Politics over Religion at MD&D

[_candygal]

With each passing day that I no longer go or post there the better my life is. How I spent so much time wasting it on that board is beyond me now looking back...but their Admin's can still kiss my arse.

You might find it interesting that Scott keeps getting banned from threads lately...just complained on the "cake thread"...he is so upset...I posted on his thread complaining about it..and told him...welcome to my world..

[_mentalgymnast]

To the credit of Utah and/or Mormons, far right extremism has been less here than in many other states. Still, it's clearly alive when you consider the Bundy family saga.

That family is composed of some weird ducks. Of course I have a personal thing going on here. A few years ago coming back to Utah from California we got caught in the traffic on the interstate during the standoff with these folks. Hours of delay. It wasn't fun. If someone keeps me from taking a pee, I take it personally.

Regards,
MG

[_Craig Paxton]

With each passing day that I no longer go or post there the better my life is. How I spent so much time wasting it on that board is beyond me now looking back...but their Admin's can still kiss my arse.

You might find it interesting that Scott keeps getting banned from threads lately...just complained on the "cake thread"...he is so upset...I posted on his thread complaining about it..and told him...welcome to my world..

Scott is a homophobe. . . he can have his cake. . . while he may have many redeeming qualities. . . that he clings to this bigotry is discusting

[_Symmachus]

Kish, you seem a bit worked up. Aside from issuing a proclamation over the pulpit to not vote for Trump, I'm not sure what more LDS church leaders could have done to make their opposition more clear. They made their feelings known every bit as strongly as they did against gay marriage re prop8.

Did the Church read letters in the quorum meetings instructing members not to support Trump? Did they raise money and thousands of man-hours from its volunteer labor force to oppose Donald Trump? I don't recall that happening at all.

Conversely, did members of the Church hierarchy come out in open support of gay marriage during Proposition 8? I don't think so.

As for the "stolen" land, it seems some clarity is needed. I haven't done much research into this, but, your understanding seems a bit backwards, at least compared to this piece.

The Daily Signal is blatantly partisan and not a credible news source, but in general I doubt you would dispute that the land in question did not belong to the United States before 1848. It was stolen from Mexico in a war of conquest, on the one hand, but then ultimately from the indigenous people, which is the real issue here. This is such an obvious point that I can't believe anyone needs to make it. I'm sure you're pretending to be ignorant, but I hope it's not to disguise the fact that you don't care.

Are you suggesting that state and private property rights are not in keeping with American values and constitutional history?

I didn't see Kish suggest that, but he'll have to answer for himself. It seems to me you are not aware that federal land is by definition public land, and therefore by definition neither private nor the belonging to the state of Utah. Therefore, how is that the rights of private entities or the state of Utah acting operating on behalf of private entities even relevant here? I invite the lawyers to chime in, but I don't think one needs to be a lawyer to determine that public is not private. As I understand it, Obama was well within his authority—do you have a court decision to show otherwise?—in defining the land in such a way that private enterprises, particularly those that are harmful to the natural environment of the place, could not use public lands for private gain. Trump reversed that, which is also within his legal power as President. That is my understanding. Whether one supports the one president or the other has to do with whether one is ok with exploiting public resources for private gain.

I for one am not ok with that. I also don't appreciate how this is sold as a jobs issue. My family comes from Carbon County. The towns where my mom and relatives and grandparents grew up don't even exist anymore because of the collapse of the coal industry, which was absolutely brutal and exploitative, but nevertheless sustained the communities. New energy industries have emerged, but do you think that has led to a jobs boom in anything like it was in the past? Not really, thanks to technology. I am sure that private contracts will bring in money to someone, but it's not going to be normal people.

Also, I don't get the hatred of the federal government in Utah, considering that without the federal government in the Utah economy, the place would be worse off than Alabama and Mississipi during a recession. You should read Patricia Limerick (Legacy of Conquest), and Richard White's title of his history of the American west captures well the hypocritical attitude of the typical "individualist" ethos of people who support what Trump is doing but whose way of life absolutely depends on federal largess: It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own.

You are absolutely right that the exploitation of public resources for the private benefit of small group is an American tradition, though I'm not sure "value" is the word I'd use for most people. It is certainly a value of the Republican party, however.

[_Kishkumen]

Kish, you seem a bit worked up. Aside from issuing a proclamation over the pulpit to not vote for Trump, I'm not sure what more LDS church leaders could have done to make their opposition more clear. They made their feelings known every bit as strongly as they did against gay marriage re prop8.

As for the "stolen" land, it seems some clarity is needed. I haven't done much research into this, but, your understanding seems a bit backwards, at least compared to this piece.

Yeah, I'm sorry, Water Dog, but you are not going to find me very sympathetic on these points. First of all, it looks to me that LDS leadership was speaking out of both sides of its collective mouth on this. Sure, happy to affirm their public values, but then happy to have former GAs go to Trump rallies. And, while one might come back with the objection that the Church does not control its former GAs, I would hope that we were, by now, not so naïve as to think that people in this group so much as sneeze with reference to something so important without some input from the head honchos.

As for the land, I recommend that you read through the materials I have provided on this thread to get an idea of how well the state is managing its land with the help of Don Peay. The Native American sites that are threatened by the reduction of the Bears Ears monument are national treasures and culturally important to native peoples, who have been screwed over with impunity for centuries. What did Trump do wrong? Need I even say anything in this regard? Really? Guy is a complete bozo, and his deliberate insults to native people give me a pretty damn good idea where he and his cronies, like Don Peay, are coming from. And, it sure ain't for the benefit of the average Utahn.

[_Kishkumen]

It seems to me you are not aware that federal land is by definition public land, and therefore by definition neither private nor the belonging to the state of Utah. Therefore, how is that the rights of private entities or the state of Utah acting operating on behalf of private entities even relevant here? I invite the lawyers to chime in, but I don't think one needs to be a lawyer to determine that public is not private.

This kind of animus toward the federal government is precisely the thing that has really piqued my interest. It's not too far from black helicopters and mysterious men in black. The federal government seems to remain the enemy it was to the Confederacy and the Mormon polygamists well over a century later. Men like the Bundys do not recognize federal land as anything but stolen from the local white people, as though they actually possessed a right to it from time immemorial (something that flies in the face of the historical realities you brought up). The private interests found their sugar daddy in Donald J. Trump, and as I have tried to show in this thread, in the case of Don Peay, this is exactly what they courted him for.

I am not questioning Trump's legal authority to hand this land over to be sold to private individuals and corporations. I am nevertheless outraged over it, and I think it right that anyone should be, particularly, in the case of Bears Ears, Native Americans in Utah.

[_Symmachus]

This kind of animus toward the federal government is precisely the thing that has really piqued my interest. It's not too far from black helicopters and mysterious men in black. The federal government seems to remain the enemy it was to the Confederacy and the Mormon polygamists well over a century later. Men like the Bundys do not recognize federal land as anything but stolen from the local white people, as though they actually possessed a right to it from time immemorial (something that flies in the face of the historical realities you brought up). The private interests found their sugar daddy in Donald J. Trump, and as I have tried to show in this thread, in the case of Don Peay, this is exactly what they courted him for.

You bring something up that makes me see some paradoxes. On the one hand, massive historical forgetfulness that is as astonishing as it is self-serving. At the same time, the distrust and disrespect of the federal government has deep historical roots going back to the Civil War (our congress today is operating much as the congress of the 1850s: a powerful block of southerners and their western allies wielding power all out of proportion to their economic importance and demographic size). Another is that this hatred of the federal government (from whose teat they feed greedily) coexists with the idea of America as the greatest country on earth. What makes America so great, then, if not the unique political system and the history of that system? America is one of the few and certainly the most successful countries on earth founded purely as an ideological project. And yet, the government set up by that system is the one they hate.

There is one slender line that threads easily through the needle of these paradoxes...

[_moksha]

For what it is worth, the Church has been wanting to acquire federal land in Utah long before anyone heard of Donald Trump or Orrin Hatch. Back then the sentiment of Woody Guthrie's song about "This land is your land, this land is my land" and the memory of corporate/government misdeeds in the Teapot Dome scandal was strong.

[_Meadowchik]

As I sit back and ponder stuff like this, I really wonder what it means to many of the LDS people to be a citizen of the U.S. What is it about LDS culture that tugs its people into tax protest, tax evasion, sovereign citizen movements, militias, the abuse of federal lands, etc.? This can't be a mistake or a coincidence. There is something in LDS culture that is not reconciled to full LDS participation in the United States of America. In some there is a kooky drive to redefine what it means to be American--to rewrite history and insist that the Unites States is something other than what most Americans have understood it to be. That effort has fed into the poison of conspiracy culture that is now ensconced in the White House itself.

If it was once prophesied that an elder of Israel would save the Constitution when it was hanging by the thread, I am afraid that it might more correctly have been said than an LDS elder would cut the thread the Constitution was hanging by. Cleon Skousen might have been that elder.

Putting on my ultra-right TBM hat:

We're the chosen generation, blessed with the fullness of the gospel and God's power to act on earth. The world is a dark abyss of wickedness where Satan tells half-truths to lead legions of good people astray, to dwindle in lives of pop culture, sex before marriage, divorcing from abusive spouses, high-quality rated R intellectual films, progressive political advocacy, and gay marriage and baking cakes for those gay marriages. The efforts at specially crafting a government to meet the needs of these unwashed masses are futile, when they are already spiritually dead and the only cure is to be found within the walls of the holy temples and the LDS homes of families solemnized in those temples. No attempt at secular government can ever hope to succeed, therefore, tearing down big government is our only hope to approach God's ideal government on earth. Our dissatisfaction, our depression, and our boredom can all be blamed on the encroaching evils of the Satan-dominated world and our only hope is in a life after this life, be it obtained through an apocalyptically-cleansed world or the Resurrection.

[_Meadowchik]

I used to associate intensely with the conservative right, very actively in political discussions. When Trump was nominated, it was fascinating to see people with the attitude that they were the exclusive group "awake" to the truth yet they instabanned me when I expressed disagreement with Trump.