taken from James Bond novels. Hubbard describes it as a “hidden government ...that aspired to world domination!” Psychiatry is the dominating force behind this sinister institution. “Recently a check showed that we had never seen or heard of an ‘insane’ person who had not been in their hands,” Hubbard writes. “And the question arises, is there any insanity at all? That is not manufactured by them?” He said that SMERSH had made one big mistake, however; it attacked Scientology. He vowed revenge. Hubbard had been wooing a young Florida woman, Catherine “Kit” Harrington (a pseudonym), to join the Sea Org. She had come from a prominent family in the south and had studied in Europe. She spoke French, German, and Spanish. She had admirable social skills; moreover, she was a redhead, always a stamp of pre-eminence in Hubbard’s book. Finally, Kit agreed to join the Royal Scotman in 1969, just as the ship was being expelled from Corfu. She was soon appointed to the “Missionaires Elite Unit.” Hubbard already had an assignment in mind for her. Hubbard set a course for Cagliari, on the Italian island of Sardinia. On the way, he personally tutored her in his plan to take over the World Federation for Mental Health, which was headquartered in Geneva. Hubbard had learned that the organization had never bothered to actually incorporate itself in Switzerland. His grand idea was to set up an office in Bern, the capital, posing as an American delegation of the WFMH bent on reforming the organization from within. The true scheme was to establish a presence in the country long enough to incorporate as the WFMH; and then, posing as the actual mental health organization, go to the United Nations with a plan for enforced euthanization of the “useless or unfixable” elements of society. Hubbard predicted that the outcry that would surely follow would turn the world against the WFMH. It would be a powerful strike against his most formidable enemy, SMERSH. All the way to Sardinia Hubbard drilled Kit in the history of the health organization, its former presidents, and the policies it supported, such as electroshock therapy. Kit didn’t need to be persuaded about the dangers of that practice; her own mother had been subjected to electroshock in the 1940s, without her consent, as treatment for postpartum depression. After that, her mother suffered from amnesia and a fear of change and losing control. By the time the Royal Scotman docked in Cagliari, Kit was well schooled. She and another Sea Org member, Marjorie Johnson (a pseudonym), a trained Shakespearian actress from Cincinnati, traveled to Bern. They set up an office, purchased furniture, and covered the walls with phony certificates. They had business cards and stationery printed. Then they filed papers for incorporation as the World Federation for Mental Health.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Hincmar, archbishop of Rheims, a most influential, proud and intolerant prelate, was ill-disposed towards Gottschalk, because he had been somewhat irregularly (though not invalidly) ordained to the priesthood by a rural bishop (chorepiscopus), Rigbold of Rheims, without the knowledge of his own bishop of Soissons, and gone on travels without permission of his abbot.680 He treated the poor monk without mercy. Gottschalk was summoned before a synod of Chiersy (in palatio Carisiaco)681 in the spring of 849. He refused to recant, and was condemned as an incorrigible heretic, deposed from the priesthood, publicly scourged for obstinacy, according to the rule of St. Benedict, compelled to burn his books, and shut up in the prison of a convent in the province of Rheims.682 According to the report of eye-witnessses, he was scourged "most atrociously" and "nearly to death," until half dead he threw his book, which contained the proofs of his doctrine from the Scriptures and the fathers, into the fire. It is a relief to learn that St. Remigius, archbishop of Lyons, expressed his horror at the "unheard of impiety and cruelty" of this treatment of the miserabilis monachus, as Gottschalk is often called by his friends. In his lonely prison at Hautvilliers, the condemned monk composed two confessions, a shorter and a longer one, in which he strongly re-asserted his doctrine of a double predestination. He appealed to Pope Nicolas, who seems to have had some sympathy with him, and demanded a reinvestigation, which, however, never took place. He also offered, in reliance on the grace of God, to undergo the fiery ordeal before the king, the bishops and monks, to step successively into four cauldrons of boiling water, oil, fat and pitch, and then to walk through a blazing pile; but nobody could be found to accept the challenge. Hincmar refused to grant him in his last sickness the communion and Christian burial) except on condition of full recantation.683 Gottschalk scorned the condition, died in his unshaken faith, and was buried in unconsecrated soil after an imprisonment of twenty years (868 or 869). He had the courage of his convictions. His ruling idea of the unchangeableness of God reflected itself in his inflexible conduct. His enemies charged him with vanity, obstinacy, and strange delusions. Jesuits (Sirmond, Peteau, Cellot) condemn him and his doctrine; while Calvinists and Jansenists (Ussher, Hottinger, Mauguin) vindicate him as a martyr to the truth. § 122. The Contending Theories on Predestination, and the Victory of Semi-Augustinianism.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I look down at the smooth wood tabletop. Pressing down, I carve the line we made deeper. I wriggle the blade around a little bit. It feels good. I do it some more. I add more lines, more curves. My movement becomes more frantic each time the knife meets the table. He must think I’ve gone mad. But even if he does, he doesn’t move. He stands behind my shoulder as if he’s there to supervise my assault. When I’m done I toss the knife away from me. Both hands are pressed against my carvings as I lean over the table. I’m breathing hard, like I’ve just run six miles. I have, emotionally. Isaac reaches down and touches the word I’ve made. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even know what it said until I watched his fingers trace it. Surgeon’s fingers. Drummer’s fingers. HATE “Who do you hate?” he asks. “I don’t know.” I do a short spin into his chest, forgetting that he’s right behind me. He grabs the tops of my arms and clutches me against him. Then he wraps his arm around my head, forcing my face against his chest. The other is circling my back. He holds me and I shake. And I swear … I swear he’s just healed me a little bit. “I still see you, Senna,” he says into my hair. “You can’t ever stop seeing what you recognize as part of yourself.” A week later, Landscape stops playing. I am stepping out of my shallow, lukewarm bath when her voice cuts off in the middle of the chorus. I wrap a towel around myself and dart out of the bathroom to find Isaac. He’s in the kitchen when I come careening around the corner still clutching the towel to my dripping body. We stare at each other for a good two minutes, waiting for it to start up again, thinking there is a kink in the system. But it never comes back. It feels like a relief until the silence kicks in. True, deafening silence. We are so used to the noise, it takes a few days to acclimate to the loss of it. That’s what it’s like to be a prisoner of anything. You want your freedom until you get it, then you feel bare without your chains. I wonder if we ever get out of here, will we feel the loss? It sounds like a joke, but I know how the human mind works. Two days later the power goes. We are in darkness. Not just in the house. November has come. The sun will not rise on Alaska for two months. It’s the ultimate darkness. There is nowhere to find light, except crouched in front of the fire as our logs dwindle. That’s when I know we’re going to die.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  In this political message too were the overtones of a holy war. This war of the American nation was directed by God himself. “All of you—all in this generation of our military—have taken up the highest calling of history,” he proclaimed, quoting the Prophet Isaiah: “And wherever you go, you carry a message of hope—a message that is ancient and ever new. To the captives, ‘come out’—and to those in darkness ‘be free.’ ” 90 Use of this biblical verse, which Jesus had quoted to describe his own mission, 91 revealed the messianic streak of the Bush administration. It was ironic that Bush announced the liberation of captives. In October 2003, the media published photographs of U.S. military police abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Saddam’s notorious prison; later, almost identical cruelty was shown to have taken place in British- run prisons. These photographs were a cruder vision of the official U.S. media presentation of the Iraq War. Hooded, naked, writhing on the ground, the Iraqis were depicted as dehumanized, craven, bestial, and utterly dominated by America’s superior power. The cocky stance of the low-ranking GIs implied: “We are high, they are low; we are clean, they are dirty; we are strong and brave, they are weak and cowardly; we are lordly, they are virtually animals; we are God’s chosen, they are estranged from everything divine.” 92 “The photos are us,” the late Susan Sontag declared. Nazis were not the only people to commit atrocities; Americans do so too, “when they are led to believe that the people they are torturing belong to an inferior, despicable race or religion.” 93 Clearly the GIs saw nothing untoward in their behavior and had no fear of punishment. “It was just for fun,” said Private Lynndie England, who had appeared in the photographs walking a prisoner on a leash like a dog. They behaved in this way, the official investigation concluded, “simply because they could.” 94 Within a month of Bush’s carrier speech, Iraq had descended into chaos. Most Iraqis gave no credence to Bush’s exalted rhetoric; instead they were convinced that the United States simply wanted their oil and intended to use their country as a military base from which to defend Israel. They may have been glad to get rid of Saddam, but they did not regard the American and British troops as liberators. “They’re walking over my heart,” said one Baghdad resident. “Liberate us from what?” demanded another. “We have [our own] traditions, morals, customs.” 95 The Iraqi cleric Sheikh Muhammad Bashir complained that if the Americans had brought freedom to the country, it was not for the Iraqis: It is the freedom of occupying soldiers in doing what they like....