The look, I could cope with, no problem. I've known quite a few Amish families
from my Yankee past. During that interview, it was the *atonality* of the women
that scared me. Reminded me of "The Stepford Wives" immediately. It wouldn't
surprise me if it came out that their husbands were standing just out of shot.
As for that idiot judge...if memory serves, wasn't there at least *one*
underaged girl reported pregnant? If so, that, IMO, is enough to warrant
immediate removal of all the kids until complete investigations were carried
out. That's how it would fly in any criminal complaint.
"There is no reason Good can't triumph over Evil, if only angels will
get organized along the lines of the Mafia." -Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man
Without A Country"
--- On Tue, 7/1/08, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [scifinoir2] OT: Texas FLDS Group Sets up Website to Sell Their
Simple Clothing
To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 1:38 PM
I hear you. The wild thing is how their look and dress hit people
more than the rumours of what they were doing. I know some people who were
skeptical, or at least, cautious, until they saw them. The look of that
ultra-modern (for 1829) dress made some people think, of course they're odd
Not saying it was all visual for you too, Martin. Was it that, or what they
said that did it?
The judge had to return them because her rulings were overturned by a higher
court, in what was seen as a rebuke for her taking all the kids. The higher
court seems to acknowledge that *some* kids might be at risk, but the state
couldn't prove that *all* of them were....
------------ -- Original message ------------ --
From: Martin <truthseeker_ [EMAIL PROTECTED] com>
Keith, when this entire thing first sprang up, I was thinking that it was
nothing more than another Guv'mint Waco-in-the- making.
And then I saw the Stepford Compound Wives on Today.
After that, I'm led to wonder what that judge was thinking in returning those
kids to that sitch. Wouldn't buy from that site if you held guns to the heads
of the five people in this world I care most about.
"There is no reason Good can't triumph over Evil, if only angels will
get organized along the lines of the Mafia." -Kurt Vonnegut, "A Man
Without A Country"
--- On Tue, 7/1/08, KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net <KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net>
wrote:
From: KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net <KeithBJohnson@ comcast.net>
Subject: [scifinoir2] OT: Texas FLDS Group Sets up Website to Sell Their Simple
Clothing
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ups.com
Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 8:16 AM
http://www.fldsdres s.com/
Wow, talk about irony . A sect that in many ways hails back to "simpler" times,
now has a website hawking their "simpler" clothing. What a strange world in
which we live. Do the Amish have web sites...?
I had conflicting feelings about this site when first I visited it. I must
admit, first reactions were a bit of amusement at the backwards-seeming styles,
which made me chuckle and shake my head in bemusement. That was then coupled
with a visceral feeling of --i don't know, distaste?--for what I see as an
oppressive, soul-crushing group that programs boys and girls with bizarre
beliefs. After all, these are people who seem to believe--many of them at
least--that it's okay to wed off girls as young as 14 to old-butt men. Doesn't
matter that much of our planet still does the exact same thing, I'm not down
with that in a modern society. So then those funny, plain clothes, and the kids
with their plain looks, took on a sinister look. Symbols of a twisted
religious/world view they became.
Then I spent some time looking at the little models (doesn't take long, they
don't exactly have a lot of styles). I saw the smiling boys and girls, who
genuinely look happy to be photographed. They don't look posed or forced at
all. Even the really scary shots of the teen girls (dig the Princess Dress)
look pretty happy posing in their cotton garb. And I recalled how many of the
kids pulled from the compound genuninely want to return to their families
(however those are configured). And I recall those TV shots of those women,
looking like something from "Little House on the Prairie", some of whom are
brainwashed to my mind, yet who genuinely love and want to do right by their
children. Women who fear the outside world, seem at a loss to function among
our society, whose very command of English seems basic at best. Yet women who
braved that world to bring back their children. I realized that, twisted,
perverted as some of this might be, there are many
people in this group who rea
lly think they're doing the right thing, who love their children and would die
before knowingly hurting them. People who think their values and way of life
could benefit the world, and who are proferring their clothing in a way to
continue those values and that way of life. People venturing out a bit into
what they must see as a world of sin, in order to protect and care for their
own. Doing it for love and necessity.
And that made me sad and more than a bit concerned. After all, it's rarely the
people who beat and obviously mistreat their own that one must fear. It's those
who in love--misguided and misdirected as it may be--craft a lifestyle and
worldview that twists their children so that they embrace that lifestyle. Yeah,
some of the kids in that compound hate what's done to them. the interviews I've
seen with women who've escaped and made new lives for themselves is proof of
that. But I wonder how many are being programmed to think it's okay to be cut
off from teh world at large? To be married off to men two and three times their
age? To be wedded to their cousins before they've even finished developing?
The more I thought about that, the more I realized that my reactions aren't
about some elitist, arrogant modern guy's amusement at a backward sect. It's
more than ridiculing people who dress like something from two centuries back.
Hell, there's something to be said for trying to adopt a simpler lifestyle, for
wanting to divorce oneself from an over-reliance on technology, TV, and
superficial things. But this is about more than that. It's about kids not
seeing all sides of the picture, about women so programmed that they can't even
think for themselves. About dirty, petty men with delusions of godhood who use
God to support their twisted views, and deny those women and children the right
to think for themselves, to see the alternatives.
And thinking about that, those pictures of those smiling kids in their simple
clothing really filled me with sadness and anger at something that's sinister
and pathetic at the same time. Ironic and sad that clothing meant to represent
a world that's closer to God than ours might actually be symbols of people so
far away they don't even know it.
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