Sophocles wrote:I've been following that board since I discovered my mother was an active poster, over a decade ago. They've chased off all the mainstream LDS and now it's mostly just different flavors of fundies arguing amongst themselves.
The OP of that thread, Fred, is just back from a nine-month ban. But he picked up right where he left off. He has been open about his real life identity for MLM purposes and as racist as he is on the board, he's even more racist on his MLM blog.
But even that one pales in comparison to his previous blog.
That guy is a member of this board also and posted one time. It got Hound super excited. I think he followed a couple other guys who landed here and decided it wasn't for him.
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I'm sorry to hear you've got family following that stuff. I agree there's something about certain people who rant at volume 10 that appeals to more normal people who perhaps are blowing off steam more than anything. Perhaps such people feel vulnerable and weak themselves. I think my parents could easily have gotten spun up and found themselves agreeing with such an individual, although I never saw them go much harder than LDS Living. My dad would get spun up over right-wing emails of the same tenor and quality, and he believed all the excerpts posted to this thread and then some. But didn't we all? If we're honest, it's unthinkable that Adam and Eve were anything but white. Anyone who says they believed otherwise as a TBM isn't honest; this is what the church believes, even if they might skirt specifics these days.
I remember once I was at some kind of festival with my dad and he was talking with a women who said she was Cherokee and my dad found that very interesting. He told her about the Book of Mormon and explained to her that the reason her skin was so light was because of the mingling with the house of Ephraim and according to a prophecy that the curse would fade over time. If he were to register here and give his opinions he'd be blasted harder than MG or anybody who has ever posted here. In fact, he left social media entirely after he gave his opinion on something (that was probably racist as f) and got blasted and that was the end of that. At the same time, nobody would go out of their way more than he would to help somebody no matter what their ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whatever, he'd be the first one at their door to listen to their troubles for hours, get people on the phone that could help with whatever they need, and try to get them to church. He brought people to church from every imaginable background.
Mormonism is basically a racist sci-fi space opera and there's just no getting around it, and to get really excited about the Church virtually requires you to get excited about this grand racist narrative. Hence my dad. He didn't otherwise have a malicious bone in his body. Politics somewhat follows, as they'd come close to agreeing with F about Democrats. They were friends with very few Democrats, and associated the party with evil: women working and "acting like men" and that sort of thing. Although they wouldn't say it was impossible for a Democrat to be a good person as those few who were friends of theirs they held in high regard. Mom would just lower her voice and get this look on her face and say something like, "well, they're Democrats...pfft." And try to justify it by saying, "Well, Boyd K. Packer was a Democrat".
So it's interesting how theory and reality may get compartmentalized. It makes collective action a huge problem, because you get the salt of the earth like my parents voting in garbage like the present regime. I guess what I'm trying to do here is separate all the racist theology from rubber hitting the road. On the one hand, there is racist doctrine that can be believed in ways that isn't malicious. On the other, there is calling ICE. My parents would never do such a thing in a million years and would never condone anybody else doing it either.
"if you can't admire Joe Biden as a person then it's probably, you got a problem." -- Lindsey Graham