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Deseret can have a little coastline, as a treat.
There was almost a Mormon Navy?
What are the oceans if not one giant salt lake?
The Scientology Navy: the prequel?
I recently learned that the Mormons settled and resettled in several states before finally staying in Utah. It's quite an interesting story, especially given that most religions are so ancient that it's very hard to track their origins today.
Johnny Harris has great videos about it, this one for instance.
Yeah, they kept getting kicked out. Mostly for being bad neighbors - or at least not being able to read the room.
Seriously, American Puritans. They'd move en masse to an area, try to impose their religion on everyone, piss everyone off, get driven out, then cry about it.
My history teach said the multiple wives thing displeased their non-Mormon neighbors.
That was one thing. They tried to keep that hidden.
In Ohio, the local Mormon-run bank went under - so did a lot of others at the time but they were being just as greedy and stupid as everyone else.
In Missouri, they were actually on the moral high ground but walking in new to town and telling your new neighbors that they're going to hell for slavery isn't a good idea. Also, they tried to buy up all the land and move enough people in to take over the elected positions.
In Illinois, one of the final straws was when Joseph Smith, as mayor of Nauvoo, declared a rival newspaper a public menace and had their press destroyed. Legal at the time but, again, great way to piss off your neighbors.
The history of the church is basically a string of grifts, arrogance, misogyny, and racism. Right up to today but now you can add homophobia and transphobia.
The cherry on top is BYU telling its incoming freshmen that they have to study an infamous speech from "Apostle" Jeffrey R Holland, who used a bunch of dog whistles to call for violence under the guise of "religious freedom."
Sounds an awful lot like Desert
The name Deseret derives from the word for "honeybee" in the Book of Mormon.
A remarkable coincidence that it's also in the middle of the desert
Living in Baja, I'm at least thankful for not having mormon craziness right next door.
Imagine northern Baja during Prohibition in the United States, jam-packed with bars catering to gringos looking to get plastered. That's how Tijuana grew from a sleepy town to city virtually overnight back then. Many people still see Tijuana as a drinking-spree place, in reputation. Now imagine it was still that way, at that 1920s level of intensity.
Imagine polygamy as part of daily religion and politics in the area. With so much territory equaling political agency, Deseret might have openly maintained their backwater, backwards attitudes towards women to this day. It would have seeped into Mexico. It would be part of the conversation.
As it stands, we are buffered from those crazy mormon bastards by a series of layers with other types of crazy, and currently Baja could not have had better luck than with a neighbor like blue, progressive California.
Thank god we don't have Texas or Arizona next door. Sorry about that, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Tamaulipas. We got lucky there in Baja.
Would have controlled Lake Tahoe and most headwaters of the Sierras. Sneaky
How were the borders of the area they wanted decided on?
I'm pretty sure it's just the entire American great basin
Hunh, you're right. Plus (of course!) a whole bunch of sea access.
I am not sure that northwest corner of Utah was worth giving up all that other territory. /s
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2024
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