Perils of Being a Mormosphere Influencer

[Limnor]

During an exercise I was role-playing as the USINDOPACOM JFACC ATO chief. My job was to brief, each day, what targets were struck and how those strikes supported the mission.

A very senior officer wanted an option that required about 14 hours of flight time, a crew swap at an airfield halfway to the target, then another 12 hours to time over target. He wanted it in 15 minutes.

So I’m trying to tactfully explain physics to a senior officer, and his response was: “What if the commander wants it in 15 minutes?” Then: “What if I want it?”

Luckily, another senior officer stepped in and backed me up, so we didn’t have to pretend we could do something we physically couldn’t.

So that’s an example of military life, at least one experience.
Sometimes the job isn’t executing the mission, it’s resisting the urge to satisfy leaders when they demand miracles and call them feasible.

It seems like there is a Mormon nexus there.

[Limnor]

Another example.

During OIF I was the targeting officer on an aircraft carrier. For about two weeks I slept maybe two hours a night. It was chaos. The hardest part wasn’t the work, or even the lack is sleep, it was reconciling the delivery of death with my belief system.

We followed collateral damage estimation methodology rigorously. And, in an ironic twist considering the internal justification arguments I was putting myself through, I was tasked with briefing an Arabic news crew that had come aboard to film how “good” we were. I took off my name tapes and wouldn’t let them film my face. They filmed my hands instead, pointing at a target image and a CDE chart.

That dichotomy was, well not stunning, but maybe a little unsettling. I was calculating lethal effects while nearly simultaneously performing moral reassurance for those we were striking.

I don’t know that there’s a Mormon nexus here. But I prayed a lot during those two weeks. Maybe in summary this story provides another insight into what military life can look like, living with moral issues while putting off examination and resolution until later.

That’s probably enough “expose vulnerability” for one day.

[Gadianton]

Another example.

During OIF I was the targeting officer on an aircraft carrier. For about two weeks I slept maybe two hours a night. It was chaos. The hardest part wasn’t the work, or even the lack is sleep, it was reconciling the delivery of death with my belief system.

We followed collateral damage estimation methodology rigorously. And, in an ironic twist considering the internal justification arguments I was putting myself through, I was tasked with briefing an Arabic news crew that had come aboard to film how “good” we were. I took off my name tapes and wouldn’t let them film my face. They filmed my hands instead, pointing at a target image and a CDE chart.

That dichotomy was, well not stunning, but maybe a little unsettling. I was calculating lethal effects while nearly simultaneously performing moral reassurance for those we were striking.

I don’t know that there’s a Mormon nexus here. But I prayed a lot during those two weeks. Maybe in summary this story provides another insight into what military life can look like, living with moral issues while putting off examination and resolution until later.

That’s probably enough “expose vulnerability” for one day.

It's surreal hearing experiences like this. I suppose I feel lucky that I can't related to it. It's also interesting how the more thoughtful posters who come through here at times end up having serious military experience as opposed to the loud-mouth right-wingers who talk it up as if they were warrior homesteaders.

[Kishkumen]

It's surreal hearing experiences like this. I suppose I feel lucky that I can't related to it. It's also interesting how the more thoughtful posters who come through here at times end up having serious military experience as opposed to the loud-mouth right-wingers who talk it up as if they were warrior homesteaders.

Yes, Joseph Green was one such veteran. He was faithful LDS and a whip smart person with real erudition. His approach was so different from the Mopologetic one. We got along famously. Limnor is another good egg.

[Limnor]

Mine was a relatively small role in the big scheme of things—I’m no Audie Murphy or anything, not an infantryman who faced being shot in any intimate sort of way. But there were some internal contradictions that I suppose are common across all levels and forms of military service.

I do think there can be a general tendency for people to exaggerate service at times, whether to enhance credibility or gain sympathy—I don’t know. I don’t mind admitting that sharing my service experience is in part a way to offer sincerity in purpose here, and to expose a little vulnerability by revealing participation in an at times unpopular profession.

One of the things I like about this board is the need to carefully select what you want to say and contribute, or at least in the terms through which I approach participation.

Truth is powerful here. Truth claims are going to be subject to a strenuous cross-examination. I think the board, seen in the aggregate, seems to “love” truth, and I think that is its greatest strength.

There are challenges associated with that rigor, of course. Not least of which are the ancient historical pictures shulem has related about Egypt, the flood, and other biblical claims, and the Greek and Roman sources Kish mentions as the probable setting for a historical Jesus, as well as the challenge of understanding how the God of the Old Testament can be reconciled with the Jesus of the New Testament.

Parsing through those obstacles is daunting, but unavoidable if truth is the goal and one wants to hold one’s own claims to the same rigor. While these challenges weren’t specifically posed to me, I’m thinking through the issues raised here and don’t yet feel fully equipped to respond to all of them.

[bill4long]

not an infantryman who faced being shot

"A warlord who shoots people in the face. What's so scary about that?"

[Limnor]

not an infantryman who faced being shot

"A warlord who shoots people in the face. What's so scary about that?"

Yes, that is the struggle.

[bill4long]

"A warlord who shoots people in the face. What's so scary about that?"

Yes, that is the struggle.

You don't know the reference?

One of the best stage perfmances ever in my opinion. Worth watching from the beginning.

https://youtu.be/GVJgmp2Tc2s?si=GLffzqAc8_QnXAy1&t=80

[Limnor]

Yes, that is the struggle.

You don't know the reference?

One of the best stage perfmances ever in my opinion. Worth watching from the beginning.

https://youtu.be/GVJgmp2Tc2s?si=GLffzqAc8_QnXAy1&t=80

I did look up the reference, yes, but I didn’t know it at first. By struggle I meant more along the lines that it might be easier to consider oneself as a brute than to present as a savior figure saying something like “this is for your own good.”

I thought you were referencing Firefly!

[Morley]

Happy Holidays to all!

I've been out of the country for a while, so missed this reply from you, C.

"Apologetics" the word and apologetics the practice did not escape religion because critics diluted the term. It escaped religion because thin ideologies started needing it. Religion required apologetics because its claims sit outside empirical verification. A point you made very well, with a great example. The apologists defend conclusions they cannot demonstrate by evidence by building narrative, coherence, and moral framing around them. That method works only when the ideology and its busy-work and BS is fragile enough to require constant defense.

Once that technique existed, it was inevitable it would be reused. Politics picked it up not because politics suddenly became religion, but because certain political positions became just as thin. When an ideology cannot survive direct engagement with facts, incentives, tradeoffs, or consequences, it does what religion has always done. It produces apologetics. It reframes objections as moral failure. It treats disagreement as heresy. It substitutes motive-reading for argument. It demands faith in conclusions rather than examination of premises.

So far, I'm with you. Additionally, I'd suggest that the whole embrace of apologetics gets a boost by the tendency we have today toward a deconstructionist mindset--where everything gets questioned, there are no 'truths,' and what is real is considered to be a matter of opinion. We've forgotten that postmodernism is merely a critique of language, not a 'theory of everything.'

My example here is that the ideology of DEI, open borders and hating the country more than hating genital herpes requires apologetics.

Trump hates open borders and DEI, but I don’t think he hates genital herpes all that much. His behavior certainly demonstrates a hatred of America. Make America great again? No thanks. We’re already greater than any other time in his lifetime.

It requires a funded propaganda machine and mouth. The Rob Reiner Machine out of Hollywood is no different than the Neil A. Maxwell institute and DCP.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't see celebrities as tools of apologetics. (Though some of them are certainly tools.) They're so far removed from any hint of experience, education, or expertise, that I'm not sure why anyone would assign them any credibility. Why would anyone think that Barbra Streisand or Kid Rock have any particular insight into anything dealing with politics, science, or morality? Why would I care who Bad Bunny endorses for US President? What deep well of wisdom do any of them bring to the table? If any of them wanted to discuss music or experience in rehab, I might listen. But tuning in to a celebrity soliloquy about whether there are WMDs in Uzbekistan, maybe not so much.

Why you complain about the things Rob Reiner said when he was alive, I'll never understand. Personally, I didn't realize that he'd said anything at all--but I guess I don't follow the same media that you do. As you may have already gathered, I have the same disregard for folks who hang on every word of baldheaded, body-sculpting, former Fear Factor hosts. Letting people like that inform my opinions makes as much sense as taking marital advice from my morning drive time radio station.

The apologetics of the status quo and moderation by some moderators at this forum is no different than the apologetics and moderation at the old Mormon Archipelago and current forums where we are mostly banned.

The moderation on this board has something to do with the topic of apologetics? I'm not getting it. Are you and I even talking about the same thing any more? You lost me here.

Before you get your panties too twisted —

Huh? Why would my underwear be twisted? The things that pull your shorts into wedgies mostly don’t bother me that much.

WMD sorta changed political apologetics for a generation or more because it worked. I am sure as many folks think FOX is just apologetics. You get the point. Nobody gets the win here. Masks and social distancing and canceling school for kids required apologetics, not goddamn science for fucksakes. We made it cultural.

Bush & Cheney's prevarications involving the Gulf War's WMDs were no different than Johnson & Nixon's tall tales justifying the adventure in Vietnam. Both involved the screwed up politics of unpopular wars, they weren't apologetics. That type of thing has been going on forever. It wasn't invented by Dick Cheney.

I am sure as many folks think FOX is just apologetics.

It's pretty clear that Fox News is a part of the mainstream media. That they themselves claim to be anything else is pure BS. But yes, there are apologists--the so-called pundit class--all over the media. Some are smarter than others; some have better track records than others; some are so bad that they get kicked out of traditional media and have to turn to podcasting. Some of them have only ever just been in podcasting. They can be entertaining and sometimes even informative, but I'm mostly surprised anyone takes them seriously.

You get the point. Nobody gets the win here. Masks and social distancing and canceling school for kids required apologetics, not goddamn science for fucksakes. We made it cultural.

I do agree that COVID introduced apologetics into areas where it never should have happened. This is what I was referring to when I suggested apologetics has now even invaded epidemiology. This began when American government, in a well-intentioned effort to contain what they saw as an existential threat to the country, put their thumb on the scale. This happened under both Trump and Biden. They vacillated and repeatedly redefined masking. They pretended knowledge about the sociological effects regarding schooling that they didn't have. They often erected a facade of false expertise to cover for the fact that they were stumbling their way through a crisis.

But to be real, it's not surprising that nobody knew how to behave in a pandemic. We still don't know how to behave in a pandemic. At this point, I'm think that we're afraid to even think about what a government should do in a pandemic. The topic, itself, has fractured the country.

What grew out of these apologetics of disease management was the whole lame-ass MAHA movement--folks who are true apologists. These are, by and large, people without experience, education, or expertise who think that their opinions carry the same weight as folks who have devoted their lives to the discipline.

Calling this “political apologetics” does not cheapen religious apologetics. It exposes the same structural weakness showing up in a new domain. If an idea were robust, it would not require defenders to invent internal enemies, fabricate intent, or flatten every disagreement into evil motives (your Hitler example to the Nth degree). It would argue plainly and survive scrutiny. The spread of apologetics into politics is not an insult to politics. It is a diagnosis of ideological weakness, cheapness and shittiness.

Of course it's an insult to politics. For the first time in US history, we had a person run for president who had neither political nor command military experience. He won twice. The results were (and are) disastrous.

Now in his second term, he appointed a television talkshow host to be Secretary of Defense (um, War); someone with no experience in law enforcement to head up the FBI; and the owner of a wrestling franchise to lead the Dept of Education. The world's richest man (again, with no experience in government) was given the authority to imbue a naïve bunch of twenty-somethings with the power to axe entire US Government programs. In all of this, we're seeing the elevation of apologists into the most powerful positions in the land. No one needs legitimate experience or education, because all opinions are deemed to be equally legitimate.

Now, I'm sure that you think everything is going to turn out okay--maybe even better than okay--maybe even the greatest America that could ever be--the Goldleafed America of Donald Trump. But, as you might guess, I don't agree.

That is why the term now applies across domains. Not because everything is apologetics, but because more and more positions have become incapable of standing without it. The discipline did not spread like a mold. The need for apologetics spread.

I get your point, C, but respectfully, I disagree. I'm afraid that the way we've adopted apologetics in the present has resulted in a toxic brew that threatens to choke this country. Our embrace is turning into a mutual death hug.