Jim, I’m happy that you found oscilloscope. You said that you found it yesterday? Damn, maybe I am tuned into you more then I thought. Yesterday I was sitting at my table, eating my lunch, minding my own business and then suddenly I get this thought, “I should get me an oscilloscope!!” It felt good for a minute then I thought, “I haven’t used an oscilloscope in 10 years, what the hell would I do with one now?” I thought of checking a couple of different types of signals and realized that I don’t do anything that really requires one. . . . but I was still tempted. Weird!!!

Just for record, I take some pride in my confusion. When I was deep in the cult, my confidence was unshakeable. In many ways, my confusion is admission to the truth of my knowledge. I have come to the conclusion that confidence, while sexy, is usually an illusion.

I’ve been on the outside for about 14 years now, Jim. The ONLY REASON and I have brother William that back me up on this, that I defend and support this culture is the happy faces. William, a brother about 7 years older, left and joined the army when he was 19. After about 5 he came back, left, and came back. He told me one day that the only thing that kept him coming back was the smiling faces. He said that “without the smiling faces I would have gotten on my Harley and never looked back.”

I know that in among the FLDS that there is fear, tiredness, and sadness in their faces since Warren took over. That wasn’t there before. Perhaps some fear and distrust of strangers, but there was always greeting, hugs, and laughter when people met, B.W. (Before Warren.)

Priesthood leaders are NOT known to rape the girls. I’m not sure if even Warren ever did that. That is simple speculation and rather mean at that. I personally am not fond of the priesthood leaders (well, maybe a few), but I’ve NEVER heard of a case of rape from any of them, not even rumor. Even Warren’s case was “accomplice” because he married the girl to the rapist. That case still stinks of injustice, why wasn’t the rapist charged? Texas was simply reckless. I’m not saying they won’t find cases of abuse, but all of those children were not abused. And aside from their sick stupidity with underage marriages, I’m not sure they will find a case.

In some states, marriage with parental consent can happen at 13. Just because these people are a little behind the times doesn’t make them criminals. I mean, look at Elvis Presley, his girl friend was 13 and we still call him the King.

Yes, I agree that government failed to enforce just and necessary laws that “SOME OF US” chose to ignore. Do you think that every prev in the nation wouldn’t be excited if the government announced that they wouldn’t enforce laws against sex crimes? I mean, get real.

I left at a young age, but I remember some of the characters that would come to town. While I was offended that they treated badly, sometimes even beaten and dropped off somewhere out of town, I remember thinking, “why does this town attract such weirdoes, we aren’t that way.” But as I got older, I realized, they all think that we are sexual prevs and that they can get a peace of the action. And suddenly, I didn’t feel so bad about our reputation for running people out of town. Some of it was totally unjust, but some of it was our only way of protecting our people. We did some so strange ones. Guys that would wear “Jesus Robes” and flash people as they passed.

Canebeds became a hot spot for weirdoes too, (a small community just outside of Colorado City.) They weren’t welcome in town, so they settled outside of town. Even the few that thought if they were good they would get a wife got discouraged after a few years. But a few have stayed on, even after 10 years without getting married, because they believe the religion . . . with some skepticism. But the point is, I agree, the government didn’t protect us. We had to protect ourselves, without the use of a judge and jails. And that neglect gave birth to the abuse of power that Warren Jeffs enjoys today.

What you call “ignoring” as if it was doing us a favor is simply denial of the responsibilities that the government had to us. True, I didn’t look at it that at the time, but I see it now.

It reminds me of a situation. There was a young man named Chuck that I worked with. He was such a trouble maker, genus in some ways, idiot in others. He probably had a bad case of ADHD, or Aspergers Syndrome. But his father didn’t know what to do with him, and he had a large family. The kid was always bring drugs home, porn, and other stuff the dad didn’t want around the other kids. When Chuck was about 16 he was kicked out of the house. Not left without a home exactly, he just wasn’t welcome at the main home. His dad channeled money to him through his mother and more or less told him to stay away.

Perhaps is was the only thing the dad could have done. I mean, I worked with this kid and you couldn’t reason with him. I’m ashamed to admit that I actually “lost it one day” and hit him and I’d never done anything like that before or after. But in many ways, that is what the government did to us. Perhaps we weren’t the child they hoped for, but they still had a responsibility to us. Just funneling money to us to keep us quiet didn’t met their responsibility.

And I don’t care so much they abandoned us. . . .I can understand why. But to come back and make it sound like we should bare full responsibility of what happened, I going to cry foul. They DID ABANDON us. Our religion was about family and marriage. We WERE NOT separatists!!! Over the past 150 years we have been mobs and armies sent against us, raided, rejected, mocked, jailed, and hunted for our RELIGION, not for crimes.

So don’t give me that “Nobody is out to crush our stupid religion.” If you truly believe that, I can understand your confusion about why we get so defensive. In spite of what you might think, we’re not a bunch of whiners. We have cut a living out of some rough places. We worked hard to build our communities. We have suffered in many ways, both physically and emotionally because of the separation and isolation from the rest of America. But we did it because of our faith and their need to reject us because of it. And you don’t hear them complaining about what they have endured because of the isolation, but rather them just saying, “trust us with respect or leave us alone.” Funneling money to shut us up was just shame money and most of wanted nothing to do with it. Some, those that were poor or bitter took the money, but most did not, until Warren came along and saw an opportunity to “bleed the beast.”

As for you comment about Bush and Warren. . . . I agree. But you can’t shoot Bush anymore then Warren’s members can shoot him. And we can’t get rid of Bush anymore then Warren’s followers can get rid of him. Thank God for limited terms. Unfortunately, once a prophet; always a prophet. But the “real” system does actually have some checks and balances. Like with the CP group, they have a counsel instead one man. They agree on things that are doctrine and cultural, but they often disagree on things that have to do with community change and growth. They are sort of like a supreme court that teaches over the pulpit. And also, most meetings are filled with speakers called upon randomly from the crowd. Usually, a different counsel member will take charge of the meeting, so he will call upon people that will he feels will teach the truth, etc. It isn’t just one voice that is heard.

There are other meetings throughout the week where non-members are asked to teach on subjects that we may not know about. One day we had a pagan in teaching us about symbols of magic and stuff. Most of the crowd ignored him, but they were taught.

The “weakness” of these cults is that often times, it is one man that tries to be the leader, thinking that he was called of God, etc. One of the things that I actually like about the CP group is that many of the members have “doubts” about the callings of some of the counsel members. I think that is healthy to have a set of leaders that have a board enough spread in beliefs that everyone cannot agree with all of them.

Again, I’m not ashamed of my confusion. I’m just glad I’m not so stupid as to be confident with my limited knowledge.