My Review of the HBO documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief"

By Tyler Goucher

Reporter

April 22, 2015

Filed under Opinions, Reviews

Bakersfield College Newspaper: The Renegade Rip

In the HBO documentary “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief”, Director Alex Gibney manages to give us an inside look at the controversial religion, which proved to be both interesting and deeply disturbing.

Throughout the course of the 2-hour long documentary, several ex-members are interviewed about their time spent as dedicated followers of the cult-like religion.

Paul Haggis, an award winning Writer/Director, talks about his time as a member of Scientology and how it took him over 20 years to realize just how corrupt and scandalous the leaders of the church were.

Jason Beghe, a seasoned actor, talks about how he went into the religion with a messed up head and came out even more messed up due to the mind games Scientology plays with its esteemed member’s heads.

Even some non-celebrity figures were interviewed in the documentary who were relatively high up in the organization who didn’t see the big picture of Scientology until they wasted years of their life and ridiculous amounts of money to find out they were pretty much studying the mind of a lunatic.

For a lot of ex-members, the story is very similar, in that they were so brainwashed for so long, that it took something very traumatic to snap them out of the spell they were put under by the extremely intelligent and manipulative L Ron Hubbard.

Hubbard was the founder of Scientology, but more important, he was an avid science fiction writer who wrote hundreds of short stories about fantastic ideas regarding mankind’s exploration to the stars and the idea that aliens inhabited the Earth long before we ever did. It’s interesting to think that a lot of what he wrote in his science fiction novels was transferred over to his book of Dianetics, which at the time was pretty much the “bible” of his soon-to-be religion, Scientology.

From the 1950’s to present day, the religion has grown in numbers and has gained a massive amount of celebrity members. The film depicts these members as the main reason why the religion has become such a controversial topic, and also why Scientology is worth billions of dollars. At one point, one of Hubbard’s ex-spouses says that he mentioned several times that “the only way to make real money in this world without the government taking it away from you, is to start a religion.”

And that’s exactly what he does, through many years of fighting the IRS to prove that they are a religious organization that should be tax exempt, the government finally caves and gives them what they want. Although the majority of the money goes toward building more churches and spreading the word of a science fiction writer, the leaders of the church still fight to make sure their public opinion is in a positive light. In fact, the film explains that Scientology, beyond any other religion, will go to considerable lengths to maintain a good public image.

Now I thought I knew a lot about Scientology and the shady nature of it’s so-called religious philosophy, but this film really does dive a lot deeper than I expected. I won’t spoil the details because I believe this is an important film for everyone to watch, but I will say that I have a newfound disgust toward Scientology, it’s founder and some of their oh-so famous members. I give “Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief” 4 out 5 stars.

- See more at: http://www.therip.com/reviews/2015/04/22/going-clear-scientology-and-the-prison-of-belief-sheds-new-light-on-the-religion/#sthash.6Q2isxF6.dpuf

Police Brutality: Beyond the Headlines

Tyler Goucher

Reporter

April 8, 2015

Filed under News, Bakersfield College: The Renegade Rip Newspaper

Recently in the United States, there has been an uprising of police brutality, or at least that’s what the media is portraying.

It has become very popular for these media organizations to flood the airways with fear-mongering material aimed at sparking controversy and backlash, often times only shedding light on the victim’s perspective, rather than giving the viewer an overall unbiased look at what’s really the root cause of most of these violent incidents.

In a recent interview with police Sgt. Joe Grubbs, public information officer for the Bakersfield Police Department, he had some insightful things to say about these recent events.

“What is going on in our nation is the narrative is putting all the blame on the police. There isn’t much of a discussion on different ethnic groups killing each other,” said Grubbs.

Although there hasn’t been many shootings in Kern County, in other locations in the U.S., there have been several cases of deadly force being used in situations where a Taser or some other type of force could have been used.

“Often times, in some of these situations, less lethal force is used,” said Grubbs. “It doesn’t always work for a variety of different reasons, though. Sometimes these devices don’t work or people don’t respond to them, and the officer is left with five seconds to make a rational decision.”

Often, media is blamed for a lot of the way people think about law enforcement. The theory is that if it wasn’t for all the coverage of controversial subject matter, such as unarmed shootings or racial profiling, it is possible that this negative stigma that has been created for the police, may not be as harsh as it is now.

“The media isn’t fully to blame. Law enforcement is somewhat to blame. Not all shootings are 100 percent right. We aren’t doing a good job of educating the community about how law enforcement works and how their training goes,” said Grubbs.

“It goes back to a lack of education in civics. Our education system has a lot to do with it. Officer shootings are almost always preceded by a bad decision made by the person the officer is shooting at.”

Due to all the recent riots in Ferguson and Oakland, as well as other cities and towns in the United States, some Americans believe that we are on the brink of a civil war because more and more civilians are becoming more combative with police officers and authority in general.

“I hope that it doesn’t happen,” said Grubbs. “I don’t see a civil war happening, but I do see somewhat of a national kind of event happening that will cause society to stabilize and come back to its core. And even if that did happen, law enforcement would still be there to do their job, regardless of what public opinion is.”

Some think the problem is within the hiring process of law enforcement and that it breeds corruption. It could also be that along the way, good cops become bad because of the already negative outlook on them by the people they are sworn in to protect.

“I don’t think people come on the force with intentions of becoming corrupt. Through the course of their careers, some officers have become corrupt, though. In most cases they are weeded out quickly,” said Grubbs.

“Police officers take their job very seriously, as well as their responsibilities and role in society very seriously. If these corrupt individuals are found, they are reprimanded or fired very quickly.”

For those who are interested in finding out statistics on police shootings, there is no national database, so the only way to find the information would be to search on Google for the date and location you are inquiring about. For the numbers being as low as they supposedly are, it’s questionable why they make the information so difficult to find.

“There should be a national database, there is a database for California,” Grubb said. “I think that most law enforcement agencies don’t have a problem with that. Most of our shootings are justified, so why would we have a problem hiding that information?”

- See more at: http://www.therip.com/news/2015/04/08/police-brutality-isnt-all-that-it-seems/#sthash.tO5olrVl.dpuf