Aristotle Smith wrote:One other point. I mainly wanted to draw the parallels between how people react to learning about Joseph Smith and about how they react to Lance Armstrong. I think there is a a very emotional element involved in being told your hero is not who you thought he/she was. I think this is something that we apostates easily forget. We can forget just how hard it is to process that, and that probably accounts for a large portion of the denial among TBMs. It was a call to be a bit more understanding and sympathetic.
There are more sinister parallels as well. For example, it's clear that Lance's tactic to keeping this stuff "secret" was not to engage in it himself and tell nobody. His plan was to make sure his entire team was implicated so that everyone would feel guilty and be scared to come forward. It's a great lesson in human psychology that sometimes the best secrets are the ones that are spread widely. By involving others he was also able to run a better operation. He could openly transport his drugs among his team mates. He had a built in network of people who could tell him when to drop out of races and help him steer clear of problems. Had Lance tried to do this on his own, without involving his team manager or team mates, he likely would have been busted years ago.
The parallel to Joseph Smith is polygamy. He tried to keep polygamy secret with Fanny Alger and it blew up in his face. It's hard to keep a big secret like that without involving others in the operation. By the time he got to Nauvoo he had learned his lesson. He made sure the inner circle was fully on board with polygamy. By doing this he was more easily able to procure more wives, sneak around to visit them, and keep the whole thing within the inner circle.
Well said.