Anyone who has read "Animal Farm" knows it as a great fable about corruption. The animals overthrow the farmer and the pigs take over and become worse than the farmer ever was. You can see a touch of "Animal Farm" in many walks of life.

There is one bit in "Animal Farm", when the animals woke up to find that the pigs had rewritten the rules overnight, and insisted they'd always said that. What does that remind you of?

At one point the pigs take food away from the other starving animals, who are required to hand over a portion of farm produce every month:

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“Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege?...We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us ...It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples”

Or should that be, "If you so sustain these callings, raise your arm to the square and say, 'Right on!'"

Or am I tad confused here?

caffiend Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Or should that be, "If you so sustain these
> callings, raise your arm to the square and say,
> 'Right on!'"
>
> Or am I tad confused here?

Right arm good, left arm bad.

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

It was not really about corruption OP. It was about
Socialism and Communism. The ruling elite were represented by the farmer. The animals were the oppressed peoples. The pigs became the Bolsheviks, who then took over and became like the ruling elite of the Communist party.

My favorite line from that book is "Some pigs are more equal than others."

In an allegory, the main characters are equivalent representations of somebody (or thing). In this case, the dogs were the secret police, Boxer the horse is the average worker who plods along, always believing that the leadership has their best interest at heart. In your application, Squealer, Boxer would be the rank-and-file TBM who faithfully answers the call to clean the toilets.

Yes, DaveinTx, Orwell was condemning politicized Communism as instituted under Lenin and expanded under Stalin. Yet, the dynamics of authoritarians who exploit a movement have wider application. Which begs the question: Were Lenin and Joseph Smith genuine idealists at the start, only to have their vision usurped by their heirs Stalin and Young? Or were the purported ideals a mere front from the very start --a ruse-- and the founders' motives, from the very beginning, cynical and corrupt? Or (an intermediate interpretation) did the founders start out idealistically pure, only to become corrupted by their ensuing power and celebrity?

I vote the middle: corrupt from the beginning.

"Meet the new boss--same as the old boss!"

Edit: Wasn't the great line, "Some animals are more equal than others" ...?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2020 12:02PM by caffiend.

Joseph Smith was a colorful dreamer, Young more "hands on".

There was in western historical circles a long effort to blame the evils of Soviet communism on Stalin, thereby exonerating Lenin and lending the 1917 Revolution a patina of ideological authenticity. In the last 25 years, however, open access to government archives has permitted scholars to see the original documents, and those reveal that Lenin was almost as nasty as Stalin.

The men thought they were agents of history and hence that anything they did was legitimate. Echoes here of JS, BY, and the whole Second Anointing process whereby anything done in the interests of the church was by definition divinely sanctioned.

The difference is that JS and BY were far less ruthless than Lenin and Stalin, who murdered at will. Lenin's relationship with Stalin was also curious because the latter was a Georgian seminary student and apparently a gangster. Simon Sebag Montefiore did great work on the young Stalin and answered the question: in and around the oil rush city of Baku, Stalin ran a full-blown criminal empire of mob violence, terrorism, extortion, kidnapping and bank robbery. He forwarded most of the income thus generated to Lenin, which is why the Bolsheviks were so powerful before and in the years after the revolution. Stalin and his successors buried these facts lest they delegitimize the beginnings of the USSR.

So in my view, Stalin was by the worst, Lenin was slightly better but still a profoundly evil man, and BYU and JS were criminal novices in comparison.

We were both wrong. But you were closer than me.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." A proclamation by the pigs who control the government in the novel Animal Farm, by George Orwell.

Great story that Animal Farm. Everyone should read it.

Another allegory that can be drawn from the book:

Everybody is equal, but some of us are more equal than others!

Not only is that true in the "Church" but many places elsewhere.

what I can't quite get my head around is that BY and joseph smith were both born in 1801 and 1805 and were products of the American Revolution, It was firmly in the air that Americans were free, and equal, and some were 'not' more equal than others (in that generation) they disavowed having a nobility, no house of Lords, Federalism (with birthright rank) died with Hamilton and Washington.

But then a short time later Joe brought back the old ways. the teaching of communism, milking the gentiles, stealing cows, stealing other mens wives, and crowning people as priests and priestesses, kings and queens. Joe and Brigham were all about creating a new Mormon Royalty with their secret Mormon ceremonies. Like Lot's Wife said above they weren't profoundly evil but were still criminals.

I quibble with the notion that revolutionary America was egalitarian. One of the reasons it was so successful was that it barely touched the economic and social structure. The revolution transferred political power from a distant British elite to the local American elite through whom the British had operated. American commoners were still disempowered.

Remnants of the aristocratic structure were evident everywhere. Black people only counted as 3/5 of white people and had no personal autonomy let alone political rights. Among the whites, only people with resources were allowed to vote. The senate was elected not by the people but by the state legislatures, which still choose the electors in the electoral college.

The Declaration of Independence was political propaganda. None of the founders were ready to behave as if "all men are created equal," including espeically the arch-hypocrite Thomas Jefferson, who owned human beings like cattle and had several children with a slave girl.

At least the pigs tell us we are free while taking everything away.

Concerning Joseph Smith D&C 24:9 "in temporal labors thou shalt not have strength."

D&C 41:7 "it is meet that my servant Joseph Smith, Jun. should have a house built, in which to live and translate."

D&C 124:59-60 "let my servant Joseph and his seed after him have place in that house, from generation to generation, forever and ever.....
And let the name of that house be called the Nauvoo House"

Bishop: Oink, oink
Me: I am a human being
Bishop: Snort, grunt

Goose-steppers: Obedience good, intellect bad

Seminary Teacher: Just get on board the glue factory truck, and don't worry. Happy farms await you.

I feel like I am living in Animal Farm right now. I felt like it in the church now I feel like "do as I say not as I do" is most of what I hear from all kinds of authority.

Oh and those guys who go on about equality and fairness? They're the worst. Some animals are more equal than others indeed.

Animal Farm? I hope you understood it better than 1984.

(Ever notice that the Revolutionary Fist gesture is always the right hand? #Ironic.)

Your post got me to thinking: In "Animal Farm," there is, at least, the propagandized ideal of some kind of equality. That is missing in "1984." There is no such fiction. There's the Inner Party (Nomenklatura), the Outer Party (Apparatchik), and the Proles (Workers).

Comparing LDS to Orwell is a bit of a stretch, in that the LDS enforcement apparatus is soft, but the Soviet was hard, and often brutal. But breaking LDS down to BIC royalty and GAs, then stake presidents and bishops, down to ward callings, and yes, the analogy works.

Nor is there the fiction of democracy and equality.

Oh, I think your take on AF is correct, so too your application of it to Mormonism.