Things I Have Learned About Mormon Fundamentalists

Thu, 21 Jul 2022 11:22:39 GMT

We’ve reached the hottest time of the year. Temps in the mid-90°s throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

This is a pain in the ass for moi since being the laziest person on the planet, I naturally like to sit and drink coffee for many hours after I first wake up and think deep thoughts about the Real Housewives and the Weimar Republic v. 2.0 and whether pigs have wings.

This isn’t possible when you have to get out and exercise before the mercury hits 85° at 9 a.m.

Not climate change.

Just the way midsummer works in the quaint and scenic Hudson Valley.

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Yesterday, I got out too late and felt like I was gonna die on the Walkway—whose parking lot has not been closed despite all those menacing signs.

I ran into the enchanting Nico:

~~His slaves~~ Neighbor and Mrs. Ed looked as defatigued as I felt.

I did not finish the current Remunerative Project, which kinda pissed me off—I came so close. But my mind was too muddled; I just couldn’t concentrate on clear logical thoughts.

So, instead I finished watching Under the Banner of Heaven—exceptionally well done, I thought. Dustin Lance Black took many liberties with the Lafferty narrative but those liberties were in the interest of turning out a perfectly dovetailed story, all of a piece.

Things I Have Learned About Mormon Fundamentalists from watching Under the Banner of Heaven:

(1) “Fornication” and “adultery” have nothing to do with sexual intercourse. They are crimes committed when a wife is not properly subservient to her husband.

(2) If you want to lure a Fundie back from the Dark Side, tempt him with Whitman Chocolates.

Now, I am reading the Krakauer book. It is very different from the FX TV adaptation.

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Sun, 17 Jul 2022 13:21:37 GMT

Puttered.

Which is to say I did little of consequence unless you think pulling a wheelbarrow full of weeds is consequential.

Puttering is simultaneously pleasant and unpleasant.

For some reason, I feel guilty when I’m not being productive. Like I should be writing great novels and brewing up a home cure for cancer instead of driving to Rhinebeck, gorging on hazelnut truffles, and watching bad French movies (Illusions Perdues, notable only for a two-second—long by movie standards!—full-frontal closeup of a most beautiful penis.)

On the other hand, doing absolutely nothing is most relaxing.

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In the evening, I watched several episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven, an epic I have been scrupulously avoiding since the Krakauer book came out 20 years ago.

I reached critical saturation on dysfunctional Mormons in the aftermath of Gary Gilmore decades ago. Norman Mailer’s literary reputation has gone underwater fast in the years since his death, but The Executioner’s Song remains a remarkable book.

Anyway, Under the Banner of Heaven is the story of the truly grisly slaughter of a young woman and her 15-month-old daughter by two of the woman’s brothers-in-law.

The young woman was a Mormon.

The two brothers-in-law were not Mormons in the strictest sense but members of a fundamentalist Mormon spin-off that interpreted Joseph Smith’s wacky teachings in a strictly constructionist manner.

Of course, Joseph Smith’s wacky teachings were not the only thing wrong with the two brothers-in-law. Their father once beat the family dog to death in full view of the family to punish the mother for some infraction of the patriarchal bylaws. The family was highly dysfunctional. Duh!

But it’s still interesting to ponder: Why these two men but not some other two men? ‘Cause it’s not like there’s any lack of dysfunctional Mormon families. What’s the attraction of fundamentalism? (Okay, we already know the answer to that one: Control.) What’s the difference between religion and psychosis?

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When Joseph Smith was 11, he moved to Palmyra, a rather negligible town in upstate New York about 20 miles south of Rochester. In the opening decades of the 19th century, Palmyra was far more bustling than it is now on account of loading docks and the Erie Canal.

That whole area around Rochester was burning up with holy roller fever in the opening decades of the 19th century. They called it the Second Great Awakening. Adventism was the other religious movement that gained some traction during that time, but, of course, not nearly as much as LDS, so I’ve often wondered: How did Joseph Smith succeed in inventing a world-class religion when so many others failed?

I mean, Mormon cosmology is really fuckin’ crazy, and Joseph Smith was an obvious snake oil salesman.

I suppose it comes down to two things:

(1) Joseph Smith’s martyrdom
(2) Brigham Young’s organizational genius

Both those factors are elements in the success of Christianity, too, though, of course, that organizational genius was St. Paul, not Brigham Young.

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In the early days of our relationship, Ben and I did the Mormon Tour of upstate New York. Ben was absolutely fascinated by Joseph Smith—in retrospect, this ought to have been a red flag 😀—and because of my early Synanon experiences, cults have always fascinated me as well.

We visited the Smith homestead—Abe Lincoln couldn’t have asked for a more inspirational log cabin—and walked through the Sacred Grove where Smith hung out with the angel Moroni.

We attended a performance at Hill Cumorah—free, and you did not have to be a Mormon!

The Old State Road that the first Saints traveled in their relentless push west is actually Highway 79, which I drive every time I go to Ithaca.

We read No Man Knows My History together, the first true biography of Smith (as opposed to hagiography.). In it, Fawn Brodie asserts that Smith’s visions weren’t a symptom of (innocent) personality dissociation at all but deliberate manipulations.

Interestingly, Smith first conceptualized The Book of Mormon as a religious novel. This is deeply reminiscent of L. Ron Hubbard’s career as a D-list science fiction writer.

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The two murderous brothers were apprehended and brought to trial.

Oddly enough, the more repellant of the two was given life without parole while the other—who had a better claim to the temporary insanity defense strategy—got the death penalty. He died before it could be implemented, but he wanted… a firing squad! Of course, he did! Gary Gilmore set the bar with that one.

And, of course, I went down the Google rabbit hole and sussed out an interview with the surviving murderer.

Is he repentant?

No.

God told me to do it, he says. God must have had His reasons. I didn’t ask.

Why the fuck not?

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Things I Have Learned About Mormon Fundamentalists

Personally, I Am Gonna Ask