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Today’s blistering pace of innovation forces manufacturers to choose a strategy: either invent and impose a standard on your industry, or piggyback on someone else’s standard—or be driven into a commercial Siberia in which your products have limited uses and markets. IBM has been the dominant force in the computer industry since its inception. It was IBM’s blue-suited and buttoned-down salespeople who first put mainframes into government offices and corporations. And for nearly two decades IBM faced only weak and disorganized competition. Much of IBM’s monumental success could be traced to its early ability to set—and enforce—a standard for what goes on inside computers. At first it was the hardware that counted most. However, gradually it became clear that software is the most important element in any computer system. So-called “applications programs” were sets of instructions to the machine to perform tasks like accounting or word-processing, printing, displaying graphics, and communicating. However, every computer has built into it a kind of meta-program called an “operating system,” which determines what other kinds of programs it can or cannot run. The key to dominating the computer industry lies in software—without which the machines are inert and useless. However, the key to dominating software is the operating system. And the ultimate lever of control—the key to dominating operating systems—lies in the standards to which they, in turn, are held. It was IBM’s control of these that made it the superpower of the computing World. Despite IBM’s efforts, however, other operating systems have sprung up over the years, from Ada, which is promoted by the U.S. Department of Defense, to Unix, originally offered by AT&T, plus many variations of these. #RandolphHarris 1 of 21

When Apple Computer started the microcomputer revolution in the mid-seventies, it specifically opted to create non-IBM-compatible machines, choosing a different operating system. Today an all-out battle is being fought internationally between IBM and its chief competitors to set the operating systems standard for the future. The struggle is highly technical, with experts arguing with other experts. However, the implication reach far beyond the computers industry itself, and governments see it as directly related to their economic development plans for tomorrow. Because IBM still dominates the field, and because its operating systems constrain users and competitors alike, a London-based organization called X/Open has been set up to create a standard for the operating systems of mini-computers, workstations, and PCs—the newer fields in which IBM is most vulnerable. Originally set up by AT&T, Digital Equipment, and the German Siemens, it now includes Fujitsu as well, all demanding a new standard that is “open,” rather than a barrier to non-IBM equipment. Since then the pressure on IBM has become so strong, it has been compelled to join the group and to pledge, cross its heart, that it will in the future commit itself to “open” policies. Even before this setback had fully sunk in, IBM faced another challenge, this time pitting it directly against Ma Bell, the American Telephone & Telegraph Company. As long as the 1960s, AT&T software engineers had developed an operating system called Unix for their own use. It had certain characteristics that made it attractive to universities and to some of the smaller computer makers. #RandolphHarris 2 of 21

Not yet in the computer business itself, AT&T let them use Unix for pennies. They, in turn, produced their own customized variations of Unix. Since then Unix has become increasingly popular, with Sun Microsoftsystems selling Unix-based machines to the fast-growing workstation market. In a shrewd strategic stroke, AT&T promptly bought into Sun and formed an alliance with Xerox, Unisys, Motorola, and other companies to create a single Unix standard under AT&T’s leadership. Backed by AT&T and these allies, Unix’s growing popularity presented a direct threat to the dominance of IMB and other computer manufacturers with proprietary operating systems. Thus IBM, the new convert to operating-system glasnost, or openness, counterattacked. Faced with the danger that a unified version of Unix would be available on AT&T machines before anyone else’s, IBM now formed its own alliance to fight back. Called the Open Software Foundation, this group now includes DEC, Groupe Bull from France, Siemens and Nixdorf from West Germany, and many others. It is working to formulate its own alternate standard for Unix Charges and countercharges blare from full-page ads in The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times as the battle over computer operating-system standards heats up. Once more the fate of giant corporations and whole industries hinges on a war over standards. Another war over standards we are seeing is with the public pressure to improve safety and prevent accidental cross-contamination of crops. This is a valid war and socially helpful. However, attempts to ban genetically modified (GM) foods altogether are irresponsible and potentially deadly. Even the cofounder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, has charged that the campaign against these foods is based on “fantasy and a complete lack of respect for science and logic.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 21

Despite Luddite opposition, the World is going to move toward the production and use of environmentally safe genetically modified foods and other production of biotechnology. And that, combined with innovations brewing in a dozen other fields, can help crack once and for all the core of poverty on Earth. We know by now that genetic modification (GM) and other biotech methods can increase a crop’s nutritional content. They can reduce the need for fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides. They can help plants grow on arid land or in cold climates. They can radically boost per-acre yield. They can slash costs and increase the value of agricultural output. Until now, GM food crops have been widely grown in only six countries and have been largely limited to soybeans, canola, corn, and cotton because these crops are popular in the West and are commercially profitable. However, this is changing. The Indian Department of Biotechnology sees in the near future large-scale production of transgenically improved cabbage, tomato and potato crops. According to India’s former minister of agriculture, Rajnath Singh, the country also plans genetic research into twelve major poor-World crops, including maize, cassava and papaya. China has recently approved the importation of Monsanto’s genetically modified corn and soybeans, having, according to some, delay until now in order to give its own scientists more time to catch up with the technology. However, some farmers do not want to wait. Strict measures adopted in recent years to tighten control over imports of GM soybeans have failed to stop the growth rate of GM imports. In the first half of 2021, China bought some 22 million tonnes of U.S.A. soybeans. Approximately $7.7 billion USD. More than 70 percent of China’s imported soybeans are genetically modified. #RandolphHarris 4 of 21

This underlines the difficulty of regulating or policing the new tools, especially in regions where governments have little control. However, it hardly invalidates the crying need for them. Recognizing this reality, according to Science, “China is developing the largest plant biotechnology capacity outside North America. Richard Manning, author of Against the Grain, a study of the historical rise and impact of agriculture, reminds us that farmers have been crossbreeding and raising hybrids for centuries—all based on trial, error, and luck. “Now,” he writers, “replace those fuzzy factors with precise information about the role each gene plays in a plant’s makeup. Today, scientists can tease out desire trains on the fly—something that used to take a decade or more to accomplish.” How can mixing chemicals (at least those specializing in synthesis) are doing construction work, and would be amazed that they can accomplish anything without being able to grab parts and put them in place. Chemists, in effect, work with their hands tied behind their backs. Molecular manufacturing can be termed “positional chemistry” or “positional synthesis,” and will give chemists the ability to put molecules where they want them in three-dimensional space. Rather than trying to design puzzle pieces that will stick together properly by themselves when shaken together in a box, chemists will then be able to treat molecules more like bricks to be stacked. The basic principles of chemistry will be the same, but strategies for construction will become far simpler. #RandolphHarris 5 of 21

Without position control, chemists face a problem something like this: Picture a giant glass barrel full of tiny battery-powered drills, buzzing away in all directions, vibrating around in the barrel. Your goal is to take a piece of wood and put a hole in just one specific spot. If you simply throw it in the barrel, it will be drilled haphazardly in many places. To control the process, you must protect all the places you do not want drilled—perhaps by gluing protective pieces of metal over most of the wood surface. This problem—how to protect one part of a molecule while altering another part—has forced chemists to develop ever-cleverer ploys to build larger and larger molecules. If chemists can make molecules, why are they not building fancy molecular machines? Chemists can achieve great things, but have focused much of their effort on duplicating molecules found in nature and then making minor variants. As an example, take palytoxin, a molecule found in a Hawaiian coral. It was so difficult to make in the lab that it has been called “The Mount Everest of synthetic chemistry,” and its synthesis was hailed as a triumph. Other efforts are poured into making small molecules with unusual bonding, or molecules of remarkable symmetry, like “cubane” and “dodecahedrane” (shaped like the Platonic solids they are named after). Chemist, at least in the United States of America, regard themselves as natural scientists even when their life’s work is the construction of molecules by artificial means. Ordinarily, people who build things are called engineers. And indeed, at the University of Tokyo the Department of Synthetic Chemistry is part of the Faculty of Engineering; its chemists are designing molecular switches for storing computer data. Engineering achievements will require work directed at engineering goals. #RandolphHarris 6 of 21

How could chemist move toward building molecular machines? Molecular engineers working toward nanotechnology need a set of molecular building blocks for making large, complex structures. Systematic building-block construction was pioneered by Bruce Merrifield, winner of the 1984 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His approach, known as “solid phase synthesis,” or simply “the Merrifield method,” is used to synthesize the long chain of amino acids that form proteins. In the Merrifield method, cycles of chemical reaction each add one molecular building block to the end of a chain anchored to a solid support. This happens in a parallel to each of the trillions of identical chains, building up trillions of molecular objects with a particular sequence of building blocks. Chemists routinely use the Merrifield method to make molecules larger than playtoxin, and related techniques are used for making DNA in so-called gene machines: an ad from an Alabama company reads, “Custom DNA—Purified and Delivered in 48 hours.” While it is hard to predict how a natural protein chain will fold—they were not designed to fold predictably—chemists could make building blocks that are larger, more diverse, and more inclined to fold up in a single, obvious, stable pattern. With a set of building blocks like these, and the Merrifield method to string them together, molecular engineers could design and build molecular machines with greater ease. By the turn of the century, medicine was well on its way to almost total reliance on technology, especially after the development of diagnostic laboratories and the discovery and use of antibiotics in the 1940s. Medical practice had entered a new stage. The first had been characterized by direct communication with the patient’ experiences based on the patient’s reports, and the doctor’s questions and observations. #RandolphHarris 7 of 21

The second was characterized by direct communication with patients’ bodies through physical examination, including the use of carefully selected technologies. The stage we are now in is characterized by indirect communication with the patient’s experience and body through technical machinery. In this stage, we see the emergence of specialists—for example, pathologists and radiologists—who interpret the meaning of technical information and have no connection whatsoever with the patient, only tissue and photographs. It is to be expected that, as medical practice moved from one stage to another, doctors tended to lose the skill and insight that predominated in the previous stage. So, without realizing what has happened, the physician in the last two centuries has gradually relinquished his unsatisfactory attachment to subjective evidence—what the patient says—only to substitute a devotion to technological evidence—what the machine says. He has thus exchanged one partial view of disease for another. As the physician makes greater use of the technology of diagnosis, he perceives his patient more and more indirectly through a screen of machines and specialists; he also relinquishes control over more and more of the diagnostic process. These circumstances tend to estrange him from his patient and from his own judgement There is still another reason why the modern physician is estranged from his or her own judgment. To put it in the words of a doctor who remains skilled in examining his or her patients and in evaluating their histories: “Everyone who has a headache wants and expects a CAT scan.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 21

Roughly six out of every ten CAT scans the doctor order are unnecessary, with no basis in the clinical evidence and the patient’s reported experience and sensations. Why are they done? As a protection against malpractice suits. Which is to say, as medical practice has moved into the stage of total reliance on machine-generated information, so have the patients. Put simply, if a patient does not obtain relief from a doctor who has failed to use all the available technological resources, including drugs, the doctor is deemed vulnerable to the charge of incompetence. This situation is compounded by the fact that the personal relationship between doctor and patient now, in contrast to a century ago, has become so arid that the patient is not restrained by intimacy or empathy from appealing to the courts. Moreover, doctors are reimbursed by medical-insurance agencies on the basis of what they do, not on the amount of time they spend with patients. Nontechnological medicine is time-consuming. It is more profitable to do a CAT scan on a patient with a headache then to spend time getting information about his or her experiences and sensations. What all this means is that even restrained and selective technological medicine becomes very difficult to do, economically undesirable, and possibly professionally catastrophic. The culture itself—its courts, its bureaucracies, its insurance system, the training of doctors, patients’ expectations—is organized to support technological treatments. There are no longer methods of treating illness; there is only one method—the technological one. Medical competence is now defined by the quantity and variety of machinery brough to bear on disease. #RandolphHarris 9 of 21

Three interrelated reasons converged to create this situation. The American character was biased toward an aggressive approach and was well prepared to accommodate medical technology; the nineteenth-century technocracies, obsessed with invention and imbued with the idea of progress, initiated a series of remarkable and wondrous inventions; and the culture reoriented itself to ensure that technological aggressiveness became the basis of medical practice. The ideas promoted by this domination of technology can be summed up as follows: Nature is an implacable enemy that can be subdued only by technical means; the problems created by technological solutions (doctors call these “side effects”) can be solved only by the further application of technology (we all know the joke about an amazing new drug that cures nothing but has interesting side effects); medical practice must focus on disease, not on the patient (which is why it is possible to say that the operation or therapy was successful but the patient died); and information coming from a machine, from which it follows that a doctor’s judgment, based on insight and experience, is less worthwhile than the calculations of one’s machinery. Do these ideas lead to better medicine? In some respects, yes; in some respects, no. The answer tends to be “yes” when one considers how doctors now use lasers to remove cataracts quickly, painlessly, and safely; or how they can remove a gall-bladder by using a small television camera (a laparoscope) inserted through an equally small puncture in the abdomen to guide the surgeon’s instruments to the diseased organ through still another small puncture, thus making it unnecessary to cut open the abdomen. Of course, those who are inclined to answer “no” to the question will ask how many laparoscopic cholecystectomies are performed because of the existence of the technology. This is a crucial point. #RandolphHarris 10 of 21

This hostile relationship between the prevailing passions of the philosopher and those of the demos was taken by the philosophers to be permanent, for human nature is unchanging. As long as there are men, they will be motivated by fear of death. This passion is primarily what constitutes the cave, a horizon within which hope seems unjustified. Serving the community that lives in the cave, risking one’s life for what preserves life, is honored. Vulgar morality is the code of this selfish collectivity, and whatever steps outside its circle is the object of moral indignation. And moral indignation, not ordinarily selfishness or sensuality, is the greatest danger to the thinker. The fear that the gods who protect the city will be angered and withdraw their protection indices ecstasies of terror in men and makes them wildly vindictive against those who transgress the divine law. There is a law that is the decree of God. When America was established, God told the founding Fathers that they were to expand its boarders, and grow more land to established Christianity and Capitalism. In the Apology, Socrates explains why he, such a good citizen, stayed out of Athens’ political life. When he presided in the Council he refused to put to the vote—and was overridden—a motion to put to death the commanders of Athens’ greatest naval victory because they had prudently refused to try to pick up the bodies of their dead from the water due to a storm that endangered the living. However, the divine law required the recovery of the bodies, and moral rage insisted on capital punishment for the commanders. #RandolphHarris 11 of 21

Mere prudence cannot override the sacred. Socrates’ philosophy has more in common with that prudence than it does with the popular moral fervor, which also caused his death, essentially for putting the prudent above the sacred. This fervor Socrates took to be the substrate of civil society. Thus there are two possibilities: the philosopher must rule absolutely, or he, “like a man in a storm when dust and rain are blown about by the wind, stands aside under a little wall.” There is no third way, or it belongs only to the intellectual, who attempts to influence and ends up in the power of the would-be influenced. He enhances their power and adapts his thought to their ends. The philosopher wants to know things as they are. He loves the truth. That is a moral virtue. Presumably he would prefer not to practice deception; but if it is a condition of his survival, he has no objection to it. The hopes of changing mankind almost always end up in changing not mankind but one’s thought. Reformers may often be intransigent or extreme in deed, but they rarely intransigent in thought, for they have to be relevant. However, they are rarely intransigent in thought, for they have to be relevant. However, the man who fits most easily into the conventions and is least constrained by struggle with them has more freedom for thought. The real radicalism of ancient thought is covered over by its moderation in political deed, and this misleads many modern scholars. The ancients had no tenure to protect them and wanted to avoid the prostitution to which those who have to live off their wits are prone. There is no moral order protecting philosophers or ensuring that truth will win out in the long, or the short, run. #RandolphHarris 12 of 21

So philosophers engaged in a gentle art of deception. There is no leaving civil society, no matter what Thoreau may have thought. However, they cannot avoid being noticed. They are different. Therefore philosophers allied themselves with the gentlemen, making themselves useful to them, never quite revealing themselves to them, strengthening their gentleness and openness by reforming their education. Why are the gentlemen more open than people? Because they have money and hence leisure and can appreciate the beautiful and useless. And because they despise necessity. Nietzsche said with some good reason that ancient gentlemen despised eating and pleasures of the flesh because these acts are forced on them by their animal nature, and they had the pride of the free. And although they tend to be reverent, they can be irreverent, and certainly are less prone to religious fanaticism than the many, because they are less in the grip of fear. Now, one day, a Processian whose name I do not remember began to tell me how much he enjoyed our music, and then in a sort of off-the-wall manner, began to speak on other matters: “You know, a lot of people say The Process is a Fascist organization It’s actually half-true. It was founded by the German Democratic Party, a neo-Nazi group in Germany as a front to raise money over here in the States. But since that time it’s grown more or less independent of the German group. I know a number of American Nazis and fascists who won’t have anything to do with The Process. They say they don’t want to be a part of a group that’s run by Europeans. When I was over in Europe, Interpol approached me and offered to pay me to spy on The Process. But I turned them down. They approached me a second time when I was at The Process headquarters in Toronto, but I told them I couldn’t do anything like that.” #RandolphHarris 13 of 21

The fellow went on to mention that he was of White Russian extraction, that his father escaped after the Revolution, and had lived for many years in Mexico. He mentioned that his brother had been busted for possession of drugs, and that he had to leave to bail him out of jail. I listened to all of this with little comment. Later that evening, Father Matthew sided-up to me and asked whether if I would do artwork for them. My illustration of a dragon showed up in the Death Issues of the Process Magazine. At closing time, after my folk group Changes was finishing up a set, Father Matthew told us, “You guys are welcome to stay, we have a little private party after closing we call an ‘Aesop,’ we sort of get loose and have a good time.” My partner, who had reservations about the group from the start, said he wanted to start heading home. I begged off as well. Father Matthew looked a bit crestfallen, but made no attempt to change our minds. Matthew asked us if we were interested in going out with the Processians to the main mental health facility in the area. Neither of my partners in Changes wanted to go. I gathered that the Processian provided entertainment to the inmates at Cook County Jail and Reed Mental Health Facility. I had no idea whether these visitations were intended as a charitable activity or for recruiting purposes. But over the years The Process seemed to attract some pretty strange characters. One woman member had been convicted of pouring blood on the draft tables at the Army Induction Center. This same woman subsequently became a leading personality in the emerging pagan movement in Chicago. She also operated a prostitution ring in the East Rogers Park area of Chicago’s North Side. In the Spring of 1980 a former Process member, Yvonne Kleinfelder, was found guilty of murdering her live-in mate, John Comer, and received a 25-year prison sentence. Comer was tied to a chair for six days after Kleinfelder emptied a foot-high lobster pot of boiling water on him. Prior to her murderous deed, Kleinfelder proclaimed herself a born again Christian. #RandolphHarris 14 of 21

It is always good, then, to consider the background to the facts recorded in the Bible. Those who claim that a Christian should reject all medical help and who base their arguments on James chapter 5 may find that it is this very chapter that urges us not to neglect the use of medicine. Nevertheless it is true that the passage in the main dealing with the question of faith healing. Thus if a Christian feels constrained to refuse medical help and to rely solely on the Lord for healing, ne cannot be criticized. However, such an attitude of faith must never be made into a law which is binding on all Christians. I am sad to say that I know of many unfortunate examples where this has been the case. One of the most important points to bear in mind when considering the historical background is the fact that there is a distinction to be made between healing motivated by God and magical healing. In the ancient World it was common to imagine that sickness was caused by evil spirits. Hence the process of healing a person was often akin to the exorcising of demons, and would consist of the exorciser or the magic charmer calling on the name of the spirit in question or on the name of a more powerful spirit. We have a case of this recorded in Acts 19, where some travelling Jewish exorcists attempted to cast out a demon in the name of Jesus. They themselves were not Christian and the result was that they were overpowered and had to flee. We could easily say that the type of healing recorded in the New Testament is no longer valid for today, were it not for the fact that people claim that similar miracles still happen today. With this we come to the center of the problem. #RandolphHarris 15 of 21

It is true to say that almost everyone who falls ill will at some time or other ask one’s self the question, “How can I get well?” The majority of people will first of all consult a doctor, but if this does not bring the relief they want, many will then turn aside to seek help in occult forms of healing. And these still exist in the 21^st century. Times have not changed. In conselling people I have met with a number of different types occult healing. After a nine-month sojourn in New Mexico, I returned to the Process headquarters to attend a Midnight Meditation, Father Barnabas had been transferred to New Orleans. Mother Mercedes was now in New York. Father Matthew was still in Chicago, but his wife and children had been moved someplace else. It was not long after when the Schism occurred. DeGrimston had been “purged,” and his estranged wife Mary Anne had reorganized the group into the “Foundation Church of the Millennium.” Gone were the old symbols. Gone too were the black outsides and cowled heads; gone where the old books and magazines. The new symbol was a six-pointed Star of the David with two F’s—one upside-down, the other upright. The new Wells Street coffee house was on the first floor at street level. Whatever mystique the Process had previously projected, the new group seemed only a bland shadow. I ran into Father Matthew one day across the street from J’s Place (the J stood for Jehovah, the only surviving God from the old pantheon which the Foundation Church still believe in). He borrowed a phone from phone from me and we stood at the curb talking…apparently he was being transferred to Miami. #RandolphHarris 16 of 21

When I asked about what happened to the old group, he looked down, shook his head and said, “It’s really just too complex to go into.” Later I was to learn that Matthew changed his name to Father Nathan and was leading the Miami group. They gave the appearance of being involved in community and charitable work. By 1974 the Foundation Church place in Chicago folded. Robert DeGrimston, meanwhile, attempted to lead his remaining loyal retinue, but later faded out of sight American urban center, and can be found in the white pages of the phone book. An urbane, different, private man, DeGrimston decried the sensationalized histories of The Process as “unbearable,” and lambasted Bainbridge’s account, too, as a “pack of lies.” The fact that DeGrimston was so easily reached by phone immediately rendered as nonsense Maury Terry’s (and others) accusations of DeGrimston as a shadowy and unreachable ritual murder team captain. Filmmaker Kenneth Anger and novelist Steven Schneck, and with the LaVey formed the Magic Circle, whose weekly rituals were not open to the public. The thought soon struck LaVey that the energy the group was being squandered trying to move a teacup by psychic means and might be better put to use spreading the philosophy he had developed throughout his eclectic evolution. Thus, on Walpurgisnacht 1966, the Magic Circle became the Church of Satan, with LaVey as its High Priest, and his pretty blonde wife, Diane, as High Priestess. In 1967, the Church received national press coverage when LaVey performed a Satanic wedding of socialite Judith Case and radical journalist John Raymond. In may of that year, it made news again when LaVey performed a Satanic baptism of the Lavey’s three-year-old daughter, Zeena, and in December, he crated another media event when he performed Satanic last rites for a sailor member, complete with a full naval color guard. With the publicity came a flood of would-be initiates to the church. #RandolphHarris 17 of 21

Among the curious seeking entrance to the “Devil house” were celebrities like Sammy Davis, Jr., singer Barbara McNair, and veteran actor Keenan Wynn, upon whom Lavey later bestowed an honorary priesthood. Davis was such a fervent member that, for a time, he wore a Satanic Baphomet medallion on stage and actively proselytized the cause, setting up dinner meetings at his Los Angeles home between LaVey and various movie and entertainment personalities. While most of the more famous Hollywood figures requested their affiliation with the church be kept secret for fear of harming their careers, one who did not mind was buxom sex symbol Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield showed up at the church in 1966 with a request that the High Priest put a curse on her second husband, Matt Cimber, with whom she was engaged in a child custody battle. After she won a favorable court ruling, she became an ardent Devil’s disciple. When her young son, Zoltan, was later critically mauled by a lion at Jungleland Wild Animal Park, the actress called LaVey for help. The High Priest drove to the top of Mount Tamalpais, near San Francisco, and in the middle of a torrential rainstorm summoned all his magical powers while slowing out a soliloquy to Satan. Mansfield credited the boy’s miraculous recover to Satanic intervention and swore her undying loyalty to LaVey and the Prince of Darkness. There are many cases where people have been healed by black magic. There was a woman with mental and psychic disturbances who came for counselling. In the course of conversation an amulet was found in her possession. At first the woman refused to part with it because she was convinced that is she did so she would die in a few days. At least this is what the magic charmer said. #RandolphHarris 18 of 21

Finally however, she handed it over and she was shocked on opening it to find a piece of paper with the words, “Satan is your Lord and Master.” As she hocked her amulet, she became sick again. Now, this is common. Unfortunately the relationship with LaVey inspired the jealousy of Mansfield’s boyfriend, Sam Brody, who threatened to expose LaVey as a charlatan unless he stayed away from Jayne. LaVey responded by putting a curse on Brody, who shortly thereafter smashed up his Maserati and broke his leg. Undeterred, Brody continues his threats and LaVey retaliated with yet another cursing ritual, this one more serious. LaVey claims that he called Jayne and warned her to stay away from Brody, but she did not, and on June 29, 1967, the car in which she and Brody were traveling rear-ended a truck outside New Orleans. Brody and the driver were killed instantly and Mansfield was decapitated in the crash. LaVey blamed himself for Jayne’s death. It seems that while clipping some newspaper articles, he noticed that on the back of one was a photograph of Mansfield and that he had cut off her head. It was then he received the phone call saying she had been killed. To this say, LaVey claims to be shaken up by the “coincidence.” Mansfield’s tragic death and the subsequent revelations about the “curse” proved to be a media bonanza for the Church of Satan, and membership mushroomed. LaVey’s The Satanic Bible, expounding his philosophy, became an immediate occult best-seller upon its publication in 1969, its sales soon topping the million mark. There was even a poster copying the Army’s image of Uncle Sam: a horned, pointing LaVey announcing, “Satan Want You.” Both God and Lucifer are a well-crafted product re-evaluating the mythical conflict between Heaven and Hell, from a cultured and witty perspective. #RandolphHarris 19 of 21

The rise of the demonic anti-hero in youth culture is also reflected in, of all places, the toy market. In April 1998, the Torture Garden—London’s leading fetish club—held a “Requiem for Anton LaVey.” “We the participants are serious Magickians [sic],” announced the organizers, “and we are performing this important ritual with real intent. At this time, near the end of the second millennium of Christian oppression, it is time…to throw off the shackles of religion and break its power. WE HAVE NO GODS BUT OUR OWN TRUE SELVES. The Black Mass is a great celebration of Flesh, Ecstasy and Freedom. Our intent:- it is our Will, to summon Satan—FOR FUN!!!” The vent was entertaining, with four floors of self-conscious exhibitionism, though, sadly Satan never put in an appearance. Perhaps this is because fetishism is almost conformist today, unlike the days when LaVey was an enthusiastic advocate. The Black Pope never advocated universal promiscuity but indulgence of whatever appetites an individual might possess. With the occult becoming so popular and mostly through the TV, it means television is not utterly useless. There are the old examples of the destruction of Joseph McCarthy, the exposure of the Vietnam War, voting fraud, the civil rights movement. We cannot deny that television has occasionally served what appears, even to me, as a progressive purpose. And yet what ties all of these together is the extent to which they were framed in the sort of objective terms that television can handle. Mail-in ballots, a broken immigration shortage, corruption in California were exposed because the issues were lies, deceits, corruption—objective matters. These are all “good television.” And everyone has to face the hard realities of racism, even in their own families. The wiring-in of everyone to television is nearly almost complete. A new national attitude is developing. The obvious rightness of the struggle to rebuild America and American pride cannot be avoided. #RandolphHarris 20 of 21

In turning the television telescope upon the American rights movement, the powers that be in television are not necessarily acting out of any deep moral or political enlightenment; they are following the inexorable dictates of the medium itself. The Rebirth of America, American produced and American made is the luckiest, most conscious, and deliberate, it is the smartest civil rights movement yet because it is controversial. There has been a good deal of violence. The issues are framed in objective terms: rights, opportunities, jobs, housing, homelessness, wages, taxes, health care, Americana, energy, cars, fuel, and schools. There are the good guys and the bad guys. It is simple to tell which is which because they even come in different political colors. There are inspired leaders who stand bravely against dazzling odds. There are mass demonstrations. All of this is the ingredients of “good television.” They have action, they highlight, they are highly visible, they are people-centered, they even deal with the subject of sensory, and they do require contextual understanding, they are “issues.” The American Unity and Civil Rights Movement is about power and restoring wealth to America. Everyone wants to be like America because they want laws, order, freedom, capitalism, the ability to get a job and become a billionaire. They want to buy their own house and the freedom to buy the car of their dreams and save for their retirement. And now we find every suburban community wanting prestigious and top-rated schools. There is something odd in the quality of success that America allows people. It is all free! All you have to do is work hard and everything you want is within the touch of your hands. No one can cap your career or salary; all you need is the skills or education and everything you want can be yours. Success is better than beauty, wealth, or being the prettiest person in the World. Capitalism is the way to go. Money and status can make the dullest people, the most desirable persons in the entire World! #RandolphHarris 21 of 21