Recently one of the editorial staff of MormonThink received an email from a former missionary companion telling her that she was leaving the church after more than half a century in the morg. This editor, who was with MormonThink almost since its inception once commented that the LDS church can not stop the leakage because the reality is the Church is actually the Corporation. A friend, who is no-mo, asked me a very interesting question:
"As a business, what is the model the LDS Corporation should follow in order to minimize loss of capital in its member stock?"The U.S. election of the elitist, ultimate capitalist, sexist Trump embodies the heart of the LDS leadership in how it stays the course of old-school, good old boy management. They, like Trump, want women suppressed, the minority view marginalized, and a wall erected around members from internet knowledge so that they are protected against an expanding world view.
I realize that most Mormon members did not want Trump as their president. They were actually vying for a local candidate named McMullin who urged the LDS electorate to "vote their conscience". That phrase is the one used by LDS leadership to urge their members to vote for the candidates they want by implication, without illicitly or explicitly breaching laws on election/charity/tax-exempt status. They use that phrase to support parties and candidates without naming them. McMullin caused a near crisis in Utah politics by using this LDS epithet. He divided the Mormon voters for a time between him and Trump (in polls) causing Clinton to surprisingly surge ahead in early polls, and almost take lead in Utah's presidential election. That would have been a disaster for the LDS leadership and their stranglehold on Utah politics. Trump even made an unscheduled visit to Utah about a week before the election because he worried about Utah's measly 6 electoral votes.
I want to go back to my friend's statement. The LDS Corporation is really just a business. Its model and reaction to the factual leaks that sites like MormonThink have flooded the internet is to push out subtle essays. I have blogged at length, spoken at the Exmormon Foundation Conference, with my writings being the subject of UT state legal court proceedings, excommunication hearings, and posted online in forums about the motive of LDS essays on controversial topics such as Joseph Smith's polyandry, The Book of fAbricam, the DNA crisis of Amerindians, and more. The LDS corporation released essays because it had no choice.
The LDS corp business model--keeping its marks content and paying--required it to respond to criticism against it, that it had misled members about its founding, its purpose, its documents, its scripture and more. Its finances are still completely trade secret, more sacred than its temple rituals and death vows. The LDS CEOs could not come out, clear the air, tell the whole truth. That would have ended the LDS Sole Corporation Business. In Enron fashion, they cooked the books by confessing just enough in the essays so that they could have local leaders point out to questioning members that they HAD indeed "come clean". They didn't advertise it broadly. They didn't need to; just have it in place to point to members that it is out there and if the member didn't see it, that was their problem, not the corporation's fault.
What is telling is: Does the LDS Corporation still sell the same pack of misleading, glossy sales-pitch lies to new marks?
YES.
Are the missionaries directed, trained and encouraged to send investigators to the essay web pages so that they can get a more full story?
Not on your life. The missionary discussions/lessons have hardly changed since the essays release (they still use the same "Preach my Gospel" from 2005). This is telling because the deception continues to pull in new members and retain mission-lifelongers based on old lies. The Corporation is not about coming clean as much as combing clean cut marks in its scam. The field is Trump white and they reap a new season of investors.
Furthermore, the essays are still full of lies. I won't take the time to reiterate those lies, because I wrote so many blogs about what the essays lacked, what they misrepresented and what they blatantly lied about, even after admitting to part of the falsehoods critics have been clamoring about for decades, if not a century.
Trump represents the capitalist spirit in promoting the ideals of those already at the top. He won by self-deception of pretending to be on the side of the common people. His election, yea verily, came to pass mostly because the opposing candidate was just about as elitist and likely dishonest. The LDS Corporation unscrupulously hides behind its essays as a church when it is in fact a business, using a business model to keep its marks from fleeing the sinking ship. They must trumpet happily that Trump lorded over Clinton. After all, to them--the alcohol-free 21st century Madmen--a woman's place is in the home, barefoot and pregnant, not in the Whitehouse or workplace.
And now, to anachronistically quote the Book of Mormon, "I make an end of my writing upon these plates, which writing has been small; and to the reader I bid farewell, hoping that many of my brethren may read my words. Brethren, adieu."
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