yes, stupid, but also idealistic and naive.
My cousin joined the Moonies in the early 1970s. He was a college student who got sucked into the idea that he would be joining a peaceful movement and would make a difference. He got married in one of those mass wedding ceremonies, to a woman he didn’t know. He went up in the Moonie organization because he was an accountant and they wanted his skills. Eventually he did some independent thinking about where the money was going. He left the movement. His wife joined him a year or two later.
He seems pretty normal now, and lives a quiet life in a small town. His wife, however, I don’t think ever completely gave up on the Moonies. I think she still has friends in it, or in a spin-off from it. Perhaps she thinks she’ll finish raising the kids and then go back to it, or return to her native Belgium. I think she has learned to find the good in normal married life, but my gut instinct is to doubt whether she will stay with it for the rest of her life.
My cousin’s family says during the Moonie years, he only came home with “minders”, never by himself. He had been raised an observant Catholic, and his family says it was naive idealism that allowed him to be manipulated like that. And of course, in the early 70s, he was one of many joining cults. I guess we should just be glad he didn’t join Jim Jones, and that he came home eventually.
There are idealistic young people around today. If you don’t want them joining up with Obama, you need to find another healthier cause they can give themselves to.
Our friend’s daughter became a Moonie in the ‘70’s. She sold her house, boat, car, everything, and gave it all to the Moonies.
She married a guy she met on her wedding day, that they assigned her, then had two babies, both of whom were taken from her and given to God knows whom.
The “couple” only see each other once or twice a year, she runs some Moonie thing in Northern Cali and her husband is down South somewhere.
What an evil bunch of people...but people fall for those cults, the Moonies, the Scientologists, the fake Christians.
Ed
Remember he is the owner of the Washington Times, one of the most conservative papers in the USA.