The Vow
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In college I was briefly a tourist on the outskirts of a Christian fellowship.
The members of NXIVM are afflicted with this same Sorkin virus.
After all, thats what Keiths tech (another bit of meaningless linguistic spin) offers.
Did it take her weeks to decide to leave?
A definitive timeline would help, and tether the story.
But then the ante climbs higher, higher, higher.
Bonnies story is center stage this episode.
All the classics of cult behavior are there.
Slowly dominating more and more of your time until you spend virtually all of it with other cult members?
Sleep deprivation and calorie restriction?
Implying that your labor and/or financial donations are an integral part of membership?
Asserting that the group is always in the right and anyone who questions it is at fault?
Comfort is like an addiction, Keith says.
In other words, hes banally cruel, a figure from a Hannah Arendt report.
But, um.)
because Mark was asked to film it all.
And this is when you know that theyve really jumped the shark.
(It makes you wonder: why would Keith agree to this?
he sees himself as the Gandhi figure in a screenplay.)
And it turns out he has good reason.
Bonnie bombards him with thoughts on Allison Macks weight and overeager thirst for Keiths approval.
But whats most remarkable is how Keith reacts when asked.
Its undeniable, though, that something truly hellish is going on and that Keith knows about it.
Scared to keep talking to Mark while the recorder is on, Sarah asks him to turn it off.
Then she confesses that the group called DOS approached her, and she joined.
