Mormon nationalism, how neoliberalism works, what the 1/6 Committee was afraid to discuss

Mormon nationalism is a lot like Christian nationalism: Newsweek reports:

A video of an African American woman detailing her experiences of racism within the Mormon church has begun to circulate online. The woman, introduced as Channel Achenbach was on the Mormon Stories Podcast in November last year, though the video was uploaded in 2023. In the video, she explained how she was told she was not permitted to marry a white man as her “seed was cursed.” She was also told that she must only marry a Black man to prevent her children from being “cursed.”

She said: "[The leaders] said 'You know what, we think it is best you get married. ‘You are older, you have served the mission, you are a great candidate for marriage but you need to find a Black man’. I remember I kept asking ‘where am I supposed to find a Black man’? They said ‘It doesn't matter, you find a Black man, you convert him or go to an area where there are predominately Black men.’

On the podcast, she continued: [I said] ‘say it, I need you to say it. So Black people and white people aren't supposed to mix’? They were like ‘no they're not.’ I said ‘is there a reason’? They said ‘yes, because your seed is cursed. If your seed mixes with their seed then your children, your husband won't be cursed, but your children will be. Do you want that for your family’?

Speaking about the story, Achenbach sarcastically said: “Two Black people, we're just going to stay cursed. So you want me to find a Black man so I could be cursed with him and so our kids can be cursed, got it.”

Mormonism is a non-Christian religion that is closer to a radical Ponzi-scheme type cult like Scientology than most what Christian sects used to be. What Christianity is like now isn’t clear to me any more. Maybe most are a lot like this nowadays. 

Us dumb taxpayers support the greedy Mormon church (MC) with the same tax breaks that all official religions in the US are entitled to. In essence, taxpayers are financially supporting Mormon racism. 

For context, the MC demands a minimum of 10% of all pre-tax earnings. Some people pay more. A 2012 analysis indicated that the MC took in about $6 billion/year in the US. It owned about $35 billion worth of temples and meeting houses worldwide. The MC also controlled farms, ranches, shopping malls and other commercial ventures worth billions more. In 2019, a whistleblower told the IRS that the MC had amassed a secret fund worth $100 billion that was supposed to be for charity. Instead of doing charity, MC elites just amassed the cash for the sake of secretly owning $100 billion and occasionally using it to enrich themselves.

So, why are taxpayers forced by law to financially support the corrupt, racist MC cult? This is why:

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A criticism of neoliberalism: Although the meaning of the term is debated and arguably fuzzy, the rise of neoliberalism in the Democratic Party tends is often attributed significantly or mostly to Bill Clinton. The version of this ideology discussed here is basically mostly pro-corporation and anti-consumer. Not surprisingly, neoliberals usually spin the narrative as neoliberalism being pro-consumer by virtue of being pro-corporate. It’s the debunked horse and sparrow economic argument (trickle down). This 11 minute video gets into the details of how neoliberalism works in real time. The neoliberal Democrat here is Pete Buttigieg and the benefitted corporations are the airlines, especially Southwest. 

The video starts by ripping Faux News for trying but failing to make Buttigieg look sleazy and corrupt. On the bright side, Faux did succeed in making itself look sleazy and corrupt. But the point being made is that Buttigieg is an intelligent, smooth, sophisticated debater. He easily made Faux look like the divisive disinformation and misinformation source of garbage it usually is. 

But then the video turns to Buttigieg’s neoliberalism. That is where some serious disappointment arises. It is in the working of brass knuckles capitalist ideology like this that make the Democrats look too much like Republicans.

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What the 1/6 Committee did not want to talk about: The role of social media in fostering radical right domestic terrorism: The WaPo writes about an important topic the 1/6 Committee investigated but was allegedly too scared to discuss in its final report:

What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report

The House committee investigating the riot avoided detailed discussion in its report for fear of offending Republicans and tech companies, sources say

The Jan. 6 committee spent months gathering stunning new details on how social media companies failed to address the online extremism and calls for violence that preceded the Capitol riot.

The evidence they collected was written up in a 122-page memo that was circulated among the committee, according to a draft viewed by The Washington Post. But in the end, committee leaders declined to delve into those topics in detail in their final report, reluctant to dig into the roots of domestic extremism taking hold in the Republican Party beyond former president Donald Trump and concerned about the risks of a public battle with powerful tech companies, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the panel’s sensitive deliberations.

Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms — especially Twitter — failed to heed their own employees’ warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals. The draft report details how most platforms did not take “dramatic” steps to rein in extremist content until after the attack on the Capitol, despite clear red flags across the internet.  

Confronting that evidence would have forced the committee to examine how conservative commentators helped amplify the Trump messaging that ultimately contributed to the Capitol attack, the people said — a course that some committee members considered both politically risky and inviting opposition from some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, two of the people said.

Context & questions

So, here we have Merrick Garland and the DoJ too scared of Trump and Republicans to do what they should have done long ago. We have the 1/6 Committee too scared of Trump, Republicans and big tech companies to have informed us of what they found about social media and its important role in supporting domestic terrorism. We have neoliberalism, i.e., brass knuckles capitalism, poisoning politics as exemplified by what it caused Pete Buttigieg to not do in his job to protect corporations over consumers. We have poisonous, racist, theocratic religions being supported each year with tax breaks worth at least tens of billions of dollars.

The question is, who or what is standing up for democracy, inconvenient truth, transparency and the public interest? 

1) Not most of the elites who run the Catholic, evangelical or Mormon churches or Republican Party elites, politicians and propagandists. They are all pro-lies and deceit, anti-democracy, anti-inconvenient truth, anti-climate science, and/or racist. What about most of their rank and file? What about Judaism and Islam? Where do they stand?

2) Not most big corporations. They are ruthlessly greedy, anti-inconvenient truth, anti-climate science, anti-democracy and pro-lies and deceit. 

3) The Democratic Party appears to be mostly wobbly and ambiguous. Apparently, wobbly and ambiguous is about the best we have going for the public interest at present. That is not good enough, or is it? 

4) Or, is that 1, 2, 3 assessment of reality over-wrought, mostly or completely false, delusional and/or deranged?