huckelberry wrote:Mormons focus on that with other Mormons, outsiders not so much.
The Brethren in the last century did not want unions for Mormon workers, because they were business owners. Mormon workers bought into that because that was the will of their Authorities. The Brethren do not encourage the provision of healthcare for all and so the members are against it. When it comes to shelter for the homeless or bread for the hungry they give mixed messages but are usually in agreement that society-wide efforts should be avoided.
Moksha, Even thought both of my parents are from Utah I have never lived in the state. I suspect that leaves me a bit shallow in my awareness of the Utah politics in the points you make above.
I find myself thinking that it is with mining that I associate unions and Utah. Many of the miners were not LDS. I usually think of the mining companies being not very LDS but it would seem unlikely that there would be no LDS ownerships. The railroad also was nonLDS so I am wondering where unions were in question for LDS owned business in Utah. I suppose you could tell me to read Michael Quinn material.(do you recommend?)
Perhaps some view US government as an encroachment upon LDS authority.
I am not up on good sources to study, but one fascinating story about early Mormonism and unions can be found on google if you time in the name Joe Hill.
Maksutov wrote:Because "social justice" has come to be associated with liberalism and therefore is a product of Satan. Also because God doesn't believe in equality. At. All.
Maksutov wrote:Because "social justice" has come to be associated with liberalism and therefore is a product of Satan. Also because God doesn't believe in equality. At. All.
I think we can trace a lot of this to ETB.
Yes, indeed. It was actually like a second faith transition for me when I realised my politics were rooted in cherry picked ideas from him, and that he was no great political or even moral mind.
moksha wrote:I am not up on good sources to study, but one fascinating story about early Mormonism and unions can be found on google if you time in the name Joe Hill.
As far as all the businesses in which the Brethren had their finger in the pot, Michael Quinn is probably the best source.
Some time back, I believe Blixa pointed out that Joe Hill was working Silver King in Park City. I could not help but be enamored of the idea. My childhood includes long travel to visit a grandmother in Park City, back before skiing and fancification. It was the tall red building with Silver King spelled out that said we finally arrived in Park City. It was the condition of the town that suggested not so much of the silver went to the workers.
I don't think any of this is all that complicated.
First, people take the church leadership most seriously in domains of life that are not primarily related their own self-interests as they perceive them—like anyone, really. In areas where Church precepts and personal interest collide, the Church will usually lose out. Hardly anyone in Utah has taken up the Church leadership's expressed views on hunting, for example. I doubt all that many Mormons in Utah changed their views on immigration simply because the Church told them to.
Second, I don't agree at all that Mormons have a special hostility to unions as compared with states in the region. Utah has never been a heavy industrial economy—indeed, I believe the federal government is still the largest employer in the state (hence opposition to government programs elsewhere but fierce opposition to attempts to shut down Hill AFB). Mormons on the whole express the same kind of hostility to labor unions that you find in states where the economy has historically been agrarian, with land use and banking (on which farmers are always dependent) being major concerns, not labor.
Third, certain parts of the state do have a history of strong labor movements, particularly Carbon County. I grew up hearing stories about the UMWA. Now that there isn't any coal left, though, union membership has declined drastically, just as it has in the rest of the economy that has moved away from heavy industry. Anecdotally (i.e. based on stories from my grandfather, who was a bishop and very active in this stuff in his younger years and idolized John Lewis till his dying breath, even though he'd moved over to the Republicans in mid life), when the UMWA was active and the land-owning aristocracy that ran the Church was denouncing unions, none of the Mormon miners listened or cared (see first point, above).
Fourth, social justice is a malleable rhetorical term deployed from the left, not a definable set of policies (hence the ballooning of "justice" areas: "reproductive justice," "environmental justice" and so on. All of these are simply appeals to a concept everyone supports—justice—that is used as a rhetorical cover). Utah, like most states of the middle of the country, is culturally conservative and therefore not going to be amenable to culturally liberal social policies advocated under the umbrella of obviously left-wing rhetoric. In this, they are not all that different from sectors of the economy with the strongest union presence; they too tend to be culturally conservative, as Trump knows, as Hilary forgot, and as Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren are beginning to find out. This isn't the result of Church brainwashing.
Last, where do you think Ezra Taft Benson got his views from? The guy was a farmer from Idaho. Like many midwestern and western agrarians, his kind of cultural conservatism was so deep that the slightest counter-pressure ignited a fever of conspiratorial delusions. There are to this day a lot of people like that in the Intermountain west and the rural Midwest who have had nothing to do with Mormonism (Michigan militia, etc.). Benson, who was distantly related to one of the most powerful conservatives in the Senate opposed to Eisenhower, got into the Eisenhower administration precisely because he was viewed as a nutjob, and therefore his presence in the administration shutdown opposition to Eisenhower from the agrarian right, which was large and conspiratorial. It had been a source of political threat but became an electoral asset with someone like Benson around. That is one significant reason why Benson was kept in Eisenhower's cabinet for both terms, which is pretty rare. When later pronouncing on political and economic matters as an apostle, Benson was doing so not as a lone nutjob but as a representative of a large segment of the population where Mormonism was strongest. He only looks crazy now because the economy of Utah has changed drastically since the 1970s and consequently so have the social attitudes of much of the state, even if they are still far more conservative than the coasts.
Church rhetoric against this or that is not reflective of some grand strategy that is gradually revealed by heaven and that members then need to be goaded into but instead simply a consequence of the culture from which the Church leadership comes: the culturally conservative membership of the Great Basin. This also explains, incidentally, why Ensign Peak won't matter very much, for he educated class of Mormons who are the stock of future leadership are entirely educated, white-collar professionals who have or aspire to have stock portfolios and 401ks with many zeroes in them. The leadership and the membership are on the same cultural page.
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
Amore wrote:You don’t know me. For some reason I’ve pissed you off by stating truth you hate. If I said, “I ride unicorns to work” you wouldn’t be bothered because you know it isn’t true. People tend to get so angry and bullying as you have with me - when they feel threatened by TRUTH.
ResIspa, did you ever tell someone to give tithe$$$ to the Mormon cult? Did you ever tell poor people they had to pay tithing to the church? I never did. Even before my faith crisis, I questioned church finances. I never went on a cult-mission. Did you? Did you teach dysfunctional cult teachings like “follow the prophet” (above Christ and God)??
So so very hypocritical. Such lack of self-awareness to criticize me for being “bigoted” as you’re criticizing me for not thinking as you! That’s an example of BIGOTRY: you’re intolerant to me and anyone who doesn’t believe your new set of ideologies. Do you realize how ignorant that is? Grow up! Look at yourself in the mirror!
Some go from calling names like “anti-Mormon apostate”... to “bigoted hater homophobe.” Same cult-mentality, different herd.
Do you see the projection? You object that I don't know you, and then proceed to psychologically diagnose me. And, as usual, you get it wrong. The reason I object to your demonization of non-binary folks is the harm you cause, not the "truth" of what you say. I would not object strenuously to your statement about unicorns because I don't see that it would harm anyone. In contrast, I've witnessed the harm done to non-binary folks by people who behave like you. It's abusive, it's hateful, and I will strenuously oppose it when I see it.
What's worse is that speaking the "TRUTH" is not what you do. What you do is regurgitate factoids -- some accurate, some not -- hateful, anti-gay so-called Christian websites. Even the factoids that are literally true are often misleading because they are presented out of context. But you even go beyond that and claim that your opinions about non-binary folk and "truth," when they obviously aren't. And there is nothing loving or kind about the way you do it -- it's intended to foment anger, fear, and disgust toward your fellow humans.
I've been on ex-mormon boards for a long time, and from time to time I've seen folks who are obsessed with accusing others of "thinking like a Mormon." And to a person they have one thing in common -- they "think like a Mormon" more than anyone else. They share the fundamental arrogance of Mormonism -- that they know "the truth" and that everyone should accept their truth. They know what is best for everyone -- even people they know nothing about. And they are harshly judgmental of anyone who disagrees.
You also aren't the first person I've run into who uses "herd mentality" as a thought stopping cliché. But you miss a couple of things. First, you display many characteristics of your old Mormon herd. The arrogance. The claim to TRUTH. Rejection of non-binary folks. Hatred of atheists. But you're so obsessed with finding motes that you miss the beam. You also miss the fact that cutting and pasting from gay-hating websites is exactly herd-like thinking. You've posted "facts" from them that I've shown are demonstrably false. Why? You followed along like a sheep rather than exercising the slightest bit of independent thought by checking their sources. That's bona fide herd thinking.
I once dedicated a whole thread to giving you an opportunity to make a straightforward, logical argument from your "factoids" to your conclusion (gay folks should be denied marriage). You literally couldn't do it. There was no logic or valid reasoning to your argument. That's because you're following a herd rather than thinking for yourself. You cited certain studies, comparing apples to oranges. Why? Because you didn't independently think through what the studies you cited actually meant. You just took what somebody else said for granted. That's bona-fide herd thinking.
But you simply use the term as a thought-stopping cliché to avoid having to address the substance of valid arguments raised against your position. And you do it with complete and utter arrogance.
Can you see your own blindness? You object to being labeled as a bigot, but you have no trouble at all labeling millions of people you've never met as "deviant," "mentally ill," "sick" and much worse in other posts. By your own logic, if I am wrong for labeling you as a "bigot," then you are just as wrong for slapping derogatory labels on millions of other people. If I'm a hypocrite, you're a hypocrite a million times over.
You protest that I'm bullying you by labeling you as a bigot. Telling teenagers that they are mentally ill, or sick, or deviant is much more bullying. Are you going to commit suicide because I called you a bigot. That's what teenage kids do when they are bullied by bigoted adults about their sexuality. Mote and beam, Amore. Mote and beam.
You're the bully here, Amore. You just can't see it because your self-righteousness gets in the way.
I started blocking her years ago because of her vile vicious lying b******t. Don't waste your time with her.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
Symmachus wrote:Last, where do you think Ezra Taft Benson got his views from?
I think they seeped through some area of the earth, where the crust was thin and magnetic variations from sunspot activity allowed a hell portal to erupt.
Symmachus wrote:Last, where do you think Ezra Taft Benson got his views from?
I think they seeped through some area of the earth, where the crust was thin and magnetic variations from sunspot activity allowed a hell portal to erupt.
That area of the earth you're talking about is just beneath the soil that nourishes Idaho's potatoes.
By the way, does anyone know about an incident where Benson, circa 1988, was giving a talk in a priesthood session of conference and, just as he started muttering about "communist potatoes," was whisked away from the podium by Hinckley? I have heard rumors about this but have never been able to verify or find more information.
"As to any slivers of light or any particles of darkness of the past, we forget about them."
