Helter Skelter

The thing is, I might have fallen for his whole propaganda, too, had I been lost and alone and feeling misunderstood and unjustly treated by people in the "normal" world. He offered food, shelter, company, a sense of belongingness to a "family" and of indispensability, but beyond that, blasphemously akin to the Jesus Christ he claimed to be, he offered a ready-made synthetic soul crafted in his image and likeness, complete with a twisted belief system whose faith centered around himself and his desires. Which is the what lost souls look for: an object of faith, something spiritual and transcendent to cling on to. And it was instant, immediate; it eliminated need for long, lonely, sleepless nights of thinking and soul searching and philosophizing and the trial-and-error process of searching for meaning. So, in as much as I'd like to pass off his followers as stupid and insist that any person with a shred of intelligence never would've fallen for any of it, I just can't. Because he preyed not on weak minds but on weak spirits. Kind of a scary thought, particularly because many people these days seem to be out of touch with their inner selves. With such an abundance of hungry souls who don't know where go, if another man came along, one much like Manson but more charismatic, more intelligent, more strategic and patient, and with more resources at hand... I can only imagine what would happen. Or, with all the holy wars going on, is it already happening?