The ------- Report and Church Finances

[jdt]

I was perusing Netflix 2 nights ago, and came across a show with Adam Driver (actor who has done a fantastic job portraying Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars movies). It was called the The Report or in some cases The ------ Report (with the dashes showing a redaction). I had no clue what it was about and the short write up said something about US governmental investigation into interrogations that happened after 9/11.
It was incredibly disturbing. I could only watch about 45 minutes. While fictional, it recounts essentially the real details of what happened after 9/11 with captured muslims. The CIA basically decided that it could do whatever it wanted in the name of national security. And it undertook to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka torture) to a slew of muslims, many of whom were not even worthy of capture by their own status. It discovered nothing. Absolutely nothing. The depictions of people who were left in a hanging fashion (by their arms so they are in a sort crucified position) while being sleep deprived (loud Marylin Manson music playing), stripped naked, and then waterboarded repeatedly was disgusting. To then hear that there was no evidence that some of the people had any intel or were grunt level in al'queda was also bothersome.
But perhaps the thing that made me the most angry, was the rationalization. During a conversation when they planning the program, one person says to another (paraphrased) "Per the Geneva convensions, an interrogator cannot intend to cause severe injury to the detainee." The other person responds, "We don't intend to injure them, our intention is to get the truth." The first guy then follows up "Furthermore they did not define severe. So we went to <some health insurance company> and they defined severe injury as basically organ failure or death, so things like cutting off fingers or crushing someones testicles would not meet the severe threshold."
That conversation really ticked me off. I should think that the actual torture should be more bothersome, but for some reason the rationalizing conversation that leads up to it troubles me more.

What I have not seen mentioned about the whole $100 billion situation, is the conversations around it. To be clear, there is a big, big difference between torture and amassing wealth, but my observation is that the rationalizing process that goes on is essentially the same. President Hinckley in particular seemed to go to great lengths to wordsmith the situation akin to the CIA. Here are a couple of examples:
1. Intimating that the stipend that church leaders receive is very modest.
2. Indicating that no tithing money was used for city creek (trace the money back to its origins and it was tithing)
3. A broad definition of "religious purposes" to pretty much permit anything
4. Hinckley's response to public budgets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGktXV346G8
Note again that all of the statements are true within a very narrow definition. But they are all intentionally trying to deceive an unwitting audience, when their is a much simpler and easily understood articulation of each point. Why veil the truth with wordsmithing?

Furthermore, the whole organization seems similar to what the CIA setup:
1. The only people even aware of the programs existence are within it.
2. We must rely essentially on whistleblowers to know the truth or sometimes even the existence.
3. Plausible deniability throughout the whole organization (in the CIA the grunts said they were following orders from the managers, the managers have orders from the director, the director briefed the President and the President can claim he did not have all the details, in the Church you follow the same strict hierarchy, and the President can claim it was a revelation or that he did not have all the details)
4. There is a natural blame that can be put on whistleblowers, in the CIA it was that you did not care about national security, in the Church you are an apostate just trying to tear things down.
5. Nice press person to make a generic "We followed the law" statement while avoiding any specific claims.

I get that people think the account is fine and their proposed usage is fine, but are people okay with duplicitous, intentionally misleading statements and clandestine organizations?

[Chip]

Jean-Claude Juncker: 'When it becomes serious, you have to lie.'

[Silas]

I was perusing Netflix 2 nights ago, and came across a show with Adam Driver (actor who has done a fantastic job portraying Kylo Ren in the new Star Wars movies). It was called the The Report or in some cases The ------ Report (with the dashes showing a redaction). I had no clue what it was about and the short write up said something about US governmental investigation into interrogations that happened after 9/11.
It was incredibly disturbing. I could only watch about 45 minutes. While fictional, it recounts essentially the real details of what happened after 9/11 with captured muslims. The CIA basically decided that it could do whatever it wanted in the name of national security. And it undertook to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka torture) to a slew of muslims, many of whom were not even worthy of capture by their own status. It discovered nothing. Absolutely nothing. The depictions of people who were left in a hanging fashion (by their arms so they are in a sort crucified position) while being sleep deprived (loud Marylin Manson music playing), stripped naked, and then waterboarded repeatedly was disgusting. To then hear that there was no evidence that some of the people had any intel or were grunt level in al'queda was also bothersome.
But perhaps the thing that made me the most angry, was the rationalization. During a conversation when they planning the program, one person says to another (paraphrased) "Per the Geneva convensions, an interrogator cannot intend to cause severe injury to the detainee." The other person responds, "We don't intend to injure them, our intention is to get the truth." The first guy then follows up "Furthermore they did not define severe. So we went to <some health insurance company> and they defined severe injury as basically organ failure or death, so things like cutting off fingers or crushing someones testicles would not meet the severe threshold."
That conversation really ticked me off. I should think that the actual torture should be more bothersome, but for some reason the rationalizing conversation that leads up to it troubles me more.

What I have not seen mentioned about the whole $100 billion situation, is the conversations around it. To be clear, there is a big, big difference between torture and amassing wealth, but my observation is that the rationalizing process that goes on is essentially the same. President Hinckley in particular seemed to go to great lengths to wordsmith the situation akin to the CIA. Here are a couple of examples:
1. Intimating that the stipend that church leaders receive is very modest.
2. Indicating that no tithing money was used for city creek (trace the money back to its origins and it was tithing)
3. A broad definition of "religious purposes" to pretty much permit anything
4. Hinckley's response to public budgets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGktXV346G8
Note again that all of the statements are true within a very narrow definition. But they are all intentionally trying to deceive an unwitting audience, when their is a much simpler and easily understood articulation of each point. Why veil the truth with wordsmithing?

Furthermore, the whole organization seems similar to what the CIA setup:
1. The only people even aware of the programs existence are within it.
2. We must rely essentially on whistleblowers to know the truth or sometimes even the existence.
3. Plausible deniability throughout the whole organization (in the CIA the grunts said they were following orders from the managers, the managers have orders from the director, the director briefed the President and the President can claim he did not have all the details, in the Church you follow the same strict hierarchy, and the President can claim it was a revelation or that he did not have all the details)
4. There is a natural blame that can be put on whistleblowers, in the CIA it was that you did not care about national security, in the Church you are an apostate just trying to tear things down.
5. Nice press person to make a generic "We followed the law" statement while avoiding any specific claims.

I get that people think the account is fine and their proposed usage is fine, but are people okay with duplicitous, intentionally misleading statements and clandestine organizations?

This is actually the biggest indicator of corruption in the church. The legalistic double speak. Technically true but formulated in such a way that it is known the audience will take a different meaning.

We hear this a lot when some of the apostles talk about the definition of doctrine. It allows them to deny revelations from former prophets, because they don’t fit the specific definition of “official” doctrine. This is technically true but they know that members of the church will equate “official doctrine” with truth. And those two things are not the same.