Salt City Sinner

Illustration by Miguel Ángel posted on 12/16/2018 by the Salt City Sinner The Religious Education Series is has proved to be an interesting and welcome addition to life in Salt Lake City. Since 2017, Executive Director Megan Kennedy has presented a series of free public lectures on topics including religion, anthropology, and archaeology. On Saturday, RES (in conjunction with the Godless Rebelution Podcast , which sounds like a lot of fun based on the name) presented the seventh lecture in the series, “Delusions of the Gods: The Colonial Racism of Ancie1nt Aliens, Mormon Anthropology, & Other Pseudohistory.” Recordings of all of the RES lectures can be found here for free, which is mighty generous of them. Now, I was not in need of a debunking on this subject. I absolutely did not subscribe to the “ancient aliens” theory going in, and have long considered it to be both nonsense and not a particularly rich vein of nonsense at that (although I have a lingerin...

posted on 12/14/2018 by the Salt City Sinner I first wrote about Jerome “Dr. Dimples” Corsi almost a decade ago, in 2009. When he popped up in connection to the Mueller investigation it was, like so much of conservative politics these days, a little like watching a band I’d seen when they were small-time favorites finally make it big. There’s a feeling of pride, but also covetousness: “Hey, this weird conspiracy-minded corner of the right wing used to be my thing – now Rachel Maddow is smirking and chuckling about it on the MSNBCs!” Yes, it seems that Dr. Jerome may have finally flown too close to the sun. It’s one thing to lie to the readers of WND or the radio-signal-receiving dental fillings in the mouths of InfoWars fans, but lying to the FBI, it turns out, may – sometimes, maybe – actually have consequences in the real world! Dr. Dimples is primarily known for being the father of the Birther conspiracy theory, but he’s a lot crazier than just that distinction wo...

posted on 12/6/2018 by the Salt City Sinner A consistent theme present in many events from about 2008 until now can be summed up as “things as they have always been, but stripped of pretense and nicety.” Whether you’re talking about the racial politics of the GOP or Jerome Corsi admitting (on camera!) that a lie isn’t really a lie when an evangelical tells it to a heretic*, these are things that we’ve all known were true all along yet more-or-less mutually agreed to bury beneath a blanket of bullshit, nonsense, and euphemism. Ever so has it been, yea verily, in Zion. Anyone who hails from the land of Life Elevated knows that the LDS Church wields more cultural, political, and economic power than any other entity ever has (or probably will). Given our state’s history, the Church’s grip on Utah is understandable (if unconstitutional and colonialist) and has been the subject of much ink and many pixels from irritated, impotent nonbelievers such as myself. Having lived in...