Did the family stuff all day. Had an incredible time. Come late evening decided to check the news and immediately alighted on this:
28 September 2025
A woman has been raped by a group of men in a churchyard in Banbury.
The woman, in her 30s, was attacked in the grounds of St Mary’s Church and the surrounding area of the town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, Thames Valley Police said.https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly622k0jm4o.amp
The police are searching for a good samaritan female witness who tried to help the victim. Of course, things being as they are, the good samaritan would have to be mental to make herself known. She’ll end up getting locked up for longer than the rapists by identifying them.
In any case, news suck. Family life rocks.
Clarissa's Blog 
lol UK.
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Let’s take bets on how soon the NHS promotes FGM as the healthiest practice leading to great mental health outcomes.
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In the wake of the mormon church shooting.
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This shooter was a Trump supporter, though.
The stupid fuck made certain we move into the years-long debate on right-wing violence, forgetting that what an outlier amidst leftist violence.
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The rhetoric against mormons on twitter right now is disturbing. I expected this from leftists and bitter ex-mormons, but even right wing christians are piling on.
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This is a primitive psychological defense. “This won’t happen to me because I’m good.” People’s psychological rubbish spilling out into the public sphere because self-control is not fashionable.
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“even right wing christians are piling on”
Even? While Mormons self-identify as Christians lots of other Christians disagree. It’s been that way as long as Mormons have existed.
However, a person who uses a mass shooting to catalogue the reasons they don’t consider them Christians is a massive failure as a human being.
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The same people wouldn’t pile on about all their issues with the religion if it was a Ba’hai temple. Guaranteed.
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I know mormon history. My point was that it’s hard for me to imagine that a right wing christian in 2025 thinks mormonism is that high on the list of things that are wrong with the country.
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There are a hundred other things to get radicalized over: immigration, race, crime, etc. This guy chose mormons.
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What I find more interesting about it is, the only reason I’m seeing any of these “rightwing” anti-mormon comments is via right-wing people who are criticizing those comments.
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I think this had to do with some sort of a conflictive family history. I think it’s a conflict with his mom or something.
It truly is impossible to get annoyed with specifically the Mormons who tend to be extremely nice and quiet.
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Religion-wise, I wouldn’t want to live next to Muslims or Hasidic Jews. But Mormons are excellent neighbors.
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Mormons and JWs– both kind of bonkers cults IMO, but every one of them I’ve ever had as a coworker has been totally fantastic, shows up on time, cheerful, honest, does their actual job. And if I were running a business I’d hire them preferentially.
I think most of mainstream evangelical/conservative America has realized these people are natural cultural and political allies, and don’t pick fights. Some people still have a weird chip on their shoulder, much like old-school Baptists and their bizarre attitudes about Catholics… and the algos amplify this because it gets a lot of reaction. Normal people don’t do this IRL.
-ethyl
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Don’t know much about JW but mormons aren’t bonkers by any stretch of imagination. Excellent work ethic, high moral standards (FBI recruits them heavily), industrious nature, education-focused, community-minded, family-oriented, health-conscious, and so on. The rest of America would be a in very good place if it looked like Utah. There aren’t too many states I’d say that about.
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The difference is, of course, that right wing people are capable of criticizing each other because they’re not a monolith. Left wing people are the Borg: if they engage in any such dissent, they suddenly find themselves… in the right wing.
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“kind of bonkers cults IMO, but…”
Pretty much my take. The less I say about their beliefs the better (nb. I have no slightest intention of trying to dissuade them from their faith). But culturally, they have a _lot_ going for them.
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An atheist friend is married to a devout Mormon who is a church elder. This was a love that overcame an enormous chasm of religious difference. They have wonderful children and are very happy together. It’s funny because she’s Ukrainian and extremely outspoken but they are managing it just fine.
In other religious news, I finally got an icon of Christ Pantocrator that I always wanted and I’m so happy. I’ll need to expand what we call the “red corner”. The name is based on the shared root of the word krasny which means red and also beautiful. This was used by the Communists to substitute icons with red flags and pictures of the Communist Holy Trinity: Marx, Engels and Lenin.
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Had an old friend, very Catholic, who married a mormon guy. Worked out great, largely because they had far more in common culturally with each other than with anybody out in the mainstream culture.
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Been thinking about this. Waco happened when I was a teen. It was a really big deal. Not much internet at the time. You see a similar thing there, on “the right”: that people have no problem holding two ideas in their heads at once: that the people involved were an unsavory cult, led by a truly bad man, AND that the actions of the government against them were wrong, disproportionate, stupid, and a threat to all religious people. Like, acknowledging that you don’t like the religion, but that this doesn’t affect your feelings about the participants as people: not a problem. I think most conservative religious people still feel that way.
What’s changed is that the left seems to have lost the capacity to see people they disagree with and disapprove of as… still being people.
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Yes, this is precisely what it is. Like when somebody asked me why I eulogized Charlie Kirk after he said things I disagree with about Ukraine. That I can disagree with somebody completely yet still see their achievements as admirable and mourn their death is not something that can be understood in this framework.
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