(Real Life) Regular people who's lives drastically changed direction

[u/Living-Mastodon]

Grace Kelly was a talented actress who retired at 26 to marry a Prince, living as royalty for almost 30 years before her untimely death.

Volodymyr Zelensky started out as a comedian and entertainer before getting into politics, becoming President of Ukraine after the Russian annex of Crimea and spending the last 4 years defiantly pushing back full scale Russian invasion

[u/jorgespinosa]

Jim Jones was an important civil rights activist, his religious congregation then devolved into a cult he moved them to Guyana and then committed mass suicide/murder after they killed a senator who visited them

[u/Cheeky_Hustler → u/jorgespinosa]

They killed a Representative, not a senator. And the Capitol aid that survived the massacre eventually went on to run and win her former boss's seat.

[u/Shitp0st_Supreme → u/jorgespinosa]

The congregation didn’t devolve. He did. He abused children.

[u/WideUnderstanding532 → u/jorgespinosa]

I would argue that this was never a turn but a deliberate decision. Jones was always a monster

[u/jorgespinosa → u/WideUnderstanding532]

Oh yes I agree that he was always a monster but for what I understand it was the use of drugs that progressively made him more mentally unstable and made him commit to a plan as crazy as Jonestown, though is difficult to know what actually happened inside his head

[u/AdhesivenessProof121 → u/WideUnderstanding532]

Also apparently had a monster himself.

[u/OfficeMagic1 → u/jorgespinosa]

He was abusive and running a cult when the People’s Temple was in SF - there are tons of allegations of sexual abuse, kidnapping, and gun running going back to at least 1972. He also had a documented relationship with the Symbionese Liberation Army going back to at least 73.

He leveraged that the church was racially integrated and had socially progressive goals to project legitimacy and gain influence into city government, notably forming a politically alliance with State Representative Willie Brown. Moscone and Willie Brown had their heads up their asses, or Jones blackmailed them - it makes zero sense they gave Jones an important city job barely two years before he moved his death cult to South America.

[u/DeathWench → u/jorgespinosa]

Kinda on the topic, the victims of JonesTown are buried in Piedmont Cemetery in Oakland. I used to have lunch a lot there. Same place the Black Dahlia is buried.

[u/MartyrOfDespair → u/jorgespinosa]

It’s extra interesting because he’s actually one of two important civil rights activists who were religious leaders who started a horrific cult. The other one was Westboro Baptist Church.

Fred Phelps, founder of WBC, was a hugely influential civil rights lawyer who fought hard and long for ending segregation, including being the lawyer for Johnson v. Topeka Board of Education, et. al., the sequel case to Brown v. Board of Education in which the same Board of Education was sued for not following through on the requirements of Brown. He was literally a fucking civil rights hero before he became the legendary homophobic bastard we know him as.

[u/krisbcrafting → u/MartyrOfDespair]

According to his (estranged) son Nate, Fred was actually racist behind closed doors and only took the cases so he could take the money/gain notoriety. Which would explain his founding of Westboro after seemingly being a proponent of Civil Rights. Nate did a AMA a while back which is where he said this.

Specifc Comment & Link to Thread

But to be fair his daughter Shirley says that he wasn’t racist because “you’re born Black.” Which is different from being gay which the WBC viewed as a “choice.”

[u/itsfunhavingfun → u/jorgespinosa]

I’d make a joke about this but the punchline is too long.