|
In Reply to: The Point of This Challenge to Penn posted by DA on August 25, 2004 at 14:20:14:
I find it interesting that you chose to quote Wolf & I assume it's because his opinion agreed with yours. But then we all have our biases. I trust you've read the quotes by Lauren who is far more impartial & objective than Wolf. She says:
In no way am I trying to defend or exculpate the author of this article, but it does seem to me that he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by saying what he did.
From everything James Penn has written, I have never gotten the impression that he is stupid – and someone would have to be pretty stupid as a first generation adult to talk about getting money from the group – quoting actual numbers -- and not expect some serious flak about it – especially when it is deliberately posted on a second generation website, knowing that we as the second generation got and continue to get nothing. Zip. Nada.
In that line of reasoning, I would have to assume that this article was posted knowing full well the self-inflicting damage it would cause, and that the author risked a backfire in order to make a very salient point.
This, I believe, is the crux of the matter, and what infuriates me the most: Not necessarily that they pay out – boy what nearly 20 grand would’ve done for me -- but that their criterion is totally self-serving. To hell with “Rewards to the Deserving” or “God Cares for His Own”, it’s all about self-preservation and image, let the children be damned.
I feel rage. I feel frustration and I’m angry as hell. Not necessarily towards the people who were lucky enough to have something to hold over the group in order to get money, but towards the group leaders who are willing to pay silence money to people they are afraid of and who won’t even recognize the validity of the difficulties we, their children, face when we exit their world and enter the real one.
We all know they have the money, although they continue to cry poverty. This is just one more nail in their coffin that proves that they do pay out, that they have the means to pay out, but that they callously refuse to lift a finger to the ones that matter most, their children.
