The Mountain Meadows Massacre: September 11th 1.0

Yesterday we remembered the lives lost and affected by the September 11th attacks: the loss was tragic and I'm sure we'll never forget it.


Or will we?

We certainly haven't remembered the Maine! Pearl Harbor seems to be becoming a bit of an after-thought. And nobody even knows what the Gulf of Tonkin incident is (or if it was even real, huh Lyndie?).

There are pros (mutual friendship and trust) and cons (forgetting how reactionary We are) to forgetting.

Hell, the air attacks on 9-11-01 was not even the first attack on Americans by religious zealots.

On September 11th, 1857 a militia of Mormons massacred a wagon trail of Arkansas emigrants, who were heading to San Francisco. The attacks seem to be a result of Brigham Young's (I don't want to hear that he had no idea it was happening.) growing paranoia over an impending scuffle with the US Army. While this paranoia wasn't unfounded by any means, massacring 140 people who were literally just passing through is ridiculous. It's a big, black mark on the Church of Latter Day Saints' record. It's that, blood atonement, and plural marriage (pretty soon they'll be caught up with the rest of Christianity). The Mormons were never attacked by the Army and the Mormons acquiesced to the government's desire to ban plural marriage, so everything turned out okay in the end. Except for those 140 innocents and the remaining 12 children that lost everybody they knew. I'm over-simplifying it, so I urge you to pick up a book about the massacre or read the wikipedia page about it. But don't rent the recent movie based on these events. Just don't. It's horrible.