Posted by:
cludgie
(
)
Date: October 04, 2020 03:39PM
I was semi-obsessed with it for some time. I have become very matter-of-fact about the church, and, while I do not try to convert my wife or family members, when they talk about something that I also have experience with or know about, I also enter into the conversation and just say honest, truthful things about the church.
I was on a walk with an adult daughter and DW, and they got to talking about why and how Mormons became so politically conservative. They are both progressive liberals, despite their otherwise fairly over-the-top Mormon qualities, so it the rabid conservatism of Mormons, especially the Utah Mormons, flummoxes them.
I told my daughter that it had decades to do with leaders like Ezra Taft Benson, Joseph Fielding Smith, and Bruce R. McConkie, among many others, who preached about the "Red Menace," who promised nuclear war with the Soviet Union, who blasted Martin Luther King, Jr. as a "communist," who rebelled against the Civil Rights Act, etc. My wife tried to deflect that, and to defend the leaders. I wouldn't have it, and brought up the constant over-the-pulpit scare talk about the Communist threat, 2-year food storage, Benson's forward in "The Black Hammer," Delbert Stapeley's letter to George Romney, and all that. My daughter might not have totally believed me, but at least she has a seed or two in her head.