Those of you who aspire to write fiction should abandon the quest and simply document the comings and goings of characters in the Republican party, because you can’t beat this. Check out who’s on the docket to speak after Donald Trump Jr. and tell me if I’m wrong. Hiroaki “Jay” Aeba is the head of a right-wing Japanese religious cult that promotes nationalism and xenophobia. Nothing odd about that, other than the fact that he claims to be the reincarnation of an alien from Venus who created life on earth millions of years ago, and who has evidence that coronavirus is extra terrestrial in origin — plus a miracle cure from outer space to deal with it. I’m burning all my creative manuscripts today and asking Matt Schlapp for a job as a booker. I have seen the light. VICE News:

Aeba is no stranger to CPAC. In fact, 2021 marks the tenth anniversary of his first visit to the Republican lovefest.

His speaker bio on the CPAC website notes that Aeba is the chairman of the Japanese Conservative Union (JCU), a right-wing political organization, and that he helped found CPAC Japan, which has been running for the last four years in Tokyo.

What isn’t mentioned is the central role Aeba plays in a Japanese cult called Happy Science, whose leader believes he is the Messiah and sells “miracle cures” for COVID-19.

“Happy Science is a Japanese cult run by a man who claims to be the incarnation of multiple Gods while pretending to channel the psychic spirits of anyone from Quetzalcoatl to Bashar al-Assad to Natalie Portman,” Sarah Hightower, a researcher and expert on Japanese cults, told VICE News.

While he has been a prominent member of the Happy Science cult from the beginning, Aeba has worked over the past decade on building close ties with prominent U.S. conservative figures and creating Japan’s Happiness Realization Party (HRP), the cult’s political wing that focuses on ultranationalism and increasing Japan’s population by making child-rearing easier for Japanese women. […]

Happy Science was founded in October 1986 by Ryuho Okawa, a former Wall Street trader who claims to be the reincarnated form of Buddha, who himself was the reincarnated form of El Cantare, a god from Venus who created life on earth millions of years ago. Happy Science was officially recognized as a religious group in Japan in 1991, quickly gained a huge following, and made Okawa a very rich man. One estimate from 1991 put the group’s annual revenues at around $45 million.

Okawa claims that he can channel the spirits of famous people — both alive and dead. In 2019, the Happy Science branch in London hosted a séance to hear Margaret Thatcher’s thoughts on Brexit. Okawa has written over 500 books filled with outlandish claims about UFOs, demonic warfare, and most recently, coronavirus and how it originated on another planet. […]

The group has been selling “miracle cures” for COVID-19 for the past year — which are essentially just blessings — and even when it was forced to shut down its two New York branches during lockdown, Happy Science continued the grift by selling COVID-19 cures remotely.

I don’t know what condition the Whig party was in, in 1854 when it finally collapsed and a new party with the name “Republican” was born, but I cannot believe that this is anything but the death throes of the present day GOP. How they can stay a viable organization while openly cultivating lunatics is something we’re going to see or not see. But this is the kind of whack-a-mole that the likes of Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Jim Jordan and all the rest seek to share a podium with.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t believe I’m real. I believe I’m a manifestation of God dreaming ‘I’m’ here. OUCH!!! I just banged my ankle on the coffee table. Serenity now.

  2. Guys like this give guys like me a bad name. I have a number of beliefs people would class as kooky as hell but they’re all based in the idea that we should be good to each other because in too many ways, we humans are all we have.

    Guys like this, though? The sheer meanness coming off them set my teeth on edge, going after victims to beat on like the bullies they are. I guarantee you, friends, that I am more of an alien in my affect than this space cadet reject could ever dream of. What he actually represents is the remnant of another failed authoritarian regime that got brought to its knees by the world’s first nuclear weapons.

    Guys like that…they’re always pining for a past that never was nor will ever be. Take him as a warning for what we ourselves may become unless we are vigilant as to our own excesses. Nostalgia is a poison.

  3. I had a comment pop into my head right from the start but as I continued reading my quick snark was ruined. This guy has been appearing and speaking at CPAC for ten years? Here’s the thing that blows my mind. Without “Christian” conservatives the GOP would have been toast long ago, and without them contorting themselves into pretzels to rationalize Trump in 2016 they’ve have gotten wiped out. What stands out to me is that this dude talks about millions of years ago his alien species coming to earth. As any hard core KKKristian KKKonservative will tell you the earth is only 6000 years old! So I can’t help but wonder how a significant chunk of the CPAC folks square having a prominent speaking slot going to a guy who says he’s the reincarnation (MORE blasphemy) of a human who was on our planet not just longer than 6000 years but a million years ago! The answer of course is that they are a bunch of bat-shit crazy hypocrites. The fact they carry such influence in our political discourse and in running this country makes me shudder. And again thankful (as I so often am) that I never had kids who will have to live in the country they are working so furiously to wreck.

    • Though I too am childless, I have no such gratitude. All I can think about are the ones who will come after us…and what I need to do to give them the best chance they can get while I’m still here. I truly hope that you are too, Denis.

      • i do feel badly about the kind of world we are leaving for future generations. I’ve always wanted to do what so many have done – leave things at least a little better than they were for me and my generation. Back when I lived in significantly more expensive jurisdiction than normal in the country (Fairfax County, VA) I paid a fortune in real estate taxes and the reason I didn’t bitch and whine about it despite being childless was that I figured every kid should have access to a quality public education like I did. If my taxes were high on that score or for other reasons due to programs aimed at helping children and families well, to me that’s just the price of being a decent human being. Not even really being a price in fact. Maybe it’s due to the golden rule type attitude instilled by adults starting back when I was very young.

        I truly am thankful I will not leave behind descendants that will have to deal with things that adults of the last forty plus years I’ve been adult failed to tend to. However that doesn’t mean I can’t feel badly for so many kids and grandkids of people I’ve known in my life, or those who are complete strangers. It’s a flipside version of despite difficulties I’ve faced and currently face being thankful at times that for all my problems and even those of my country that we have things, advantages and blessings that countless people around the world have never experienced and never will. Hell, I’ve got a roof over my head, food to eat and at least have access to quality medical (alas, not dental) care at the VA which is a hellluva lot more than so many millions of my own fellow citizens have! It’s why when I get to whining too much and don’t recognize it in time to give myself a swift kick in the ass I wind up appreciating it when someone else gives me a well-deserved one. Life is hardly luxurious and I’ve had times far better than what they are now, but I think one of the things that makes me progressive is that I believe everyone deserves at least as much as I’ve got. If I don’t have much to share, I’ll still share what I can. And conservatives won’t, or won’t with “those” people (which often includes people like you and me because we aren’t conservatives!) which truly offends me. Knowing so many people from back home and other places I’ve lived that started out lower middle class (very lower – not working poor but too close for comfort) that would rather tear other regular folks and their chances to live a better life down rather than work at improving their own lives drives me nuts. But that’s just what the leadership of the conservative movement has convinced working class (mostly white) Americans to do and with some considerable success due to the rise of their “great communicator” Reagan.

        I’m starting to ramble so I’ll shut up. I’ve been worn out the past few days which means my first Covid vaccination is doing what it’s supposed to do so I might not be articulating my thoughts as well as I’d like to. But I hope you get where I’m coming from. We tend to disagree with some frequency but I always appreciate your comments even when they take me to task. Unless I’m mistaken you feel the same about me when I disagree with you. Paying attention to those who have a different view on a given matter helps us learn.

        • I DO strive to come from a place of respect, Denis. There are times that I might be SCREAMING offscreen at how you came up with some conclusions in the manner of Harry Truman. But I can imagine that the reverse is true is well. Different POVs ARE important. Too many blindspots otherwise…we need look no further than the GQP to see the hideous and inevitable results.

          • Bareshark AND Denis, it’s what I so enjoy about both of you. You’re smart, well read, and can disagree while having a great discussion instead of a schoolyard fight. I have learned a lot just from reading both your comments, and this is how a good discourse should be. I am childless also. It was not my choice at the time, but now when I look at how things are, I think if I were of that age again, I would really have to re-think it. I have a niece who is the daughter I never had, and she has two teenage boys – my surrogate grandchildren. I worry about them a lot, and about the future they will face. And it’s a good feeling to come here and talk about it with like-minded folk such as yourselves.

  4. Ursula, just a note: “I don’t know what condition the Whig party was in, in 1864 when it finally collapsed and a new party with the name “Republican” was born, . . . .” That year should be 1854. As for what caused the collapse, well, slavery was at the heart of it. Whigs were split over the passage of the “Compromise of 1850” (which included the stringent Fugitive Slave Act) and Millard Fillmore’s presidency was basically shot afterwards. He lost renomination (well, technically “nomination” as he’d acceded to the Presidency following Zachary Taylor’s death) in 1852 to General Winfield Scott but Scott was not popular with Southern Whigs and there was literally almost no difference between the two parties’ platforms. But, ultimately, it was the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act that led most directly to the founding of the Republican Party (and, ironically, it was a coalition of Northern anti-slavery Democrats, members of the Free Soil Party–an anti-slavery party–and Whigs although the anti-slavery movement was primarily intended to prevent slavery from expanding in the Western territories rather than outright abolition).

  5. More proof that in the republiKKKan party, the few sane ones are locked up in the loony bin, and the bats*it crazy straight jacket and padded cell nut-jobs are running the show!

  6. The GOP keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. I wonder how many corporate donors will be left to fill GOP coffers after this CPAC! Actually, I’ve always thought DJT was an escaped bit of algae from the planet Slime.

    • It’s quite the list, Blue, of longstanding historical prejudice. It works like white supremacy…just sub out whites for Japanese in relation to every other race in Asia (especially true of Chinese and Koreans). Oh and fun fact: the old apartheid regime in South Africa considered Japanese “honorary whites”.

  7. Nitpick: The Republicans were organized in 1856. Lincoln ran as a Republican.
    But the current GOP isn’t the party that existed as recently as Goldwater and Nixon. It’s just batshyt insane.

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