Strategic Patience and the Kingdom of God
I have opinions. Specifically on history. 54’40” or fight, Trist betrayed his trust, the Polynesians were too great in seafaring not to have contacted the Americas.
And so I have opinions on history’s follies .
A folly that seems to be a real pattern of the elite class in different times and places is throwing themselves into the dustbin of history in an attempt to avoid being thrown into the dustbin of history. Through injured pride they end up losing everything they were proud of. Through fear of losing their place they touch off the conflict that tears them from their place. They see a threat, and their attempt to end the threat causes the threat to become real. This is the classical tragedy of hubris except doing nothing would have worked. If they had bided their time, most likely the threat would never have happened.
They lacked strategic patience.
Let’s check out some examples. Japan, Germany, Mexico, the Confederacy, Germany again, Russia, Austria-Hungary. It will be a whirlwind tour.
Firing on Ft. Sumter. The Civil War begins.
In a manner of speaking, the Imperial Japanese allowed themselves to be provoked into World War Two. At one level, their strategic calculations made sense. They planned to take the Dutch East Indies for the oil and the Philippines lay right across their shipping lanes to the Dutch East Indies. They believed correctly that the United States and occupation of the Philippines could shut down their shipping lanes at any time. They also believed with at least some reason that President Roosevelt was hostile to them and would like to shut down their shipping lanes.
They therefore concluded that they had to take the Philippines in order to take the Dutch East Indies which means they needed to knock out the US Navy which means they needed to do a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which meant they awakened the sleeping giant and ensured that foreigners would destroy their empire, occupy their land, and remake their people.
The reality was if they had taken the Dutch East Indies but ignored the Philippines, allowing themselves to be vulnerable, likely the US would have done nothing. We had already sanctioned them about as much as they could be sanctioned. And Roosevelt, whatever he may or may not have wanted, knew his way around politics. I do not believe that Roosevelt would have seen his way clear politically to initiating the war. America wouldn’t have stood for it and Roosevelt would therefore not have tried. He needed Pearl Harbor (know that this is different from saying that he deliberately engineered Pearl Harbor and knew about it in advance.) I’m merely making the moderate and I think extremely valid claim that Roosevelt thought the Japanese were a menace and wanted to stop them, but had no intention of doing so because of the political climate in the United States. Until the Imperial Japanese changed the political climate for him.
The absolute furthest I can conceive of Roosevelt going is maybe setting up patrols off the Phillippines that harassed and stopped Japanese shipping to the DEI, perhaps even occasionally impounding a vessel for perceived technical infractions of some aspect of the Law of the Sea. What then? The Empire of the Rising Sun would have still had their oil, just slightly less than before.
***
Here’s more examples. Hitler should not have declared war on the United States once the US declared war on Japan (we can be thankful he did). It wasn’t as stupid a decision as we often think. The US was more or less in an undeclared naval war with Nazi Germany in the Atlantic at the time and Hitler believed that the US was going to come into the war in a few months anyway. So it made sense to move right away when the US shipping lanes were still largely undefended and Nazi submarines would be able to sink important war material and ship tonnage. What would have happened if Hitler didn’t declare war is less cut and dried than the one with the Japanese. There is a real possibility that FDR would have been able to accelerate the situation to the point where he could extract a war declaration from the US Congress sometime in the next months.. The undeclared naval war in the Atlantic would likely have continued to generate clashes that would allow a war declaration but that is by no means certain. It is possible Hitler may have been able to keep the United States from entering the war for months or even years. We are not displeased he didn’t, of course, but Hitler’s lack of strategic patience is another example of a leader losing their goals because they could not wait and see.
***
Here’s another—the Mexican authorities in the run up to the Mexican War. President Polk started the Mexican War by sending troops into the disputed section between Mexico and the in the land that laid just this side of the Rio Grande. Mexican forces then crossed the Rio Grande and attacked the US forces and based on this insult to the flag President Polk was able to get a war declaration, though even with the attack by Mexican forces, it was still a close run thing. Without the attack, I am pretty sure there would be no DoW. Of course President Polk didn’t really declare care very much about that strip. And neither did the Mexicans. It was and continues to be a unexceptional. piece of land. It is nobody’s jewel although there’s nothing particularly wrong with it either. What happened next? The Mexican government was overthrown. Yankee conquerors walked the streets of Mexico City, and Mexico was obliged to cede large tracts of territory containing huge amounts of mineral wealth, and in California agricultural wealth and large harbors. All for some acres between the Rio Grande and the Nueces.
What would have happened if the Mexican government had decided to protest and do nothing? Or at most perhaps send their troops also into the disputed territory, but well away from the American units?
I doubt very much there would have been a declaration of war. A number of whigs and northerners were dubious about the whole enterprise. It is possible that California would have been lost anyway. At least to the northern part. Although possibly not, the British who were the superpower of the day may have preferred to keep it in Mexican hands if the alternative was that the United States would come into its possession. But almost certainly big chunks of what is now the American Southwest would have remained Mexican.
Further, it is likely that after enough time Polk would have had to withdraw the troops because he would have looked foolish. If not, eventually a whig President would have come into power and would have drawn them back anyway.
***
Now lets talk about the southern leadership that fired on Fort Sumter. Epic blunder. Again, you can make a certain kind of strategic sense of why they did it. At the time the Confederacy only had the lower tier of cotton states. They believed, correctly, that if they fired on the Fort Lincoln would call for troops to suppress them, and the upper tier of slave states would take their side. They believed, incorrectly as it turns out, but it was their belief, that if the upper tier of slave states joined them the Union would either not dare to invade or else the Confederacy would win a short war, probably with foreign intervention. That is to the extent they had any strategic thinking at all. As in the Mexican situation, it was more anger and wounded pride.
The result was the destruction of the South. Their cities burnt, their towns occupied, their manhood dead, Yankee interlopers ruling their governments, their precious slavery utterly abolished. From their point of view the reverse of everything they had hoped for when they fired that first shell early one morning in April.
What if they hadn’t? Lets imagine a Confederate leadership with strategic patience.
They try to negotiate with Lincoln as in real life, he rejects the negotiations, as in real life . . . but then, nothing. They still occupy federal facilities where they can do so without starting a fight, but they announce that they are doing so custodially “pending negotiations to resolve the final status.” If the administration tries to collect tariffs, they protest diplomatically but state that they acknowledge that they are responsible for some portion of the existing federal debt and other obligations, and will simply include the tariffs paid as “on account” “pending negotiations to resolve the final status.” They don’t levy tariffs on trade down the Mississippi or undertake any retaliatory measures. In fact, perhaps they allow federal inspectors or even disarmed federal caretakers onto federal properties in the South.
They allow resupply to Ft. Sumter as long as it isn’t war material, which is all Lincoln was proposing when the Confederates fired the opening gun.
What then? Lincoln would likely not have started the war. The North was ambivalent until the guns of Sumter. Lincoln was an incredibly skilled politician who knew exactly what the mood of his people was. Further he really wasn’t eager to shed blood. So most likely what happens is . . . nothing. After a year or two passes, the secession of the southern states is a fait accompli and there is not going to be any appetite on the side of the Union to reverse it. Confederate independence is de facto recognized and sooner or later de jure. Likely some of the border states secede and join the Confederacy when its clear that it’s a going concern and the precedent for successful secession has been established.
If somehow the Lincoln administration invaded, the likely result would beeven more border states join the Confederacy than occurred in actual history, the war has much less support in the North, and the Confederacy wins.
As a proud Unionist and opponent of slavery and so on I can’t say I regret that the South did not take this road not taken. But I also can’t say it wouldn’t have worked. It would have.
But let’s back up. Why declare secession at all? Isn’t it clear that most of the Southern efforts to protect slavery and their “way of life” in the 1850s, up to and including secession, had the opposite effect? Kansas-Nebraska was a farce. Dred Scott was a farce. The “right of sojourn” was a farce. None of these things was going to protect slavery or expand it. All they did was provoke. Fringe abolitionism became wildly popular free soilism. The Fugitive Slave Act had some effect, but the provocation was even more extreme. All were ill-conceived. Southern statesmen should have let themselves take a loss or two.
***
All right, perhaps the South is a bad example because even with strategic patience, we piously assert that slavery would not and should not have lasted indefinitely.
So lets talk about the great tragedy of the West, the suicide of our civilization, WWI. The German high military and civilian commands were scared to death of Russia. It was finally getting its act together, was industrializing, and would become an unstoppable Tsarist behemoth. They felt they needed to fight while they could still win. Conversely, if they fought now, they could seize vast tracts of Eastern Europe and cement the eternal destiny of their great Kaiserreich etc etc. To those gentry, the Serbian crisis looked opportune, which was why they gave Austria-Hungary the famous “blank check.” (the other reason was that they felt they absolutely needed A-H as an ally against the growing Russian menace). Elements in the German leadership even foiled a last minute personal peace effort between the Kaiser and the Tsar, because they were afraid that the two would work out a peace deal. Almost certainly they would have.
But of course to knock Russia out of the war they will have to defeat Russia’s ally, France. To defeat France, they will have to strike through Belgium, whose neutrality is guaranteed by Britain. Risky, to be sure. But necessary, because otherwise in 20 years the Tsar’s legions will surely bury us!
And so the great horror began. Millions of deaths. Starvation. Economic collapse. Surrender. The fall of the government, the abdication of the Kaiser, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine and much territory to the east. Fighting in the streets, Spartakist revolts, Freikorps. Inflation, reparations, Weimar and its degeneracy. Nazi dictatorship, total interference with every organ of society. War, concentration camp, the horrors of the eastern front. Total surrender and occupation, the rape of hundreds of thousands of German women, many more civilian deaths, thorough economic destruction, wholesale population transfers, much more land lost. Soviet occupation. Cold war. And now—I am going to be unnecessarily negative here, but there is a grain of truth to it—a neutered American satrapy with a bad economy and a worse birth rate. No will to live and nothing to live for.
What if the German elite had not stopped Cousin Willy from hashing out a deal with Cousin Nicky?
Well, they were correct that Russia was going to be very formidable if currents trends continued. As a straight line projection, indeed, yes, Russia was going to be an awful threat. But modernization is extremely perilous for a large backwards country. The most likely outcome would have been that Russia dissolved into some kind of political turmoil. Coups and even civil war. Just a few years before in 1905 the Russian state had come very close to the brink.
If the Russian state did keep itself together, there would be no guarantee that it would be hostile.
If it did keep itself together and were hostile/expansionist, there is a good chance that the Germans would have been able to find new allies, including possibly Britain who would have felt India was threatened. Expansionist states have a way of creating coalitions against them.
And maybe, horror of horrors, you could try actively conciliating the French and the British. Giving up Alsace-Lorraine, is that so bad?
Austria-Hungary, ditto. Nothing they feared would happen to their eastern provinces if they didn’t slap the Serbs down hard was worse than what actually happened. A-H ceased to exist.
Russia, ditto. Better a hundred years of humiliation than 50 years of Leninist misery.
(France I give a pass too. Once Russia declared they really had no good options. Britain, maybe, I’m not sure sure about that one.)
A lack of strategic patience poisoned the well of the 20th Century and beyond. We are still tasting the polluted waters.
***
You might find it interesting to think about strategic patience in the modern day. In the context of Russia, Ukraine, NATO and the US vis-a-vis Russia, China, Taiwan, the US vis-a-vis China . . .
But I’m more interesting in thinking about the church. As some of you know, I have concerns or even doubts about a number of over all moves we are making that seem to parallel the types of accommodations that were made by the mainline denominations 50 years ago. They are now howling wastelands. So what do you do with concerns or even doubts? If you have faith and a testimony, you put them on the shelf. And so I have.
And from time to time you take them off the shelf to see if you they make more sense to you now. That’s what I am doing now. Does strategic patience teach us anything about our current situation?
I wouldn’t have the cold ruthlessness to make decisions knowing that a number of Saints would thereby be denied the clarity they needed, and would fall away into sin, even if I believed that confronting the world now would likely lead to our destruction. But perhaps that occasional cold ruthlessness is a necessary quality of Christian leadership. Look at the Old Testament if you doubt me. My lack of that quality may just be another way I am unfit to be at the helm.
Am I convinced? No, not really. So back on the shelf the doubt goes, but this time with a few more chips and chinks. There is some more doubt of the doubt.
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | No Tag
Jacob G.
November 2, 2022
Excellent post.
ofc there is the moldbug take: it just keeps happening over and over that people attack the USA (or globalist associates) and end up getting conquered. Weird, huh?
I also can’t help thinking of the BoM saying that when it comes out there is a secret combination in place in all nations. Maybe some of these events were scripted and various leaderships were not acting as the independent agents they appeared to be? I hate to try to read too much into this because we know the earth is covered in thick clouds of darkness, lies piled on top of lies and to think I’ve penetrated it in even the least degree is astonishingly hubristic – but I can’t help but wonder.
As to your final point. I recently have been thinking a lot about the view I encountered here on JrG that the church is analogous to the Israelites in Egypt. They referred to it as slavery and so it was at the end when Egypt tried to assimilate them and make them take the same deal as all the other Egyptian peasants. But I think most of their 400 year stay they were mostly left alone or sometimes even privileged. Else how could they have grown so numerous and retained a separate identity?
Anyways the actions of the church look a lot different if you see us as a conquered subject people, that must be careful not to attract the ire of their masters. The priesthood as envisioned by Joseph Smith clearly included all government, something that in these days has been given up – and this is the case because God allowed it or even caused it to happen.
Eric
November 2, 2022
I wouldn’t be so doom and gloom about the Church’s future. It brings to mind some of the systems President Nelson has set in motion based on the revelations he’s received, while commenting that we won’t notice the obvious benefits for another 50 years. The Lord is playing a very long game here. And, as President Packer was fond of saying, “Let the pending items pend.”
[]
November 2, 2022
In about 10 years we won’t have to be so careful saying the Civil War and WW2 were bad things.
G.
November 2, 2022
@JacobG,
Like Norm said, its awesome how if you read history the good guys won in the end every single time. What are the odds?
Eric,
thanks for your testimony. May it be so.
[],
Hopefully the untrammeled free speech you prophesy won’t be the freedom of already being in camps. 🙂 But while I have been known to be coy, I think that when the gates slam shut behind me and I can at last speak my mind, the first words out of my mouth probably aren’t going to be, “The Union should not have fought the Civil War and the US should not have fought WWII, phew, glad I got that off my chest.”
Zen
November 2, 2022
I feign no revelation here, but this has been my feeling for a while. I expect it could go far enough that we are in concentration camps. Notice, that the Book of Mormon has multiple examples of saints imprisoned, and a minimum of two where they escape what we could call concentration camps (Zeniff and Alma the Elder).
Do you have enough faith to go to one, if the Prophet said so? What if some people say we need to actively resist and fight, while church leadership says we should not, even if it does honestly mean we going there?
Though, if we do go there, I plan to walk out, like Alma the Elder did.
I truly do not know, but I do know that this is the Age of Restoration of All Things. That means, that if there is a blessing that a previous age had, we are also going to have that blessing. But the other side of that is, that we are going to have all the unique trials that gave each dispensation its blessings.
seriouslypleasedropit
November 3, 2022
“Thy friends do stand by thee, and they shall hail thee again with warm hearts and friendly hands.”
Vader
November 3, 2022
Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares. The tares will eventually be pulled up and burned, but not while there is still tender wheat that might be pulled up with the tares. It seems to me that this is a parable of strategic patience particularly applicable to our day.
Also remember that all of us at this blog are a few sigma off the mean. This does not mean God is not mindful of us and caring for us, but our concerns may not be the same as the concerns of most of the Church.
G., did you ever get my letter?
G.
November 4, 2022
I did. I appreciated it very much.
G.
November 4, 2022
Some of our leadership factions think Trump and his fans are a serious threat to our democracy. The way they are responding seems to me to be a near catastrophic lack of strategic patience.
Sute
November 5, 2022
Somewhat related:
What if the church never allowed itself to be known as Mormons AND from the outset tastefully but not ostentatiously used the cross in our churches?
Was prejudice against other Christian faiths behind this differentiation actually a strategic blunder?
Is there any revelation showing the Lord’s opposition to using the cross as a symbol of us following him and taking his name upon us? I’m aware of all that’s been said in the past and recently. It’s all rhetorical.
Could anyone disagree with the cross as a symbol who believes we should take up our cross and follow him? We use the symbol in print, alphabetically, and we use it vocally, but uhhh, don’t actually draw it.
The rationale we publish is that we celebrate his life and resurrection, not the means of his death. Yet the resurrected Christ in the book of Mormon made the cross a central focus of his and our lives when he says, “my Father sent me that I might be lifted up upon the *cross*; and after that I had been lifted up upon the *cross*, that I might draw all men unto me, that as I have been lifted up by men even so should men be lifted up by the Father, to stand before me, to be judged of their works, whether they be good or whether they be evil”
Christ sent to the cross by whom according to his own words? The cross to him was an image of lifting up. Not torture, it would seem.
If allowing the world to call us Mormons instead of the church of Jesus Christ was a great victory for Satan, maybe we blundered and still do to this day in rejecting the image of the cross which Christ was sent to be lifted up on.
I’m all for no iconography if we want to go there, but we have simple lines on our garments, gestures, temple iconography, angels, trumpets, stars, moons, gardens, lions, Christuses, statues, but we run away from any image of the cross?
The kindly quotes about the cross being a symbol of the dying Christ or more negatively an instrument of torture seem to ignore the Saviors own words on the issue.
Errr…. why would he use the image of the cross rhetorically if he was opposed to its visual depiction? We have no problem with nails through his hands and referring to that instrument of torture, most recently with shining happy Jesus smiling in the new book of Mormon videos.
I wonder if we not only lose fellowship with other faiths, allow ourselves to be mischaracterized, but most importantly fail to connect to Jesus’s own sacrifice and lifting up and words on the issue. What was that the book of Mormon had to say about the snake on the staff being lifted up again? That image was OK for Moses and BoM reference but we definitely can’t look to another shape in the similitude because reasons…
We really like the image of the Christus, but seem to forget that it’s shape with Jesus’ outstretched arms is literally formed in the shape of the cross.
There’s far more to argue for using the cross and the arguments against strike me as weak contrarian apologetics.
G.
November 5, 2022
My own feeling is that differentiation helped to establish the church. Part of the reason I struggle some with current Church direction is I still feel the same way. The idea of a pure gospel without cultural aspects is nonsense in my opinion.
G.
November 5, 2022
Although the main reason we don’t do the cross could just be that most of the early saints came out of the radical Protestant tradition where you didn’t have crosses or any other symbols in the church
Zen
November 5, 2022
I have no problem agreeing with both Sute (we could display the Cross more) and G (It is part of our differentiation).
I rather suspect that 4/5ths of the Word of Wisdom is just differentiation.
Vader
November 5, 2022
Trump _is_ a threat to the Constitution. The man must never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power again.
Strategic patience sometimes means being willing to lose an election or two. Of course, the Republicans could also come to their senses and nominate someone else, but a party that expels a Liz Cheney while talking of restoring a MTG’s committee seats is not a party showing any signs of coming to its senses.
Sute
November 5, 2022
G,
So the cross gets thrown under the bus like racist attitudes and weakly justified after the fact?
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not in some “the Brethren got this wrong, how can we trust them?” mindset. It’s just…dumb. Although absolutely, I can see issues with all the embellishments to the cross, gems, gold, etc. That kind of stuff can be seen as distasteful, but I think it can be equally justified from a sincere catholic believer that…where else would you use your previous metals and gems if not your most sacred works? Would it be better to buy a nice meal with your gold or sacrifice it into a symbol of your faith and forgo all its world benefits?
In order to criticize the catholic or protestant use of the cross, we have to understand it from their perspective. And I assume I’ve done it some justice.
I find the latter-day Saint justification flat, when we have the Saviors own references to it and our otherwise frequent use of various icons and symbols and ornate designs.
Differentiation becomes rather poor justification when we invite all to Christ…who told us he was lifted up on the cross for all mankind and that likewise we will be lifted up for our works. It’s literally a symbol lifted up on churches saying…we follow Christ.
My daughter was given a child’s cross with sheep painted on it, from her older brother who was given it by is catholic kindergarten teacher. Would I rather she play with that and carry it around at church or a mickey mouse duplo?
Again, back to this post idea, there may very well be some strategic blunders that were not rooted in revelation but attitudes of the day, and continued in such that needlessly obscures our true identity as disciples of Christ.
Eric
November 5, 2022
Sute, I don’t think you’re wrong. That said….
If we Latter-day Saints started to adopt the cross as a symbol, I don’t believe that act alone would persuade legacy Christians to accept us as fellow Christians, because all the other reasons why they don’t. They’ve opposed us far too long to let that one thing change their attitude.
Such a change would also be seen as caving in to peer pressure, which would earn us no respect from within or without–except for those whose fervor can be aroused by things like superficial symbols and slogans, or a politician’s platitudes.
While we talk about loving others and cooperating with other faiths in a spirit of respect, the counterweight to that still exists–that we’d prefer people joining us rather than our adopting their ways. The first generation of Christians had no interest in compromising with the pagans, and that didn’t change until all the apostles were dead.
I myself feel no antipathy toward the cross; it’s not going to drive me a way like a vampire. Our military chaplains have used the cross on their uniforms, and some of our buildings have used the cross in one way or another. For example, the Liberty Ward meetinghouse in Salt Lake that my dad’s family attended when he was a kid had its chapel shaped like a cross (back when our meetinghouses had a lot more personality) but it wasn’t something people made a big deal about if they noticed it.
While a lot of people make a big deal out of President Nelson saying the Church’s nicknames are a victory for Satan, I’m more persuaded by what he said right beforehand: that all those nicknames are inappropriate because they leave out Christ’s name. I take that to mean that any nickname for the Church that includes Christ’s name would be fine, though no such names have been put to use.
As it is, it would be difficult for the Saints to be ignorant of the cross and what it means. I liked how Elder Holland explained it at the latest conference, that we’re so old school that we don’t feel the need to adopt a symbol that Christians didn’t use until after the time of Constantine.
If the Church ever does adopt the cross as a symbol, I could see it happening sometime during the millennium after other churches have been absorbed into the Church of Jesus Christ–although having Jesus on the earth and openly among us might make such symbols less compelling. But I don’t think this is a very urgent matter among the Church’s leadership. I could be wrong, of course, but past trends seem likely to continue in this regard.
Sute
November 5, 2022
I think Elder Hollands rationale, with all due respect to him and his office is incomplete.
We have scriptures in the old testament about a snake on a staff, in similitude of a cross, we have quotes from the Savior himself and Book of Mormon quotes no less.
Abandoning the name quasi officia name Mormon and dropping lds.org and adopting the christus symbol were all a rebranding of sorts that could be seen as caving in. It’s a far way from a propet singing “I am a Mormon boy” in conference to asking us never to call ourselves Mormons.
Constantine may spread the image of the cross just by nature of his domination in his period, but even a quick wikipedia read shows it was common place enough 100 years before that. And we can assume that it just didn’t suddenly become common place late 100s without being used before that.
The fact that there’s not a ton of evidence archeologically….uh, makes it pretty robust still when we talk about all manner of BoM claims. I’m not convinced by archeology arguments as most of it is lost to antiquity.
In any case, there are writings of it from the 100s or early 200s, which would tend to dispute the claim that it wasn’t used. Really we just have less evidence of it being used. And seriously, wouldn’t we expect the first 100 years after Christ’s death to see the simple icons being eradicated as Christians themselves were supressed?
My point is… the attitude towards other Christian faiths sure does seem like it blundered us into the not Christian column. If from the very beginning our steeples and our temples had a simple cross on the top, it sure does become a lot hard for the not Christian argument to stick. Yes, they will still toss it, as they do about Catholics. But it becomes even more fringe. Anyhow, enough cross talk I gues.
G.
November 5, 2022
Vader,
I don’t expect we will see eye to eye on this even a little bit, so I don’t intend to argue about any of that. But I will at least make my position clear.
A. Trump _is_ a threat to the Constitution.
B. The man must never be allowed anywhere near the levers of power again.
I increasingly believe that if you believe A, asserting B is an error and probably a catastrophic error. For the reasons expressed in this post.
G.
November 5, 2022
Sute,
I sympathize. I mean, I personally don’t really believe there is anything wrong with the cross as a symbol per se and have had my eye on a nice pair of cowboy boots with a honkin’ cross on each outer side. But not using it doesn’t bother me either because, I do not believe that differentiation is a poor justification and also because I increasingly value mainstream christianity for what they have in common with us, not vice versa, if that makes any sense.
Vader
November 5, 2022
The cross was not a symbol adopted by the Saint of Christ’s day. On the contrary, it first appears as a graffiti _mocking_ Christianity, with Christ rendered as a donkey.
The comments about the cross in the New Testament were likely in response to this, and aimed at defusing the graffiti. Something like how “Mormon” was first applied by enemies of the church and we tried to defuse it by embracing the term. Which we are now commanded not to do.
FWIW. YMMV.
Evenstar
November 5, 2022
We could use the fish symbol.
Eric
November 6, 2022
We could use the snake symbol too, but that one has been appropriated by the medical community and would just confuse people at this point.
G
November 6, 2022
Confusing people is good!
Zen
November 6, 2022
Every time I see that Greek serpent as a medical symbol, I feel a bit cheated, and think it should be the Brazen Serpent.
Vader
November 6, 2022
I am content that the angel proclaiming the everlasting gospel — and, by implication, the temples bearing the representation of the angel — have become our symbol.
[]
November 7, 2022
I’d love lots of confusing symbols we could ID each other by, especially if they marked whatever weird esoteric sub-sect we were working on. We have to do things by the higher law now, esoteric sub-sects are OK now.
Trump can’t be allowed “back” near the levers of power because he was never close in the first place. Those who are deserve our savage hate.
G.
November 8, 2022
We use the monocle. In print, thusly: []