My Joke Proposal for World Peace

I recently read a very lengthy and thoroughly engrossing article in The New Yorker centering on a well-known world religion.  This religion has the following characteristics, among others:

     --  It believes in a very colorful founding mythology that is centered on a single charismatic leading figure.

     --  It believes that a single book has all the answers and provides a complete, consistent, and correct guide to all aspects of life and death.

     --  It has millions of believers worldwide.

     --  Some of its acolytes behave as though they have been brainwashed.

     --  Acolytes are willing to suffer all manner of deprivation and degradation for their faith. 

     --  It has a single leader and sub-leaders whose edicts are regarded as infallible and must be followed.

    --   Most significantly:   It cannot stand the slightest criticism of its tenets.  Even the most innocuous questioning of its beliefs or tactics, even parody or other humorous treatment, calls forth a variety of well-organized and severe defensive measures.  These measures include mob action, lawsuits, propagandistic publicity, accusations of discrimination, and even violence.  It sustains itself largely on instilling in its acolytes the belief that the rest of the world is against it, and that those who are not acolytes are condemned.  Believers are expected to sacrifice enormously to advance this religion.

Nope, not Islam.  Nope, not Radical Islam, if that is a different thing from Vanilla Islam (and who the heck knows?  But that's another article). 

You've guessed by now.


A-yup.  Scientology.  (You can find the article here.)

Unhinged Celebrity Scientologist Tom Cruise declaring
his love for Katie Holmes to an apparently hissing Oprah

But read that list again.  It could have been Radical Islam, couldn't it?   Especially that last bit about how touchy-touchy they are about, oh, you know, opposing views in a free society?

Unhappy Muslim



So here's my proposal:

Get the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and Howard Stern's listeners (that last population might be the most effective) to infiltrate Scientology and Radical Islam in large numbers.  Among Scientologists, they spread the idea that the greatest threat to Scientology is Radical Islam, that in fact R.I. has an active program to attack Scientology from without and within, all over the world.

 

Scientology Leader and Accused Serial Batterer Richard Miscavage


You're way ahead of me:  At the same time, the R.I. infiltrators spread the same information about the threat to Islamic fundamentalism represented by Scientology's highly-organized, insanely-motivated worldwide cadres. 

These efforts can be supported by fake websites, propaganda, YouTube, the possibilities are endless.



And then you stand back and watch these two stupendous international nuisances eliminate one another.

 

An Operating Thetan VII

 Result:  World peace.

Or, if not, at least we can go back to arguing with the Russians and the Chinese, which we seem to know how to do, as opposed to suppressing fascistic and imperialistic religions, which we seem to not. 

If you want a nice tidy Cold War, you really need to be dealing with a better class of international thug.

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