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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Jeff Guinn
Read between
January 21 - January 27, 2020
If she couldn’t be happy, at least she could be different.
You did your homework, learned about every aspect of an issue, and then suggested plans that in some way benefited all sides involved. Essentially, whenever you could, you offered solutions. Then, when you did point out a problem, people who could do something about it listened and were ready to help.
Jones observed to Terri Buford, “Keep them poor and keep them tired, and they’ll never leave.” How well he understood his people.
There were agnostics and atheists in the Temple, attracted by its socialist goals and Jones’s frequent dismissal of the Bible as racist propaganda.
I, as a neo-Pagan occultist for for decades & now as a atheist may have been interested in Jones for this very same reason.
But at either end of the spectrum, not interested enough to join a cult. I might have gone to a meeting or spoken to someone but I wasn't coven, church or group oriented then & I'm even more reclusive now.
Jones ordered the auditorium windows opened, and then commanded everyone to shout “Fuck!” in unison. They did, and Jones insisted that they do it again and they did, finally bellowing the same culturally forbidden epithet over and over for a full minute, with passersby on the sidewalks outside certainly puzzled and probably alarmed by what they heard.
But Harvey became a friend of mine, and I went to his house and spent time with him and his partner and realized that a gay couple was just that, a couple.
The writers asked how these things were possible—and then let disenchanted former Temple members provide the answers. Everyone was identified not only by name, but in accompanying photographs. That made them real to readers, rather than faceless, anonymous bellyachers, and immunized Tracy and Kilduff from potential charges by Jones and Charles Garry that they’d invented some or all of their sources.
Now THAT is gonzo journalism.
My stomach fucking lurched.
All those people's lives immediately were placed in danger.
On Jones’s instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.