Comment on a Review by Adam

of Under the Banner of Heaven.

BEING IS SOMETHINGNESS


SUNDAY, MAY 25, 2008
Under the Banner of Heaven



I'm like 5 years behind, but I just finished reading Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. Krakauer examines how religion drives people to extremes by detailing the "violent" history of Mormonism and its modern-day effects. Krakauer, traditionally a nature writer, focuses on polygamy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, and Ron and Dan Lafferty, a pair of apostate Mormons from Utah County who believe(d) they were ordered by God to murder their sister-in-law and her 15 month-old daughter. For more details you can read a review here, and read the Wikipedia entry here.

In all, it's a fascinating read. I had a few problems, though. I thought it was interesting that Krakauer tried so hard to put the Lafferty Brothers' actions in the context of Mormon history, but didn't bother to put Joseph Smith's actions and beliefs in the social context of his day. This resulted in a dishonest portrayal of Joseph Smith as slightly more disturbed than the Lafferty Brothers. Krakauer uses smug language to describe Joseph Smith's polygamy, but switches to an academic, "objective" tone to describe the Lafferty Brothers' vicious murders. There are also a few inaccuracies riddled throughout the book, including the Church's modern stand on birth control and families.

I'd recommend the book, though, if you're up for a slightly disjointed, but good read.

ADAM
WASHINGTON, DC, UNITED STATES

My Comment--

I think leaving Mormon History out of Mormon History and then leaving Modern Mormonism began with the Fruedian Mormon Grandaughter of David O'Mckay who was given the keys to the vault and came out with the conclusion that the Early Church leaders were drooling letchers. Her excommunication for heresey created a schism in Mormonism that lingers like an uncurable chronic disease.

There is danger of a Ressurection of a 19th Century Church a la Victorian Pulp Fiction, applying 19th Century paradigm to the Modern Mormon World. And I think it's dangerous. Look up Blood Atonement on YouTube. It won’t be long untill you find the Hydra, digg around a bit.

The press is flushing them out and they're going to get more dangerous. Jeffs abused his children in, it seems, quite perverted ways.

You get that down at the Court House at Any City, USA where we admit to it because it's both common and treatable and Any City realizes
it's treatable.

Jeff's knows it's his achilles heel and not related to his relationship with God, except that he's still getting revelations that are telling him that he blew it. He, like many leaders of men, has hubris, in this case a fatal case of hubris. Utah's hubris is to dope him up with drugs instead of treating him.

I remember Supreme Justice Psueder said that there may be a number of Civil Rights not included in the Bill of Rights and Constitution. The
Right to Eat for instance--the right to follow the better teachings of a lesser Prophets and to alternatly ignore, try to understand, their dark side.

If this is not done, you get the Hydra effect--two heads replace every one that is cut off. We are losing our buffer of wildlands between the
once small Polygamous settlements and people drawn to the Redrock Country by Photography and SUV's.

Some folks aren't reading LDS historical fiction, Levi Peterson, Orson Scott Card et. all, and coming before was The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Dandilion Wine, The Giant Joshua. These are/were actually written by Mormon Historians and contain some Mormon History.

Anything that Brigham Young and Joseph Young had to hide has been and will, I fear, be so exceeded by their offshoots that they will
stick in our hearts, even though we really know that feelings, including our feelings for Father, Son and Holy Ghost really happen in our brains.

Was the early Church against birth control? With an Infant Mortality rate like we had, yes, much of the world was against it in hope of rearing a small surviving family to adulthood.

Joseph Smith favored birth control via a pamphlet, used by the New York Oneida Community to deal with it's STD problem, and with mass immigration from the Satanic Mill Towns of Europe's Eastern Seaboard came many diseases, principally Syphillis. Dire poverty leads to this and it is congenital. 9 million Americans, men, women and children, had the disease or a collateral look alike by 1910 [Public Health Yearly Report,
San Francisco, CA.]

That is why he took wives who had a very few children, Josephina must have been a spoiled brat. He dreaded the Exodus into the wilderness and the heavy toll it would take on Mormon Women.

Many Victorians beleived the practice recommended by a doctor to reduce the transmission of syphillis to the innocent, obscene. Joseph
Smith's wives were married to Brigham Young after his assasination
and began to have children, lots of them, neccessary to settlement
of the land.

The raids have continued all pioneer practices that developed in the brutal years of persecution, including the need to have huge families for fear of losing them to a Federal Government that confuses Bigamy with consensual and usually loving families.

I had a BYU writing Professor who used to say that happy families don't sell books, they don't even lead to the writing of fiction. But Exposés--gruesome, unbeleivable, the more brutal and twisted the petty tyrant, the more pure and innocent the victims, the more money they make. I'm
not suggesting that they made it up.

And via the hydra phenomena, you get imitators, admirers. Who
wants to see goodness. Why is it the Jewish Comedians who are leaving their genres to follow this story and demand that the children be
returned home.

I know a few I should call, in fact I know a guy the New York City Club called the Funniest Guy in Mahatten--what is that laughter do.
What does it cover up.

I see a ressurection of the division between the Deseret Church, and the Church of the Mission Field, and these raids will widen the gap.

I havn't read Under the Banner of Heaven. A Chicken, I guess. I saw it as a prelude to a dreaded witch hunt. Actually, I detest any but Sororal polygamy, I think the male driven forms leads to tyranny, abuse, and miserable family. Sororal polygamy is easy to live, and patriarchal neccessarily difficult. Wives who don't love and admire one another
from the beginning may have a long row to hoe. Isolated from their normal companions, those waiting at the Ranch, Yearning for Zion,
and drifting more towards sororal polygamy.

Poverty and the stress it brings lead to increasingly tyrannical families, as much in the LDS Church as among
it's illegitimate successors. It leads to ignorance and hunger.

The Yearning for Zion folks lead the poor and rejected of the Intermountain West to a new life of food and clothes,housing suited to their needs and even a Temple where they could be married as the saints of yore.

Why Texas?--I wonder how they ever found that limestone quarry.

Kathleen

MAY 26, 2008 10:48 AM