All artwork by MK10Art
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By ‘Nettie Monroe’
If Keith Raniere had practiced what he preached and had his own Exploration of Meaning, [EM], it would have brought him back to that one moment that lit the fuse, the one and only, only time his father was proud of him, when Keith had taken a generic IQ test at school and had supposedly scored in a high percentile.
I say supposedly, because Keith was better at faking good scores than achieving them.
But believing Keith’s score, his father showered him with praise, which lit the fuse and triggered an obsession with IQ tests, and trying to figure out how to score highly on them. Not how to legitimately earn a high score, but how to “get” a high score–by hook or by crook.
Everyone knows the story of how he used bogus means to score high on a take home IQ test, which, due to a failure on a worldwide publication’s part to do due diligence on the test and its methods, his name got printed in ONE single edition, listing him as one of the smartest men in the world, all due to his results on this particular test.
There are many other articles detailing how and why the test itself and Keith’s methods of obtaining his score should never have passed the smell test, so I won’t repeat that here.
Nevertheless, when the publication discovered the (I’ll call it a) sham, it was too late. His name had already been printed in the Australian edition. And though they removed his name (and the entire category due to its subjectiveness) from all other editions, having his name in print just once (legitimately or not) was all it took to turn Keith into a megalomaniac. Being the “smartest man in the world” became his entire identity from that moment on.
And because megalomaniacs can never get enough praise, he was soon no longer a mere mortal. He was so intelligent, he became a God. And he ordered his “disciples” to idolize and obey him as one.
Everything after that was using, abusing, scamming, and scheming, to get the two things he desperately wanted and needed: to be idolized by obedient disciples, and sex.
As the God Vanturd’s influence grew, so did his sadistic appetites. He demanded complete obedience and loyalty, and he required it from more and more people. Vanturd made his followers feel like they were mere mortals, and he was their God saviour, the only one who could save them from their human frailties.
He literally created a world where he was God. He unleashed wrath upon his disciples so he could watch them quiver in his presence. He made them to beg for just a slice, a moment of his time, and feel like they’ve won the lottery if he spent 5 minutes with them.
He destroyed his disciples’ lives so he could show them how powerful he was. And he demanded a lifetime vow of obedience because true disciples must sacrifice their lives for their God.
He may have used the terms master and slave, but in actuality, Keith saw himself more as a God with disciples than a master with owned slaves. The slave label and blackmail (collateral) was just to ensure that none of his disciples would leave if they came to their senses and realized he was merely a man. A lazy, fat, stupid one at that.
The Not-So-Smartest Man in the World
I wonder how Godly he feels now? I can so picture him on the toilet, squeezing so hard his forehead bends his glasses, trying to turn that toilet water into wine.
