There's a movie review in the L.A. Times today (p. E-5) about a documentary recalling totalitarian East Germany and the Stasi, its secret police. One paragraph in particular ought to resonate with each one here:

"But then, one of the film's most troubling insights is that countless good men and women (and even children) were pressed and manipulated into service by the Stasi, who were skilled at using even the smallest nuggets of information as weapons of intimidation and control. The documentary continually lays bare the cruelty of a system that turned family members and friends against one another, effectively destroying the most crucial resource – trust – that a society needs to survive."

None of this is especially surprising, but it is illustrative of how something random and unexpected can relate to the appalling nature of Mormonism.