We are hiking the slot canyons and washes of Utah this week, and are deep in Mormon country. It’s an oppressive feeling in the towns – we are in Blanding, and it is sleepy. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s an air of insularity here. I look at the faces of other diners in a restaurant, and there is a passivity that creeps me out. These people do not think for themselves, and are trained all their lives to accept the rule of church hierarchy. They are severely punished if they get out of line.
In Bill Maher’s movie Religulous, he interviewed a couple of fallen away Mormons. they talked about ostracism. They not only lost contact with their friends and community, but also their business relationships, jobs and income. If you leave the Mormon church, you might as well leave Utah and start over. And that is hard, if not impossible, for most people. So they get their minds right.
And they seem happy, and that brings to mind Napoleon’s observation that freedom is not something most people want, but is rather something cherished by only a few people “of noble mind.” People don’t want to think for themselves or go againt the flow. I’m not talking about Mormons, of course, but all of this nonsense about “killing” Osama that is going down. It is so painfully obviously a total hoax, and yet those who are even a little suspicious are ridiculed and so might have to leave the Big Utah, the US of A, or just look at their shoes. Or get their minds right.
And I suppose they are happy.
Maybe that is why the Mormons ended up in Utah. It is such a big state with so many ways to go off and be alone. Maybe they all sneak off now and then and have a private thought. Maybe they tear off that white shirt and tie and tie one on, or read a book that has evil thoughts. I haven’t seen it, but these canyons are so deep that they have not all been discovered or explored. It could be that there is life here after all.
Maybe we will stumble on a colony of freethinkers today.
Piece of Mindful 
What are you, a mind reader? What a smug asshole.
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You’re right of course. It is never possible to know anything unless it is plainly spelled out for you. Outward manifestations mean nothing.
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But you’re right. We watched Utah TV and these things werenot spelled out for us, so the jury is out. nothing is true until it is on TV.
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The Ute might have something to say about the land now occupied by Mormons. Apparently, early on Utes and Mormons share one thing common: Polygamy.
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“So painfully obviously a total hoax”?
Please explain, oh noble-minded one.
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Oh, I will, I will. Stay tuned. It’s a little hard to type on this little screen but we are home again tomorrow.
In the meantime, why don’t you do the scientific thing, and rather than merely accepting official truth, set out to disprove it. Failing to do so, you will have credence here. Right now, you’re just another guy who gets his truth from TV. Hitchens wrote a short piece a few years back laying out his reasoning in believing Osama dead. For myself photographic evidence is weak, voice analyses are inconclusive at best, and the whole game of foreign policy, to have on overarching enemy to justify all of our attacks and interventions since the end of World War II merely continued after 9/11. Osama replaced the Evil Empire.
That’s enough for now. I did not coin the phrase “noble” minds, but do see that most people look up the food chain for their opinions, and that your profession is especially food-chain driven.
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Hitchens may have indulged in those speculations a few years ago, but when the clear picture emerged last week, he wrote a very good piece about what the killing of bin Laden in Abbotobad means, and he did not express a shred of doubt that the killing had occurred. It’s on Slate. You can look it up.
If credence on your blog was what I was after, there would never been an end on it. I would have to disprove everything back to the dawn of creation. That’s a strange way to operate. You remind me in this respect of the woman from Kalispell who called me at work this week, after I wrote a short piece saying that David Irving, “a leading Holocaust denier” was coming to speak in Billings.
She pretended to find me a terrible journalist because I had not done mountains of original research to find out what Irving’s “real” beliefs were. I told her that given the number of hours in a day, we are forced to accept some “facts” as we find them, and the abundance of opinion and evidence pointing to the conclusion that David Irving is a Holocaust denier is overwhelming.
The only people who claim he was not are those who hang out at Stormfront blogs and the like. But at least there are many white supremacist blogs. As for bloggers who insist that bin Laden’s killing last week was a hoax, I haven’t seen anyone but you making the claim. So, again, why don’t you prove it, rather than asking me to disprove it. Or you could just roll out your standard denunciation of hack journalists, like the lady from Kalispell.
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You are too forgiving of yourself. I don’t care what others say or think, as I am in my own private Idaho. I know about Area 51 and Holocaust and all of that. I know about flying saucers and Bilderbergers … why does any of that matter? Why do you assume that having one set of ideas, I must also share others?
And why do you assume that given limited time, the information you have is adequate?
You say “hack” journalists. I don’t says as much, but certainly agree that most of the profession is dominated by lightweights. I only find them annoying because they take themselves soooooooo seriously. Those balloons need popping.
But you … you can write, you can think, you can deal it out with the best. And you are never rattled in your sincerity or belief that you know enough to be writing for the rest of us. You’re good. I’ll give you that. But you’d be better if you weren’t so afraid to tread dangerous waters.
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