The Rag Blog

The police will say there was an “Imminent Harm” situation but that doesn’t answer the question of why they rounded everyone up and hauled them off. The head guy, Jeffs, was already in jail. Has the caller ever shown up? Who was the complaint against? Would not detaining that or those specific persons been enough?

What ever happened to “police work”? Careful police investigation would be too much work and not have given them the headlines. Then there is always the attitude that “we make the rules, we don’t play by them”. The ultimate power for control freaks is having no restraint on themselves while having the ability to kill anyone with impunity. Barbara Erenreich’s book “Blood Rites” contains a lot of insight on this. The ability to terrorize a marginal group sends a message to the whole society, “You could be next”.

I’d like to see some investigation leading to solid evidence before anyone is arrested for anything. So I was speaking to why the “authorities” are often disinclined to do a professional job. Where does the sadism come in. If the obvious job for a sexual predator is “camp counselor,” “religious leader” and such then the obvious job for the sadist is “police and prison guards” and such. A good psychological screening could be put into place if one were wanted.

The problem for society is that no one is effectively policing the guardians. Those who do not mind pushing people around will gravitate to jobs that allow them to push people around. I even see this at self-policing left events. The tendency to abuse power is universal. In Austin police cadets used to be given the ink blot (what do you see?) test but that was dropped in favor of a simple/cheap multiple choice test that most could figure out. The cops (of various kinds) are supposed to channel their sadistic tendencies toward the disenfranchised so no one who “matters” will care. If a good system were put in place to curb/modify the power of the police (of all kinds) then the powerful would be less so.

I’m mad at MADD but they only wish they had the power of CPS.

The difficulty, as always, is organizing people to create the new system.

does cps have some ridiculous policies? you bet. does it overstep its boundaries at times? of course. i often fight them tooth and nail. other times i am in alignment with them. i am all too versed in the spectrum of child endangerment. i have represented hundreds of children and scores of parents. i will not go into any specifics. let me just say that these are real life situations that are uglier than anything most of us have ever seen or lived through.

i have read the affidavit that was the basis for the ruling that allowed cps to go into the compound. there are very serious allegations contained in the affidavit that sound quite plausible to me. i think what cps did in this instance is probably a good thing. it is not okay in my book for girls to be raised from birth to be the sacrificial lambs for procreation with an older man. that is what is happening. it is not about religion. screw religion. someone needs to hold the men in this group accountable for their behavior. it may seem like a drastic way to do it because it is.

the group is represented by a lawyer from jerry goldstein’s office. so they have the best lawyers that money can buy. each child will be appointed an attorney ad litem & a guardian ad litem. the attorney represents what the child wants if the child is old enough to direct representation. the guardian represents the child’s best interests.

so the children will be protected.

child abuse cuts across all racial, gender, religious, and socio-economic strata. yes poverty and lack of education make it even worse. social services in texas are of course almost non-existent. that is a much bigger picture issue. i deal with this every day. i often joke that i live in cps world.

i think we all need to be less knee-jerk in our reactions.

Just like the women in the burkas, there are women who appreciate life in the functional state of polygamy. Look, they get to have a family of many women and children as opposed to one man per woman which quite often can be very abusive. If there are many women per one man, they can manage to fly under his radar most of the time.

If the sexual “duty” is the abuse, when it is divided among dozens of women it isn’t all that frequent. I’m sure it is excessively onerous for the young and nubile women who the head honcho thinks require impregnation, to keep the family growing. He probably justifies it in that motherhood provides them with their purpose in life–taking care of their babies and young children.

As they age and new ones take their place the sex drys up. The community of women and children develops close ties as though members of one huge family. There is a kibbutzen quality to it. Imagine endlessly being away at summer camp.

I worry for how all these children will be absorbed into the larger community. Who will support them? Who will provide basic food, shelter and clothing if the big daddy of them all is in prison? Did he really father all 400 or were some procured in other ways? I’m sure the story will continue to unfold for years to come.

It kind of reminds me of that convent of cloistered nuns who lived over in Tarrytown in a righteously valuable manse while they were on welfare, having no man to provide–except god who saw no reason to waste money on them. After all they had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience–they became brides of Christ. Since He isn’t around anymore they became perfect candidates for state aid.

There are reasons that the practice has gone on uninterupted in places like Utah for decades on end. Providing all these women and children with alternative life stations in the larger community is going to be tricky. Will there be a human version of a pet adoption shelter? Group homes funded by the state? Arranged marriages?

Texas takes it on. Wow. It could have been worse. It could have been the feds with tanks and firepower–ATF, FBI with orders coming out of the AG’s office in DC.

Frances Morey

It is an important topic, because I think the US global empire is breaking down and I think this trend will gradually lead to many more religious cults and localized community reorganization attempts.

The raid on this FLDS cult instantly brought to my mind the botched government attack on the Branch Davidians, which almost everyone can now agree was a horrible mistake. The whole concept of government-imposed morality reminds me of Bush destroying Iraq in the name of bringing democracy.

The real objection to this particular religion is that it does seem to be socially engineered to allow a few older males to appropriate young females as wives, which drives out younger males. One of the women wrote a scathing indictment of her experience titled “Escape.”

I think the ultimate litmus test may whether a majority of the cult members were happy and might wish to go back to the security and support of the cult, as alien as that might seem to the outside world. It might be that a majority were contented, as the Branch Davidians apparently were. I am most curious about where their money came from, but I’m sure the mediaand pundits will soon be all over this issue from every angle.

As strange and repressive as this cult may seem to mainstream America, I believe we are living within a political system and economy that is just as crazy right now.

Instead of a few cult elders running things for their own benefit in a commune, we now have a tiny number of billionaires acting to push the great majority of humans off the edge of an environmental cliff, and virtually assuring mass misery through over-population of the planet in the next century. The corporate empire is destroying the planet through global warming, killing off nature and countless brethren species, and assuring human misery on a vast scale in the name of greedy unlimited profit.

I think it is hypocritical to go after a religious cult for arguable abuses, while being blind to the similar problems that our civilization and culture are creating on a planetary scale, however
normal we may consider our current policies according to the conventional thinking.

Has anyone read the “World Scientist’s Warning to Humanity,” signed by a majority of the world’s Nobel Prize winning scientists about a decade ago? Our current policies amount to a short-sighted economic and political cult of power junkies, leveraged with fossil fuel based
technology, applied on a global scale — and at gunpoint. Let us try to look at these things in perspective.