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SilentDawning wrote:
For example, last Sunday a High Councilor spoke. It was the most PAINFUL talk I’d witnessed in a while. Not because he was offensive, but because he was BORING.
Ah, so he was well qualified for the job.
Frankly, as soon as I find out we’ve got one speaking, I plan to take a nap or sneak out early. Haven’t quite gotten up the guts to bring a pillow and blankie, or show up in footie pajamas yet. I do use the door closest to the men’s room if I’m leaving, so they can think it was just a potty emergency.
NightSG wrote:SilentDawning wrote:For example, last Sunday a High Councilor spoke. It was the most PAINFUL talk I’d witnessed in a while. Not because he was offensive, but because he was BORING.
Ah, so he was well qualified for the job.
Frankly, as soon as I find out we’ve got one speaking, I plan to take a nap or sneak out early. Haven’t quite gotten up the guts to bring a pillow and blankie, or show up in footie pajamas yet. I do use the door closest to the men’s room if I’m leaving, so they can think it was just a potty emergency.
I take offense to these remarks, but fortunately I don’t take it personally and I’m generally thick skinned (although I do have some weak spots). I do recognize what you’re talking about, there are some that are truly boring and frankly irrelevant. Just don’t throw us all in the same bucket.
[Just to be totally clear, this is mostly tongue-in-cheek.]
When I tried to go back to work after the stillbirth of our third child, I had a severe anxiety attack. Since that time I have had less severe anxiety attacks when something goes very wrong – I lose my job, car breaks down on the freeway, significant mold is discovered in our rental property, etc. I have medication to take upon the onset of an anxiety attack. I had a pretty bad one the night of the election. My fear really breaks down to world politics and economics. I view President Trump as so much of a loose cannon that I fear he will act impulsively militarily and drag us into WWIII…. Or that he will set in motion policies that allow the same type of speculative bubbles that brought on the great recession.
I do have a glimmer of hope. The last eight years have been so marked with partisan obstructionism that maybe, just maybe with republican controlled branches of government we can get things done. Maybe we can pass a budget and stop having these showdowns over the debt ceiling.
When I talk to somebody that I disagree with about politics, I usually bring it back to the safe place of how great it is that in this country we settle our differences through discourse and voting. Nobody wants military coup or civil wars. Hopefully the things that draw us together matter more than red vs. blue. We can still be friends even if we see things differently.
Also – I never have these discussions on Facebook. It is not a productive forum to explore differences and areas of common ground. To me, it seems like a megaphone to amplify shouting.
I am no expert. I continue to fail, learn, and grow on this subject.
I’ve debated with myself about whether or not I should post, but I keep thinking about this topic. This is an interesting place to discuss something like this. This site has been a great place to come to talk about things where we can all respect each other’s differences. It’s hard for many of us to find a ‘safe zone’ like that in our real lives, so having people who can understand our unorthodox positions is invaluable. In my time on this site, it’s been interesting to see the differences and the similarities in people’s experiences as they’ve tried to navigate through this crisis of faith. One common theme that I’ve seen is that this experience often causes people to question the leaders of the church, past and present. I know I’ve spent a lot of time on that road. But, what I really appreciate about this site, is that it encourages people to look for ways to find peace with the information that has disturbed us, so that we can ‘StayLDS’ in our own way. It’s okay to disagree with leaders, it’s okay to form our own testimonies, it’s okay to step away from specific aspects of the church that we find disturbing. We’re all still looking for ways to accept things that we may disagree with. And we’re all doing it for various reasons; family, culture, habit, faith, etc. Personally, I’ve had a VERY hard time with JS and BY. I’ve basically come to a point that I don’t believe they were prophets, but I accept that they were founders of our church. I have to force myself to find the positive things that they did, rather than the negative (for me, this is easier said than done). But, I’m trying.
When I look through the comments that have been made about Trump, I could easily take all of the adjectives that have been used to describe him, and attach them to Brigham Young’s name. I honestly see very little difference between Trump and BY. That should tell you that I’m not a Trump fan (nor am I a Hillary fan). Racist, sexist, isolationist, loose cannon, hostile toward outsiders, power-hungry, etc. They could be brothers! I think they would have gotten along like two peas in a pod.
I think there have been times when most of us have wished that our families/friends could see the church and the leaders through our eyes. If only they could understand! But, it always comes down to respecting each others perspectives. If I want others to respect my right to have some unorthodox beliefs, then I need to respect others’ rights to be completely orthodox. If I want others to respect my right to vote for Gary Johnson (or anybody else), then I need to respect their right to vote for Trump. My guy didn’t win. Now, all I can do is look for the positive. If I can do it with BY, then I can do it with Trump. I dislike Trump, I disliked Obama, I dislike BY. But, positives can be found anywhere. I respect any of you who voted for Trump, and I respect any of you who didn’t. This is still a safe place to disagree, and that’s really what matters to me.
[attachment=0]by.jpg[/attachment] Holy Cow wrote:…I honestly see very little difference between Trump and BY. That should tell you that I’m not a Trump fan (nor am I a Hillary fan). Racist, sexist, isolationist, loose cannon, hostile toward outsiders, power-hungry, etc. They could be brothers! I think they would have gotten along like two peas in a pod.
And they both have universities named after them.
:think: Would they get along… or fight over who gets to be king of the pod? Sometimes being too similar can create issues.
DarkJedi wrote:Just don’t throw us all in the same bucket.
That much monotony concentrated in one bucket would probably cause mass suicides from hundreds of yards away.
nibbler wrote:Would they get along… or fight over who gets to be king of the pod? Sometimes being too similar can create issues.
Ha! Very true! They’d probably be chummy on the outside, while trying to figure out how they could use the other person for their own benefit.
😆 And both universities occasionally have some PR issues. But come on, Trump has nothing on BY’s 55 wives.
I will stop now before I get myself in trouble.
It’s hard to listen to the very obvious politically conservative rhetoric in HP mtg that so often bleeds out in a backhanded way. Like “yeah we’re not supposed to talk political in here but yeah we all know this is the right way and blah blah the Lord surely wants this guy blah blah blah and we all know it and blah blah the Lord is behind us blah we’re right yeah but vote your conscience”. It’s tougher in a very conservative community. It seems like no one even considers another thought or thinks any of his neighbors do either. It wasn’t so irritating when living in more liberal places. I guess that stands to reason.
There is an increasing problem in the US that not only are we incredibly partisan, but the parties are operating on two completely different sets of “facts.” There are no fact-facts. How do we ever get people together when they can’t even agree what the truth is? Both parties, their leadership, and their candidates are masters of manipulation, lies, trickery, and deception. It’s how they get elected. Can you honestly be upset, that so many Americans (including members of the Church) were decieved? Everyone who went to the polls based their decision solely on misinformation. dande48 wrote:Both parties, their leadership, and their candidates are masters of manipulation, lies, trickery, and deception. It’s how they get elected. Can you honestly be upset, that so many Americans (including members of the Church) were decieved? Everyone who went to the polls based their decision solely on misinformation.
While I think I understand what you are getting at, and I even partly agree, we simply cannot make such a definitive statement that “
Everyonewho went to the polls based their decision solelyon misinformation.” Please try to avoid such sweeping generalizations in the future. 
Fascinating article from one of the guys who writes fake news for a living: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=sm_tw Quote:Please try to avoid such sweeping generalizations in the future
My sweeping generalization was on both candidates, and both parties. Misinformation is all there was. All corruption, bribery, rhetoric on all sides. What honest, non-biased information is there? The candidates track history?
It all came down to what misinformation was the most believeable. But nearly half of the well-informed public completely disagree with your choice in candidate (whoever it was). About half of those, found your candidate to be downright frightening.
So who was decieved? And how can you tell?
I’d chalk a lot of what governs a person’s choice of candidate up to a difference in perspective and preference. Sure there’s misinformation, shady campaign promises, bribery, etc. on both sides but I don’t think that whoever wins ultimately comes down to which side did a better job of deceiving the most people. Using a real political issue might distract so I’ll go over to Gulliver’s Travels with the Big-Endians and Little-Endians. An egg should be broken on the convenient end… but people can’t agree over which end of the egg represents the convenient end. A third party that does not have a vested interest might come along and call the whole thing silly but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the issue is very real to the people that are embroiled in the conflict.
Politics can be similar to religion. Is everyone that doesn’t belong to a specific religion deceived, or are they all deceived? When it comes to religion is there something more at play than deceit or being informed? Some argue that geography factors largely into determining what religion a person adopts, maybe that argument can be extended to say that geography also influences a person’s political views, maybe not north, south, east, or west, but maybe the “geography” of which family you are born into, the friends you chose, or what socioeconomic status you are born into.
I think that due to human nature our desire to be understood is greater than our desire to understand. Maybe an increased desire to be understood comes from a projection of our own lack of ability to understand? I don’t know, but I didn’t see many people trying to understand one another during the election.
dande48 wrote:It all came down to what misinformation was the most believeable. But nearly half of the well-informed public completely disagree with your choice in candidate (whoever it was). About half of those, found your candidate to be downright frightening.
I believe confirmation bias plays a role. The misinformation might not be swaying someone’s decision as much as it confirms a decision that someone has already made.
People can see the exact same thing and walk away with completely different conclusions. It’s based on perspective, the lens through which someone sees the world, and the angle they have from their vantage point. Maybe a new way of seeing things would be to say that both sides are right instead of both sides are wrong.
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