"We Walk with Giants"?: An appreciative reply to our fellow colleage Cabbie
(posted by Steve Benson, RfM, 8 June 2014)
It was recently brought to my attention that SLCabbie had put up an eye-catching post about "giants" strolling among us. In a previous thread, he wrote:
"It's My Fault... And Steve Benson's and Tom Clark's . . . and a whole lot of others who were here around a dozen years ago.
"We are all proud 'sponsors' of RFM's 'LGBT friendly certification.'”
"I'm terrified I'll leave someone out (having just stumbled in from a shift), but three remarkable individuals who left us include [RfMmers] Kathy Worthington, her partner Sara Hamblin, and FlattopSF.
"I also remember [former RfM posters] Shakula (a nevermo), Aussie John, and Sideon.
"Maybe [Rfm poster] WCG can chime in with some of the others who also took courageous positions.
"The board was not nearly as gay-friendly as it is now (are you suggesting it shouldn't be? There's a lot more here to put TBM noses out of joint than someone's sexual orientation), and there was one particular homophobic sort who posted as 'Col. Thomas Kane.' He was especially offensive, and a number of the gay posters took delight in baiting him every time he tossed in a gay slur.
"He made the mistake of crossing me (I'd allied myself with the 'gay side,' suggesting to anyone that if they had any issues in that area, they should drive taxi for a while; they might acquire some prejudices, but not in that area. After waitresses/food servers, gays are my favorite fares, and I wasn't gentle when he came up short on my fact checking on his racist claims involving our third U.S. President, Thomas Jefferson and his black mistress, Sally Heming.
"There were, indeed, a number of obvious TBM trolls who'd been egging Kane on, and I think ADMIN managed to identify almost all of them. They'd tried to discredit author Fawn Brodie on that subject because they'd come up empty trying to find fault with her biography of Joseph Smith.
"Steve backed up my research, and [fellow RFM contributor] Tom put in a post of support that still chokes me up when I think about it.
"I consider that action, and the post I made about the lady fare who disclosed to me she'd undergone electroshock 'gender reorientation therapy' under the aegis of BYU, as the two pieces of work I've done with the Internet that are my most satisfying and proud efforts.
"But the present situation has been an incredible group effort, and I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that reality.
"We walk with giants..."
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1276113,1276161#msg-1276161_____
I totally get, and appreciate, what Cabbie is trying to say.
But "giants"?
If I may take a respectful, but differing, perspective.
I can't speak for others listed who may deservedly rank in Cabbie's category of those worthy of signature special status but I can, and will, speak for myself (as one critic told me once, "Steve, you're humble and proud of it").
I'm just a 5' 9" straight guy who was born, quite by accident, into the Mormon Cult and who, equally by accident, found himself sliding down a genetically-randomized birth canal, landing in a family whose name happens to rhyme with Muppet maker Jim Henson's. As for where I ended up plopping down, it was nothing "Mormon royal"; it was simply happenstance soil.
For what it's worth, I'm of the view that we--meaning all of us--come to the plate with our personal recipe of traits, temperments, talents, troubles and temporal tread wear. Having entered this biosphere through no fault, fate or feat of our own, we find ourselves reacting the way we do to this we're-here-in-this-sphere reality, based on our special blend of personal choice, basic instinct, societal expectation, cultural practice, family influence, religious teaching, educational background, geographical location, internal neurological-chemical composition, and external input from fellow homo sapiens with all their manufactured institutions designed to influence and control our thoughts and behavior.
This reaction originates from some sort of unique and complex genetic/environmental mix that serves to help make us who we are. Trailing clouds of non-heavenly but individually-wired unholy human glory, we are randomly air-dropped into our little corners of the world, from where we make our own marches, crawls, hops, skips and/or jumps through the wilderness of this insignificant blue rock we call Earth, doing the best we can--then die and turn into carbon.
Each of us responds differently to both our own surround-sound circumstances and to the drive of our own internal combustion engines, depending on our genes and on our experiences. Hopefully, amid the cacophony of hurry, scurry and fury that typifies this tiny planetary neighborhood, we make our own sound heard in ways that make personal sense to us and, in some cases, to others. Hence, in response to our deep human need for meaning and security, we end up forming communities--say, like RfM.
In my case, the personal vantage point that I was given for up-close viewing and behind-the-scenes assessing of the operations of the Mormon Cult (as provided me by the accident of birth) gave me a perspective that clearly indicated to me that LDS Inc. is poisoned by the theocratic toxins of:
--historical revisionism,
--institutional dishonesty,
--financial sleight-of-hand,
--member mind manipulation,
--community/group guilt-tripping,
--relentless pressure to conform,
--patronizing sexism,
--blind obedience,
--anti-individualism,
--scriptural racism,
--inbred homophobia,
--anti-intellectualism,
--compulsive authoritarianism,
--chronic abuse of power, and
--personality worship.
But hey, no cult is perfect.
I just thought it was wrong, evil and corrupt, It wouldn't answer my questions, it lied to me when it did, it tried to control me by making up what it thought were scary stories that would succeed in making me quake and conform, and it demanded money for those "services." Geezus, How dumb did they think I was? To hell with it, I thought, I don't need this scam trying to ruin my life and pad its bank account, so I up and left.
In my personal opinion, if there are any "giants among us," they arise in the form of godless Goliath goons--otherwise known as the Mormon Cult and other similar brain-crushing and heart-harming monsters--who stomp around the planet, using it as their own specially-entitled urinal and, in that pee-full pillaging process, ruining the experience for a lot of innocent humans who deserve better.
We are not mythical “giants” but, rather, the real “little people” of the world who make the world what it is. I don't mean that latter term in any sort of derogatory way but, at least as I see the reality on the ground, it pays to remember that in the grand scheme of things, our journey through infinite space on a small rock located in an outer ring of an insignificant galaxy is short-lived, although not meaningless.
Ernest Hemingway, in his book, “Farewell to Arms,” made the following sobering, yet, enlightening observation:
“Once in camp I put a log on a fire and it was full of ants. As it commenced to burn, the ants swarmed out and went first toward the center where the fire was; then turned back and ran toward the end. When there were enough on the end they fell off into the fire. Some got out, their bodies burnt and flattened, and went off not knowing where they were going. But most of them went toward the fire and then back toward the end and swarmed on the cool end and finally fell off into the fire. I remember thinking at the time that it was the end of the world and a splendid chance to be a messiah and lift the log off the fire and throw it out where the ants could get off onto the ground. But I did not do anything but throw a tin cup of water on the log, so that I would have the cup empty to put whiskey in before I added water to it. I think the cup of water on the burning log only steamed the ants.”
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We may be ants, but this is still our hill. Even the Mormon Cult's Goliath is capable. of feeling our collective sting.