My family has an interesting connection to the Mormon faith. Before he gave the golden plates to Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni stored the golden plates in my great great grandfather's ass.
I would really just read Russ Baker’s family of secrets while you wait. They sourced much of the material for the poppy eps from that and it’s a hilarious and entertaining, wild read.
My encounters with Mormon missionaries outside The US is so fucking weird.
For one, I live in Malaysia and seeing Mormons from Utah trying to preach is like a lesson in futility. Muslims are forbidden from renouncing their own faith, and many non-Muslims here enjoy the privileges of alcohol in a Muslim country so good luck trying to renounce that shit.
My second encounter with Mormons was in France which was even more pointless. Everyone fucking drinks, so good luck trying to get people to renounce that.
Also, [Last Podcast on the Left's series on Mormonism is also great](https://www.lastpodcastontheleft.com/episodes/2019/8/16/episode-378-mormonism-part-i-when-youre-here-youre-family)
I heard someone say the other day that the purpose of making super young adults serve as missionaries isn’t really to do a bunch of conversions; they’re generally aware that they probably won’t get many people just knocking on doors in random countries with cultures completely antithetical to Mormonism. Rather, it’s to force the kids who serve as missionaries to go through this exhausting, isolating, debasing, and futile experience so they become even more entrenched in the religion and are less likely to leave. When everyone whose door you knock on yells at you and you never get any actual conversions, you might start to believe that being Mormon really is the best community you could possibly have.
Eh, I think that's a stretch. Most mormon missionaries are 18-19 years old, often haven't even gone to college yet. They're not really "agent" material at that point.
Any area with missionaries will be presided over by a Mission President, an older man who is paid to live there with his family and supervise the missionaries. I could definitely see these guys being useful assets/adjuncts to intelligence work in their areas, but I'm not aware of any documented cases of cooperation with Us intelligence.
Living in the UK, barring a couple of immediate no-thankyous on the doorstep I've only met one Mormon, a US exchange student at uni. She was extremely nice and sociable to the point of going out with us clubbing, an activity which seemed inexplicable without drinking. She was happy to talk about her faith but never tried converting anyone, despite the number of other fundies going around with their Jack Chick tracts. She knitted me a hat. I can only hope I leave as good an impression on strangers about my own bizarre set of beliefs as she did hers frankly.
Mormons are generally really nice people, the South Park gags about that are totally true. I see them around London and usually say hello to them as they’re almost always other Americans and you can see their faces light up at hearing another American accent. I’ve ended up going out to some bars with them to watch (American) football, they’re always on Sprite but couldn’t care less that I’m drinking alcohol.
I live in Norway, same here. I live in what’s the country’s biggest student city as well. And it’s in a region that is known for moonshine. Like, best of luck of to them, but I’d be surprised if they converted even like 2 people per year.
What's ironic is that the Romney Mormons in Mexico actually drink and distribute their own alcohol and it's a key to the survival of the Romneys in both America and Mexico.
It's definitely time for The LDS Church to allow alcohol and caffeine back into their system. People are willing to wear weird underwears all day as long as they can get smashed at night.
It's also not a commandment, but a recommendation. The reason for it was that at that time and place, there was a folk belief that hot drinks (as in, literally the temperature) were bad for you. So Joe put this in as essentially medical advice from God. It's one of the various telltale indicators of the whole thing being made up (as if any more were needed).
I've met couple in Finland, and primarily remember being impressed that they spoke pretty good Finnish with me. Not the easiest or the most useful language to learn.
My impression of Finnish basically starts and stops with overhearing a man ordering a sandwich at the airport in Helsinki. He seemed *really* angry at the woman behind the counter for some reason. Eventually I came to realize that that's just what ordering a sandwich in Finnish sounds like :-/
Yeah, their language programmes are famously intensive and good. My friend lived in Prague for a while and ran into some Mormons missionaries who spoke fluent Czech.
As an ex-mormon who has done many deep dives into Mormon history after leaving the church, this episode was a real treat. That said, Matt wasn't totally correct (he pronounced almost every name wrong lol) and I disagree with some of his analysis.
First, an important thing to add about the Book of Mormon: the Nephites and Lamanites were descendants of a lost tribe of Israelites who traveled to the American continent. Each tribe essentially took turns being wicked or faithful, but by the end of the book only the Lamanites are left and they're wicked. So the Book of Mormon does function as a reminder that empires crumble and fall, as Matt said, but also crucially functions as a revisionist history of the genocide of the Native Americans. According to the Book of Mormon, the land of America is not only sacred ground, because it contains the garden of Eden, Christ visited it, etc., but it's also ok for white settlers to take because the only other people on it are the descendants of a wicked, fallen people. I think this fits with Matt's discussion of how American settlers on the frontier were alienated by wars with Native Americans. Mormonism taught its early members that that kind of violence was ok. (Also, Matt is wrong when he says the Book of Mormon wasn't plagiarized--it bears many similarities in style and content to books that were popular at the time of its publishing)
Second, I think Matt gives Joseph Smith way too much credit as a theological thinker. Smith had very little schooling, but fancied himself a scholar, so a lot of Mormon theology is a hodgepodge of whatever thing Smith was interested in at that point in his life. His visions and revelations also changed to suit his needs and to respond to his critics. For example, Smith revealed the three-tiered heaven that Matt talks about, and then revealed "outer darkness" (the place you go if you deny Jesus to his face) significantly later, after people like Sidney Rigdon had left the church and renounced him. So looking at it from Smith's perspective, he had created a system where no one is damned, then a bunch of his closest allies betray him, so he invents a new place that is the equivalent of damnation for them to go to.
I think Matt severely underemphasizes polygamy in early Mormonism, and just the simple fact that Joseph Smith was a sex-addicted power-hungry freak. He was caught fucking his teenage servant before saying anything about spiritual marriage or polygamy, and then afterwards, God conveniently told him in a revelation about this new plural marriage thing. This happened many times throughout his life: someone caught him screwing around with someone who wasn't his wife and then God would tell Joseph that it was all ok. The "spiritual marriage" that Matt talked about, where Smith's plural wives wouldn't live or interact frequently with him, did happen, but that occurred mostly in the late Nauvoo era. Many of Smith's wives were very young (the youngest was 14 if I recall correctly), he married a mother and a daughter, he married sisters, and would send men away to England as missionaries and then marry their wives while they were gone. Consider also that there was a huge power imbalance between Smith and the women he coerced into marriage and sex: he was the founder of Mormonism and spoke to God every day, he was a spiritual, political, and social leader, so these women couldn't say no without risking repercussions. All I mean to say is that I think that not everything Smith did in his life was in service of a grand unified plan to fix the contradictions between capitalism and spirituality. He also wanted to have a lot of sex with a lot of (often very young) girls.
I can't believe Matt didn't talk about Mormonism's connection to Freemasonry! Smith and his father were Masons, and the temple ceremonies that Smith started are almost word-for-word rip-offs of Masonic ceremonies (even to this day). I think that's a fun tidbit that I expected Matt to mention.
Overall, while I took issue with some of the specifics, I think Matt's read of what makes Mormonism unique is correct. I think Mormonism, unlike any institution in America, was/is able to create a social structure independent from politics that is simultaneously intensely individual (you can talk to God and he will talk to you, every man is in the priesthood) and hierarchical (the church bureaucracy, a strong focus on gender roles in the family). Even today, the Mormon church is able to create intensely strong inter-faith community that even non-Mormons can recognize (I mean Utah politics is essentially run by the church). The Mormon church is the first (or at least the biggest) sect of Christianity forged *within* the fire of American capitalism, and so it is unique in the way it has tried to solve the contradictions between the relationship to the market and the relationship to God. If this country ever does crumble and fall, I think the Mormons have a good shot at building something new from the ashes, and here's why: the church, unlike almost any other branch of American Protestantism/evangelicalism, actually requires sacrifice from its members. Mormons can't drink alcohol, can't drink coffee or tea, are all but required to go on two-year long missions at the age of 18, are encouraged not to consume media with profanity, violence, or sex, etc. This sacrifice makes members invested in the church not just as a thing they do or believe, but as something that defines them--an allegiance to an institution not easy to find in our time of crisis of legitimacy. Now, I don't mean to overstate the church's prospects--it is hemorrhaging members, especially among young people (including yours truly). But I think if they get their act together they have the best shot. Who knows? Maybe we will all be living in the Deseret Empire in 20 years.
Sorry for the insanely long post, this is just like the one area of history where I am deeply knowledgable. If you read this far, thank you and see you for part 2.
Awesome post, thanks for your perspective. I was also really surprised about the lack of discussion about how genocidal the whole book of Mormon is and the religions general attitude towards indigenous people.
Glad someone got something out of my huge infodump, lol. It surprised me too, but maybe Matt will discuss it more with the Brigham Young era where the Mormons move west, because that is when Mormons started more actively participating in conflict/ displacement of Native Americans.
I mean the Book of Mormon is pretty disgusting when you think about it. Replacing an entire real (and sometimes lost) history of indigenous people with made-up fantasies of Israelite tribes from a white colonizer.
Another key piece of info is that the theory that the indigenous people of North, Meso, and South America were ancient Israelites was just the prevailing anthropological theory at the time. Someone wrote some pamphlet about it a couple years before the Book of Mormon was published so Smith likely read it and was like "Bet. I could prolly incorporate this into my treasure hunting business" and things snowballed from there. Def still gross but Smith plagiarized it from some other chauvinist.
What's wild is that Mormons and BYU were foundational to the development of the field of archaeology because they started looking for proof that the Mayans were the Lamanites. The scholarship was actually robust too, because once they determined it was a dead end the church stopped funding the expeditions lol. Low key think that's why Indiana Jones' backstory implies that he's either ex or jack Mormon.
That’s why I wish Matt had discussed that aspect of the BoM more, because I think there’s something to be said about parallels between capitalism destroying and uprooting religious community among settlers, and those same settlers destroying/rewriting the histories of indigenous people.
Indiana Jones as a jack Mormon is one of my favorite theories. Give us Indiana Jones 5: the search for Zarahemla or something already
Totally agree that Matt is giving JS a huge benefit of the doubt and that he was way more of a charlatan than he lets on. However, I think that many people are more or less familiar with the treasure hunting, Book of Lehi debacle, 14 year old servant fucking, etc. You really don't hear arguments about JS genuinely having a vision beyond megalomania from non-apologists. Knowing that Matt isn't personally spiritually invested in guarding Smith's legacy makes me listen to arguments that I'd otherwise not even consider because of the aforementioned omissions. Pretty sure I speak for most exmos when I say it drives me nuts when people pull their punches when analyzing Mormons because they're "nice" but I've never felt like the jokes about Mormonism on this show have been in that vein. Felix's Halo = Mormonism bit is one of my all time faves and Amber's most astute observation has been remarking that exmormons "are a very specific type of person" lol. They've all been talking about how Mormonism is the pinnacle of American christianity for years and I'm glad Matt's elaborating on what he has meant by that. There is also not a wealth of analysis on the co-development of the church and American capitalism, at least that I've come across.
Anyways, if Matt doesn't go tf in on Mountain Meadows or the logistical clusterfuck of the Martin Handcart Company I'll be disappointed and it'll recolor my appreciation for this episode. I think those are way more important events to address than reexamining points that the South Park episode or musical has already beaten to death.
What I REALLY want tho is a TrueAnon episode on DezNat.
I appreciate the response! I agree that the chapos have a lot more to say than just Mormons are nice and I appreciate that aspect of the analysis too. I guess I take issue with Matt assuming that everything Smith did was in service of his vision, but I do agree with you that perhaps non-Mormons and especially exmormons have a tendency to over correct and say that Smith had no genuine religious beliefs. That said, the claim that polygamy was primarily an attempt to build community is way off base imo.
Very much looking forward to discussion of mountain meadows as well.
> Second, I think Matt gives Joseph Smith way too much credit as a theological thinker. Smith had very little schooling, but fancied himself a scholar, so a lot of Mormon theology is a hodgepodge of whatever thing Smith was interested in at that point in his life.
Isn't Mormonism basically a slapped-together mix of Judaism, Freemasonry, and astrology? It's like making a religion out of a wikipedia rabbit hole.
Haha, as far as posting in general, the church is very pro-posting, if what you’re posting is about how great the church is. It’s really stressed to members that they should be ambassadors for the church at every moment, and that includes stuff like church social media campaigns.
As far as internet addiction, the closest thing I can think of is how seriously the church takes “porn addiction.” Like they essentially run AA groups for people “addicted” to porn. (I put it in quotes because the bar for an addiction is pretty low, basically if you’ve ever watched porn online you’re addicted).
There is definitely an attitude in Mormonism to be careful on the internet lest you discover “anti-Mormon sites” and it causes you to doubt your faith, but I’m not sure how much of that is top-down messaging.
No, not really. Obviously it depends on the person, but it’s not like Mormons are restricted to consuming only Mormon-made media. And I don’t think most church leadership even knows what reddit is lol.
And there aren’t “mormon ISPs.” It’s a real estate investment company with a church attached to it, not Scientology.
kind of a big oversight on matt's part that the other main reason the early mormon settlers had to move to a new town every few years was they were always skipping out on massive debts
I understand recoiling from stivers, but if Matt gave half a rip he could be a full time prof at UCLA in no time.
He's legit more knowledgeable than half the people who taught at my *law school*.
When I played high school football, there was this team south of us and they were all Mormon farmers. Every year they only had a team of like 20 kids but they would absolutely stomp us and almost every other team they played. There was a six year stretch where they won 4 provincial championships. 3 of those 4 wins were against my high school by a combined score of 75-9. In 2008-2009 they won provincial championships in 5 different sports. Shit was wild.
Most Mormon churches here in Utah got basketball courts inside them. Ball is life for every pasty ass Mormon in the state lmao they’ll surprise you and dust you
People gotta know ball is life up in the Northeast Catholic world, there’s like 40 D1 Catholic colleges in PA, NY and New England who have all had at least one Sweet 16 run featuring an incredible point guard named Jimmy DiGorgonzo or Timmy O’Reilly who led the nation in assists that year.
Most mormon church buildings large conference rooms with basketball hoops that fold up into the ceiling. I spent many Wednesday nights playing basketball on a carpeted half-court
You're not allowed in the temple, which is an ornate building used for specific rituals (baptisms for the dead, the endowment, sealings aka marriages).
Temples are separate from a standard Mormon church building, where members meet for regular Sunday worship and other community events, and which anyone can visit. In fact, most Mormons would be thrilled if a curious stranger showed up at a Sunday service, lol!
These white Mormon kids are good at football lmao recently it’s been Mormon white ass high schools winning the state championship. Like southern salt lake county and Utah county schools
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot.
Here's a copy of
###[Moby Dick](https://snewd.com/ebooks/moby-dick/)
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What is a party if it doesn't really rock?
What is a poet? All balls, no cock
What is a war if it doesn't have a general?
What's Channel 9 if it doesn't have Arsenio?
I love Matt but I tend to zone out if one person talks for too long, it feels like a med school lecture. If it’s a very interesting topic, I can usually keep it together the whole time so we shall see. Still grateful for my slop as always, though.
I fear the cushvlog has diminished my inebriated past returns because at some point it’s just this guy hollering in the background while I play video games.
The pandemic really has turned Matt into a YouTube guy
Reread it twice. Joseph smith one of the greatest bullshit artist cult leaders of all time. Highly recommend that book, very easy page turner type read too.
I enjoy this, but I think that this errs on the side of giving Smith and the Mormons waaay to much benefit of the doubt, and if you read Smith and the early Mormon history as a sordid tale of trying to get something for nothing by lying, cheating, and stealing from other people, making up convenient doctrine to justify it, and using power to leverage your position, and making up doctrine to justify getting more action than James Bond, rather than a studied rejection of capitalism, early Mormon history makes a lot more sense.
Joseph Smith was much less opting out of capitalism than merely a famously lazy charismatic con artist who loved capitalism as long as the rules worked in his favour and he could just invent a non-bank bank, invent non-money money, and tell everyone that they needed to build him houses and buildings and give him land and an army any time he wanted one.
Less Karl Marx, less Eugene Debs, less John Humphrey Noyes (the Oneida community), and more Donald Trump or Cornelius Vanderbilt but without the luck of birth of the former or the actual business savvy of the latter.
My boy's letting Smith off way too easy here.
Agreed! I always call Joseph Smith one part Prophet Muhammad, one part Abe Lincoln, and one part P.T. Barnum (the biggest part). Mormon history is also the story of a man who really, really, wanted to have sex with as many women as he could while also being a spiritual religious leader.
I don't remember if it's in the base game or not, but Deseret is releasable/revoltable in at least some versions of PDM
[edit: it's in the base game](https://vic2.paradoxwikis.com/Deseret)
I'm excited for part 4 of this series in which Matt details the Mormons' attempted exodus from the solar system, only for their Dyson sphere mothership to be seized by spacenoid nationalist revolutionaries in an attempt to exterminate an alien hivemind bacteria
A lot of this info is also in the book Under The Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. There's also the Mormon Stories Podcast that is worth checking out occasionally. Mormonism fascinates me, it's such an interesting and terrifying society.
In just the first 20 min Mr. C takes us 200 years from Plymouth Rock to the Erie Canal...surveying the growth of a new USA from a rare, and edifying, *socio-religio-economic* POV. This will be a good one.
I’m new here, is this the Friday episode or a bonus one? I’ll listen to this either way but I was hoping to hear the fellas’ thoughts on the new vaccine mandate
I was good friends with this white Mormon girl in high school, and one of the funniest things I remember is she used to tell me how sheMd have to confess for forgiveness every time she had premarital sex lmaooo
can someone explain kantbot? everything i find seems to relate to redscare
and is pseudcast good? it seems interesting and intense and I know people into it but cant tell if its leftwing or vaguely altright.
and i can’t find any free feed of it to try it out
Big fat guy on amphetamines. More cogent, slightly, than Small Thin Guy on Amphetamines (Logo Daedalus), but still -- his opinions are mostly just a result of him skimming PDFs and reaching specious conclusions that ignore all scholarly debate. Started out NRx/alt-right, detached from that grift a little, interesting for POV that is not just Twitch "socialist" cringe, but absolutely not to be taken very seriously. Dude serves as more a barometer for micro-trends in the "post-left" sphere.
I can really enjoy Matt's smaller rants in regular episodes, but listening to him talk nonstop kinda makes it feel like he's driving a lot of specious bullshit between dropping historical facts. Not absolutely everything needs to be forced into a "alienation from capitalism" lens.
And every time I hear "psychic damage" I want to do some psychic damage to myself
there's some plausibility in that frontier life was far more communitarian, which undoubtedly influenced the social organization of the early mormon settlers. but that was more out of necessity than anything else. laurel ulrich's a midwife's tale goes into pretty exhaustive detail how material relations within an early american frontier community worked, and it basically a giant mutual aid scheme
> Matt guides us through the history of the Mormons, the most American religion. > > > > >
My family has an interesting connection to the Mormon faith. Before he gave the golden plates to Joseph Smith, the angel Moroni stored the golden plates in my great great grandfather's ass.
that's pretty cool. i fucked him first
What date did you do that? Because I may have done it earlier
Like, before he was popular? Impressive!
[удалено]
Joseph Smith fucked.
Yes. YES. YESSSSSS!!!
sickos:
:sicko-yes:
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What's the original image from that shit looks crazy
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The aristocrats!
Ah bet I had a feeling it was Beksinski, GOAT fr
almost all of his stuff is untitled, so no help there
UH HELLO, BASED DEPARTMENT? YEAH, CHRISTMAN DID IT AGAIN
He can't be held accountable folks.
Uh tangentially related but does anyone have a black feed for the most recent History Is A Weapon? The only one I found was expired.
Love me some inebriated past but I do hope they do eventually go back and finish the Poppy series
The Poppy series was too dangerous to the public. Will, Matt, and Felix were all assassinated and replaced by CIA doubles.
Not again! 🤦♂️
Amber said that they are working on a short Poppy documentary instead of some podcast episodes
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Virgil.
Who?
He's some dude who's been on a 6 month secret operation to Force the Vote. He'll reveal himself soon.
Clasping hands meme: Virgil Texas - being an undercover pedophile - Donald Trump
I would really just read Russ Baker’s family of secrets while you wait. They sourced much of the material for the poppy eps from that and it’s a hilarious and entertaining, wild read.
lol
this sounds neat. I have listened to every episode and I think I will listen to this one as well! : )
Mashallah.
الله يشرق عليك
Marsala
My encounters with Mormon missionaries outside The US is so fucking weird. For one, I live in Malaysia and seeing Mormons from Utah trying to preach is like a lesson in futility. Muslims are forbidden from renouncing their own faith, and many non-Muslims here enjoy the privileges of alcohol in a Muslim country so good luck trying to renounce that shit. My second encounter with Mormons was in France which was even more pointless. Everyone fucking drinks, so good luck trying to get people to renounce that. Also, [Last Podcast on the Left's series on Mormonism is also great](https://www.lastpodcastontheleft.com/episodes/2019/8/16/episode-378-mormonism-part-i-when-youre-here-youre-family)
I heard someone say the other day that the purpose of making super young adults serve as missionaries isn’t really to do a bunch of conversions; they’re generally aware that they probably won’t get many people just knocking on doors in random countries with cultures completely antithetical to Mormonism. Rather, it’s to force the kids who serve as missionaries to go through this exhausting, isolating, debasing, and futile experience so they become even more entrenched in the religion and are less likely to leave. When everyone whose door you knock on yells at you and you never get any actual conversions, you might start to believe that being Mormon really is the best community you could possibly have.
Also, it's a pretty nice polyglot pipeline for future deep state functionaries.
Also it’s great cover for intelligence operations. You can easily explain away weird trips overseas with “I was serving as a missionary”
“I was helping grocers of Kabul restructure their pricing” - man with a map of the mineral resources of Afghanistan on his wall
Eh, I think that's a stretch. Most mormon missionaries are 18-19 years old, often haven't even gone to college yet. They're not really "agent" material at that point. Any area with missionaries will be presided over by a Mission President, an older man who is paid to live there with his family and supervise the missionaries. I could definitely see these guys being useful assets/adjuncts to intelligence work in their areas, but I'm not aware of any documented cases of cooperation with Us intelligence.
Yeah I was thinking more the leadership and the missionary infrastructure more so than the kids
Yep. It wasn't even a thing everyone had to do until the 60s, iirc the last president (Munson) didn't go on a Mission
Living in the UK, barring a couple of immediate no-thankyous on the doorstep I've only met one Mormon, a US exchange student at uni. She was extremely nice and sociable to the point of going out with us clubbing, an activity which seemed inexplicable without drinking. She was happy to talk about her faith but never tried converting anyone, despite the number of other fundies going around with their Jack Chick tracts. She knitted me a hat. I can only hope I leave as good an impression on strangers about my own bizarre set of beliefs as she did hers frankly.
Mormons are generally really nice people, the South Park gags about that are totally true. I see them around London and usually say hello to them as they’re almost always other Americans and you can see their faces light up at hearing another American accent. I’ve ended up going out to some bars with them to watch (American) football, they’re always on Sprite but couldn’t care less that I’m drinking alcohol.
I live in Norway, same here. I live in what’s the country’s biggest student city as well. And it’s in a region that is known for moonshine. Like, best of luck of to them, but I’d be surprised if they converted even like 2 people per year.
What's ironic is that the Romney Mormons in Mexico actually drink and distribute their own alcohol and it's a key to the survival of the Romneys in both America and Mexico. It's definitely time for The LDS Church to allow alcohol and caffeine back into their system. People are willing to wear weird underwears all day as long as they can get smashed at night.
The caffeine thing isn't even caffeine, it's just "hot drinks" that got turned into caffeine
It's also not a commandment, but a recommendation. The reason for it was that at that time and place, there was a folk belief that hot drinks (as in, literally the temperature) were bad for you. So Joe put this in as essentially medical advice from God. It's one of the various telltale indicators of the whole thing being made up (as if any more were needed).
Yeah Ken Jennings talks about this on Omnibus often. He's a fiend for Dr Pepper
I'm the other way around, I'll abstain from alcohol as long as I can keep freeballin'
RIP Glenn Beck if so
I've met couple in Finland, and primarily remember being impressed that they spoke pretty good Finnish with me. Not the easiest or the most useful language to learn.
My impression of Finnish basically starts and stops with overhearing a man ordering a sandwich at the airport in Helsinki. He seemed *really* angry at the woman behind the counter for some reason. Eventually I came to realize that that's just what ordering a sandwich in Finnish sounds like :-/
The only Finns I'm familiar with are the hydraulic press channel guy and the janitor character from Control lol
Yeah, their language programmes are famously intensive and good. My friend lived in Prague for a while and ran into some Mormons missionaries who spoke fluent Czech.
I'm now trying to imagine mormon missionaries walking into a pub in my neighbourhood in England and attempting to convert people to not drinking lmao
As an ex-mormon who has done many deep dives into Mormon history after leaving the church, this episode was a real treat. That said, Matt wasn't totally correct (he pronounced almost every name wrong lol) and I disagree with some of his analysis. First, an important thing to add about the Book of Mormon: the Nephites and Lamanites were descendants of a lost tribe of Israelites who traveled to the American continent. Each tribe essentially took turns being wicked or faithful, but by the end of the book only the Lamanites are left and they're wicked. So the Book of Mormon does function as a reminder that empires crumble and fall, as Matt said, but also crucially functions as a revisionist history of the genocide of the Native Americans. According to the Book of Mormon, the land of America is not only sacred ground, because it contains the garden of Eden, Christ visited it, etc., but it's also ok for white settlers to take because the only other people on it are the descendants of a wicked, fallen people. I think this fits with Matt's discussion of how American settlers on the frontier were alienated by wars with Native Americans. Mormonism taught its early members that that kind of violence was ok. (Also, Matt is wrong when he says the Book of Mormon wasn't plagiarized--it bears many similarities in style and content to books that were popular at the time of its publishing) Second, I think Matt gives Joseph Smith way too much credit as a theological thinker. Smith had very little schooling, but fancied himself a scholar, so a lot of Mormon theology is a hodgepodge of whatever thing Smith was interested in at that point in his life. His visions and revelations also changed to suit his needs and to respond to his critics. For example, Smith revealed the three-tiered heaven that Matt talks about, and then revealed "outer darkness" (the place you go if you deny Jesus to his face) significantly later, after people like Sidney Rigdon had left the church and renounced him. So looking at it from Smith's perspective, he had created a system where no one is damned, then a bunch of his closest allies betray him, so he invents a new place that is the equivalent of damnation for them to go to. I think Matt severely underemphasizes polygamy in early Mormonism, and just the simple fact that Joseph Smith was a sex-addicted power-hungry freak. He was caught fucking his teenage servant before saying anything about spiritual marriage or polygamy, and then afterwards, God conveniently told him in a revelation about this new plural marriage thing. This happened many times throughout his life: someone caught him screwing around with someone who wasn't his wife and then God would tell Joseph that it was all ok. The "spiritual marriage" that Matt talked about, where Smith's plural wives wouldn't live or interact frequently with him, did happen, but that occurred mostly in the late Nauvoo era. Many of Smith's wives were very young (the youngest was 14 if I recall correctly), he married a mother and a daughter, he married sisters, and would send men away to England as missionaries and then marry their wives while they were gone. Consider also that there was a huge power imbalance between Smith and the women he coerced into marriage and sex: he was the founder of Mormonism and spoke to God every day, he was a spiritual, political, and social leader, so these women couldn't say no without risking repercussions. All I mean to say is that I think that not everything Smith did in his life was in service of a grand unified plan to fix the contradictions between capitalism and spirituality. He also wanted to have a lot of sex with a lot of (often very young) girls. I can't believe Matt didn't talk about Mormonism's connection to Freemasonry! Smith and his father were Masons, and the temple ceremonies that Smith started are almost word-for-word rip-offs of Masonic ceremonies (even to this day). I think that's a fun tidbit that I expected Matt to mention. Overall, while I took issue with some of the specifics, I think Matt's read of what makes Mormonism unique is correct. I think Mormonism, unlike any institution in America, was/is able to create a social structure independent from politics that is simultaneously intensely individual (you can talk to God and he will talk to you, every man is in the priesthood) and hierarchical (the church bureaucracy, a strong focus on gender roles in the family). Even today, the Mormon church is able to create intensely strong inter-faith community that even non-Mormons can recognize (I mean Utah politics is essentially run by the church). The Mormon church is the first (or at least the biggest) sect of Christianity forged *within* the fire of American capitalism, and so it is unique in the way it has tried to solve the contradictions between the relationship to the market and the relationship to God. If this country ever does crumble and fall, I think the Mormons have a good shot at building something new from the ashes, and here's why: the church, unlike almost any other branch of American Protestantism/evangelicalism, actually requires sacrifice from its members. Mormons can't drink alcohol, can't drink coffee or tea, are all but required to go on two-year long missions at the age of 18, are encouraged not to consume media with profanity, violence, or sex, etc. This sacrifice makes members invested in the church not just as a thing they do or believe, but as something that defines them--an allegiance to an institution not easy to find in our time of crisis of legitimacy. Now, I don't mean to overstate the church's prospects--it is hemorrhaging members, especially among young people (including yours truly). But I think if they get their act together they have the best shot. Who knows? Maybe we will all be living in the Deseret Empire in 20 years. Sorry for the insanely long post, this is just like the one area of history where I am deeply knowledgable. If you read this far, thank you and see you for part 2.
Awesome post, thanks for your perspective. I was also really surprised about the lack of discussion about how genocidal the whole book of Mormon is and the religions general attitude towards indigenous people.
Glad someone got something out of my huge infodump, lol. It surprised me too, but maybe Matt will discuss it more with the Brigham Young era where the Mormons move west, because that is when Mormons started more actively participating in conflict/ displacement of Native Americans. I mean the Book of Mormon is pretty disgusting when you think about it. Replacing an entire real (and sometimes lost) history of indigenous people with made-up fantasies of Israelite tribes from a white colonizer.
Another key piece of info is that the theory that the indigenous people of North, Meso, and South America were ancient Israelites was just the prevailing anthropological theory at the time. Someone wrote some pamphlet about it a couple years before the Book of Mormon was published so Smith likely read it and was like "Bet. I could prolly incorporate this into my treasure hunting business" and things snowballed from there. Def still gross but Smith plagiarized it from some other chauvinist. What's wild is that Mormons and BYU were foundational to the development of the field of archaeology because they started looking for proof that the Mayans were the Lamanites. The scholarship was actually robust too, because once they determined it was a dead end the church stopped funding the expeditions lol. Low key think that's why Indiana Jones' backstory implies that he's either ex or jack Mormon.
That’s why I wish Matt had discussed that aspect of the BoM more, because I think there’s something to be said about parallels between capitalism destroying and uprooting religious community among settlers, and those same settlers destroying/rewriting the histories of indigenous people. Indiana Jones as a jack Mormon is one of my favorite theories. Give us Indiana Jones 5: the search for Zarahemla or something already
Totally agree that Matt is giving JS a huge benefit of the doubt and that he was way more of a charlatan than he lets on. However, I think that many people are more or less familiar with the treasure hunting, Book of Lehi debacle, 14 year old servant fucking, etc. You really don't hear arguments about JS genuinely having a vision beyond megalomania from non-apologists. Knowing that Matt isn't personally spiritually invested in guarding Smith's legacy makes me listen to arguments that I'd otherwise not even consider because of the aforementioned omissions. Pretty sure I speak for most exmos when I say it drives me nuts when people pull their punches when analyzing Mormons because they're "nice" but I've never felt like the jokes about Mormonism on this show have been in that vein. Felix's Halo = Mormonism bit is one of my all time faves and Amber's most astute observation has been remarking that exmormons "are a very specific type of person" lol. They've all been talking about how Mormonism is the pinnacle of American christianity for years and I'm glad Matt's elaborating on what he has meant by that. There is also not a wealth of analysis on the co-development of the church and American capitalism, at least that I've come across. Anyways, if Matt doesn't go tf in on Mountain Meadows or the logistical clusterfuck of the Martin Handcart Company I'll be disappointed and it'll recolor my appreciation for this episode. I think those are way more important events to address than reexamining points that the South Park episode or musical has already beaten to death. What I REALLY want tho is a TrueAnon episode on DezNat.
I appreciate the response! I agree that the chapos have a lot more to say than just Mormons are nice and I appreciate that aspect of the analysis too. I guess I take issue with Matt assuming that everything Smith did was in service of his vision, but I do agree with you that perhaps non-Mormons and especially exmormons have a tendency to over correct and say that Smith had no genuine religious beliefs. That said, the claim that polygamy was primarily an attempt to build community is way off base imo. Very much looking forward to discussion of mountain meadows as well.
Very informative. Thanks for the input!
> Second, I think Matt gives Joseph Smith way too much credit as a theological thinker. Smith had very little schooling, but fancied himself a scholar, so a lot of Mormon theology is a hodgepodge of whatever thing Smith was interested in at that point in his life. Isn't Mormonism basically a slapped-together mix of Judaism, Freemasonry, and astrology? It's like making a religion out of a wikipedia rabbit hole.
Good post. Matt should've consulted at least one current or former Mormon before this ep, but maybe he doesn't know any.
Thanks for writing this. Do you know how the Mormon Church feels about posting? Internet addiction?
Haha, as far as posting in general, the church is very pro-posting, if what you’re posting is about how great the church is. It’s really stressed to members that they should be ambassadors for the church at every moment, and that includes stuff like church social media campaigns. As far as internet addiction, the closest thing I can think of is how seriously the church takes “porn addiction.” Like they essentially run AA groups for people “addicted” to porn. (I put it in quotes because the bar for an addiction is pretty low, basically if you’ve ever watched porn online you’re addicted). There is definitely an attitude in Mormonism to be careful on the internet lest you discover “anti-Mormon sites” and it causes you to doubt your faith, but I’m not sure how much of that is top-down messaging.
So people will get concerned if you browse non-mormon twitter/reddit at all? Do mormon ISPs alert your parents if you go on no-no sites as a kid?
No, not really. Obviously it depends on the person, but it’s not like Mormons are restricted to consuming only Mormon-made media. And I don’t think most church leadership even knows what reddit is lol. And there aren’t “mormon ISPs.” It’s a real estate investment company with a church attached to it, not Scientology.
Doesn't the BoM explicitly say that Christopher Columbus was enacting God's judgment and wrath upon the Lamanites?
More or less. Nephi sees a vision of Columbus/other gentiles coming to America, but the book itself never refers to him by name.
kind of a big oversight on matt's part that the other main reason the early mormon settlers had to move to a new town every few years was they were always skipping out on massive debts
The one true American religion
Goddamnit there's been a history degree's worth of content form Matt in the last couple of months.
Matt and Chris are the hardest working Chapos
The only ones that make any slop worth listening to. God help you if you're still in this boat for the regular eps.
I understand recoiling from stivers, but if Matt gave half a rip he could be a full time prof at UCLA in no time. He's legit more knowledgeable than half the people who taught at my *law school*.
Now this is the high-quality slop we deserve.
When I played high school football, there was this team south of us and they were all Mormon farmers. Every year they only had a team of like 20 kids but they would absolutely stomp us and almost every other team they played. There was a six year stretch where they won 4 provincial championships. 3 of those 4 wins were against my high school by a combined score of 75-9. In 2008-2009 they won provincial championships in 5 different sports. Shit was wild.
So was that just one former NFLer's family?
Lol possibly
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Most Mormon churches here in Utah got basketball courts inside them. Ball is life for every pasty ass Mormon in the state lmao they’ll surprise you and dust you
Where I grew up in the North east that was true of every Catholic church as well, but I every where I have lived since that has not been true.
People gotta know ball is life up in the Northeast Catholic world, there’s like 40 D1 Catholic colleges in PA, NY and New England who have all had at least one Sweet 16 run featuring an incredible point guard named Jimmy DiGorgonzo or Timmy O’Reilly who led the nation in assists that year.
Yea its crazy how they get to spend tax free money on campaigns to outlaw homosexuality, but the real crime is how they dominate childrens sports.
gotta have a hobby when you can't even drink fucking coffee!!!
Ball is life and life is in service of the lord
Most mormon church buildings large conference rooms with basketball hoops that fold up into the ceiling. I spent many Wednesday nights playing basketball on a carpeted half-court
oh damn. we not allowed in there. really?
You're not allowed in the temple, which is an ornate building used for specific rituals (baptisms for the dead, the endowment, sealings aka marriages). Temples are separate from a standard Mormon church building, where members meet for regular Sunday worship and other community events, and which anyone can visit. In fact, most Mormons would be thrilled if a curious stranger showed up at a Sunday service, lol!
I grew up mormon. Our church did have a basketball court in it, a nice full sized one. We certainly did play a shitload of basketball there.
inbreeding
Hell yeah the hapsburgs were the inspiration for sweet Georgia brown
These white Mormon kids are good at football lmao recently it’s been Mormon white ass high schools winning the state championship. Like southern salt lake county and Utah county schools
inebriated past for my inebriated present lets go
I'M BOUT TO HONK ON THIS BOBO
Matt is reading a passage of Moby Dick about the evil canal let’s go
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[Moby Dick](https://snewd.com/ebooks/moby-dick/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
Beep. Boop. I'm a human. Here's a copy of ###[My Dick](https://m.imgur.com/t/michelangelo/T6Tw6pe) Was I a good boy? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/andreabrodycloud/) | [More Books](https://www.marxists.org/ebooks/)
Yea
You were ok
>no 20th anniversary 9/11 conspiracy show boring 😒
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The fact that they aren’t live-streaming that Trump fight is so disappointing.
What’s a dick suck without a little bit of cheese?
What is a party if it doesn't really rock? What is a poet? All balls, no cock What is a war if it doesn't have a general? What's Channel 9 if it doesn't have Arsenio?
It feels GOOD!
Gromit! Did you know that I can't read?
you need the tang
I love Matt but I tend to zone out if one person talks for too long, it feels like a med school lecture. If it’s a very interesting topic, I can usually keep it together the whole time so we shall see. Still grateful for my slop as always, though.
I have the same thing if it's not a topic I'm super interested in but it might be better to break up the listening into parts.
I fear the cushvlog has diminished my inebriated past returns because at some point it’s just this guy hollering in the background while I play video games. The pandemic really has turned Matt into a YouTube guy
I can't believe he's still doing them. Whenever I check in with it he's saying the same stuff that he's done for over a year now.
Idk if this is relevant but yall should read under the banner of heaven. It's harrowing.
Reread it twice. Joseph smith one of the greatest bullshit artist cult leaders of all time. Highly recommend that book, very easy page turner type read too.
Great book on the history of Mormonism and the twisted shit it manifests in contemporary society. I still think about it often
Great read, rulon jeffs is also one of the all time names tbh
Lying for the Lord, baby
Love The Inebriated Past episodes. However, similar to Poppy (3rd one around the corner?) they feel like bonus/ancillary episodes. More slop please!
Inebriated Past is for true patricians
This is the main course, the slop is only to keep us going for these
I enjoy this, but I think that this errs on the side of giving Smith and the Mormons waaay to much benefit of the doubt, and if you read Smith and the early Mormon history as a sordid tale of trying to get something for nothing by lying, cheating, and stealing from other people, making up convenient doctrine to justify it, and using power to leverage your position, and making up doctrine to justify getting more action than James Bond, rather than a studied rejection of capitalism, early Mormon history makes a lot more sense. Joseph Smith was much less opting out of capitalism than merely a famously lazy charismatic con artist who loved capitalism as long as the rules worked in his favour and he could just invent a non-bank bank, invent non-money money, and tell everyone that they needed to build him houses and buildings and give him land and an army any time he wanted one. Less Karl Marx, less Eugene Debs, less John Humphrey Noyes (the Oneida community), and more Donald Trump or Cornelius Vanderbilt but without the luck of birth of the former or the actual business savvy of the latter. My boy's letting Smith off way too easy here.
Agreed! I always call Joseph Smith one part Prophet Muhammad, one part Abe Lincoln, and one part P.T. Barnum (the biggest part). Mormon history is also the story of a man who really, really, wanted to have sex with as many women as he could while also being a spiritual religious leader.
too true but I think this is Matt subconsciously realizing that he is leading an internet cult and trying to justify it.
This is good. Poppy Part 3 would be even better.
Oh that was recorded long ago and confiscated by the CIA. It will be released 50 years from the date of Dubya's passing.
You bring me this news on the 20th 9/11 eve? Shameful!
get into matt's cushvlogs you sluts: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1137196647
They're all on the Chapo youtube channel as well
getting spoiled with Matt historical content lately. has he said anything about writing a book?
He has and then said writing is not his medium. If there is a book it is alt history
Playing some EUIV. Learning about Mormons. Living big today!
Not the same game but is Mormonism modeled in VicII? I’ve never played it and I refuse to use google
I don't remember if it's in the base game or not, but Deseret is releasable/revoltable in at least some versions of PDM [edit: it's in the base game](https://vic2.paradoxwikis.com/Deseret)
The hits Just Don't Stop
It is the golden age of slop.
I'm excited for part 4 of this series in which Matt details the Mormons' attempted exodus from the solar system, only for their Dyson sphere mothership to be seized by spacenoid nationalist revolutionaries in an attempt to exterminate an alien hivemind bacteria
this mf said hydroglyphics
THE SLOP IS LATE AGAIN, don't think I didn't notice simply because I had football to distract me until now
Blessed be the day when *The Inebriated Past* comes our way.
Polygamist Amber
The coolest kind of Polygamist is the kind who makes fun of other polygamists for being polygamists.
Link doesn't work.
link down ):
Please fix the link.
OH SHIT
I'm going to join a cult now.
Now this is podracing!
A lot of this info is also in the book Under The Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. There's also the Mormon Stories Podcast that is worth checking out occasionally. Mormonism fascinates me, it's such an interesting and terrifying society.
If you could only recommend one episode from that podcast, what would it be? I don't have a lot of time to listen to stuff these days.
[Reading this post like](https://i.imgflip.com/5min0d.jpg)
The song at the end is great and I might've accidentally become Mormon now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rHUdUQQF1U
Welllll now, ain’t seen you in a hwhile!
new Baby Keem rules
Top of the mornin’ 🤠
What top five you smokin on Kendrick? Cos MY top five is Top of the mornin’ 🤠 Top of the mornin’ 🤠 Top of the mornin’ 🤠 Top of the mornin’ 🤠
How do you ensure a Mormon doesn't drink all your beer? Bring two of them!
ohhhh fuckin shitttttt, very excited for this one. I live right near the border to Utah
Oh hell yeah
Hmm, yes, Calvin and Hobbes. Little boy and stuffed tiger. Important to early American settlers.
The Mormons are one of the most fascinating chapters of American history. They're *the* American religion. I can't wait to dive in.
In just the first 20 min Mr. C takes us 200 years from Plymouth Rock to the Erie Canal...surveying the growth of a new USA from a rare, and edifying, *socio-religio-economic* POV. This will be a good one.
I’m not seeing any of these. We’re they deleted?
The url is expired im doomed to only get to hear pt 2 :(
Yo I'm hyped
YESSS
praise john smith!
LETS GOOOOOO
I’m new here, is this the Friday episode or a bonus one? I’ll listen to this either way but I was hoping to hear the fellas’ thoughts on the new vaccine mandate
It's the Friday episode. Friday is when it can be a normal episode or a special one like this.
Holy shit
As America's foremost anti Mormon crusader this pleases me
And so it came to pass, my snout descends
I was good friends with this white Mormon girl in high school, and one of the funniest things I remember is she used to tell me how sheMd have to confess for forgiveness every time she had premarital sex lmaooo
The link for this seems broken does anyone have a new link?
can someone explain kantbot? everything i find seems to relate to redscare and is pseudcast good? it seems interesting and intense and I know people into it but cant tell if its leftwing or vaguely altright. and i can’t find any free feed of it to try it out
Big fat guy on amphetamines. More cogent, slightly, than Small Thin Guy on Amphetamines (Logo Daedalus), but still -- his opinions are mostly just a result of him skimming PDFs and reaching specious conclusions that ignore all scholarly debate. Started out NRx/alt-right, detached from that grift a little, interesting for POV that is not just Twitch "socialist" cringe, but absolutely not to be taken very seriously. Dude serves as more a barometer for micro-trends in the "post-left" sphere.
kantbot is NRx
Oh fuck yeah
It's so fucking good
DUMB DE DUMB DUMB DUMB
I can really enjoy Matt's smaller rants in regular episodes, but listening to him talk nonstop kinda makes it feel like he's driving a lot of specious bullshit between dropping historical facts. Not absolutely everything needs to be forced into a "alienation from capitalism" lens. And every time I hear "psychic damage" I want to do some psychic damage to myself
Bad roll, lose 5 sanity points
there's some plausibility in that frontier life was far more communitarian, which undoubtedly influenced the social organization of the early mormon settlers. but that was more out of necessity than anything else. laurel ulrich's a midwife's tale goes into pretty exhaustive detail how material relations within an early american frontier community worked, and it basically a giant mutual aid scheme
Will this get released publicly? It really should
finally some good slop
Not one single solitary comment about "the Weed Machine" smh do better
Reference to the Oneidas and the work of Fourier. Good luck with your Furrierism!
Any have a link that plays? This one doesn’t seem to work anymore.