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The communists attitude towards Tiananmen Square is similar to the GAs attitude towards what event in LDS history:

Eighteen years later, the massacre is still a taboo subject in China, as Mao Yushi also discovered. In 2004, the internationally esteemed economist sent a polite petition, signed by 100 fellow intellectuals, to the Chinese government, asking it to apologize for Tiananmen and thereby help bury the tragic past. He, too, lost his university position and wound up under house arrest. I met him at his home on a rainy day; plastic bowls collected the water leaking through his crumbling roof—his refusal to play along with the Party has had material consequences. “I had forgotten the present leadership is the same as in 1989 or its immediate successors: they can’t confess,” he tells me.

http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2206

richardMdBorn wrote:The communists attitude towards Tiananmen Square is similar to the GAs attitude towards what event in LDS history:

Eighteen years later, the massacre is still a taboo subject in China, as Mao Yushi also discovered. In 2004, the internationally esteemed economist sent a polite petition, signed by 100 fellow intellectuals, to the Chinese government, asking it to apologize for Tiananmen and thereby help bury the tragic past. He, too, lost his university position and wound up under house arrest. I met him at his home on a rainy day; plastic bowls collected the water leaking through his crumbling roof—his refusal to play along with the Party has had material consequences. “I had forgotten the present leadership is the same as in 1989 or its immediate successors: they can’t confess,” he tells me.

http://www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=2206

Are you referring to the Meadow Mountain Massacre which President Hinckley has described as a tragedy?

He too lost his university position and wound up under house arrest. I met him at his home on a rainy day; plastic bowls collected the water leaking through his crumbling roof—his refusal to play along with the Party has had material consequences. “I had forgotten the present leadership is the same as in 1989 or its immediate successors: they can’t confess,” he tells me.

Almost sounds a bit like that September Six squabble. Any update as to how is Dr. Quinn doing?

Nehor, while it was also a tragedy, it was a massacre. How anyone can refuse to call it a massacre is beyond me. GBH may well refer to it as the "Tragedy at Mountain Meadows", but all that does is downplay the significance of it, ignore the fact that it was a massacre, and put it on par with some natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. To the extent that GBH and the current leadership cannot, or will not allow themselves to describe as it was, ie: a massacre, they are hiding being some kind of shield of denial.

Note, none of what I said in the preceding paragraph implies in any way, shape, or form that GBH would be accepting some kind of culpability on behalf of the church for the massacre. Calling it a massacre only acknowledges the fundemental nature of the event, which was a massacre, and does not imply anything at all about who is culpable for it. That they won't even acknowledge the nature of it as a massacre smacks of institutional denial.

From dictionary.com, a definition of tragedy (the rest were literary definitions)

6. a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster: the tragedy of war.

I think you're splitting hairs about words, Sethbag. The definition of tragedy is pretty stark. 'fatal event or affair' could easily mean massacre.

Its not about the dictionary, finally, though. Its about not using the term most associated with the event, "massacre."

Blixa wrote:Its not about the dictionary, finally, though. Its about not using the term most associated with the event, "massacre."

Why does that matter? I don't get it. To me it would be like referring to World War II as 'a conflict of nations' or my old British Professor who still (without any malice) calls the United States 'the Colonies'. My impression of what President Hinckley has said is that he is trying to heal a rift and regrets that it happened.

His form of "healing" is PR avoidance. Plus why is the operative trope "healing?" Why not "acknowledgment" or "understanding?"

The Nehor wrote:My impression of what President Hinckley has said is that he is trying to heal a rift and regrets that it happened.

Healing for whom? It's not about the side that massacred those people healing (which is where Pres Hinckley comes from). It's about healing from the other side, the side that was massacred. It's about acknowledging that church leaders allowed and encouraged something really really bad to happen, and apologizing for it now (even if the apology is very late in coming).

Nehor, a tragedy could be man-caused or it could be just a natural disaster, like a tornado strike on a town, or a tsunami. Tragedy usually, to most people, has some kind of connotation of natural and accidentalness to it. A massacre, on the other hand, is specifically man-perpetrated. Calling it a "tragedy" and not a "massacre" specifically lessens the connotations the usual name for the event carries. This lessening of the connotations is a form of denial. Don't try to hide behind the dictionary though, please - you know exactly what I'm talking about, and know that this point is meaningful.