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Back when I was dealing with online anti-Mormons in the 2000s, I formulated a hypothesis for what I call the "Holy Crusader" mindset. This is a situation where a person becomes so mentally and emotionally invested in whatever they adhere to that they consciously or unconsciously see it as a deity figure, and by extension view themselves as holy warriors in behalf of the cause. Since they see their cause as "good" and themselves as the arbiters of "good", they therefore regard anything that is the opposite of their cause as being inherently "evil". Thus, in their eyes, everything they do is justified as part of the larger battle of good versus evil. This is how we have, say, people claiming to be "anti-fascists" when they themselves are behaving in a fascistic fashion.

One thing I really don’t understand about the rioters is their lack of self awareness. They are the type that want to beat you up when you imply that they aren’t peaceful.

Our first daughter is 5 months old now, and the time has gone by so quickly, it won't be long until she is walking and talking it feels like. Which has had me considering, how do I create a family environment, which fosters a desire to remain a member a Church? I've had a few faith wobbles, so for a time I was considering if I should teach the kids apologetics from a young age, but I think that would just cause resentment, and not a deep enough understanding of spiritual things to know the gospel is true, and just overall felt uninspired. So my wife and I have been discussing and we want to try and create our own "family culture" and 2 things my wife and I have done to work on that so far are: 1) Having a special "Family" set of scriptures. We've purchased a genuine leather quad combination, and in the front of it my wife and I have glued in a copy of a testimony we both wrote onto archival quality paper, as well as table for important family names and dates (such as date of birth, the dates of various ordinances etc.). The set of scriptures is to be a family record keeping tool, but also to be something symbolic of family unity in a way, as it'll be used for readings during special family events, like a baptism for example. Almost to send a message like "Oh, Dads got the family scriptures out, we'd better behave for this!!" The second thing we've done is write a "Family constitution", which is essentially just a set of rules and expectations which we all will try to follow. I've attached it in case you want to comment on it. But most importantly, looking toward the future I'd just like to ask, what have you done that's worked? and what have you done that probably didn't work as well as you'd hoped? If anybody is willing to share, I'd be grateful to hear and learn from your experiences, Thanks. The Family Constitution.docx

My thoughts, for what little they are worth, as one whose children have all left the church, and who has been deconstructing/reconstructing faith for some years now. 1) "Certainty" has been a problem in my experience. The earliest stages of my "faith crisis" started decades ago as a bio-ag student at BYU within a decade of Elder McConkie's "Deadly Heresies" talk. My teenage years was heavily influenced by family and friends who agreed with Elder McConkie that evolution was a deadly heresy and that creationism (whether old or young) was certainly true. Naturally, my required evolution class shattered that sense of certainty, casting doubt on all those (including apostles like Elder McConkie) who claimed certainty in some of these truth claims. I've heard multiple people who deconstruct their faith who will say something like, "If I was wrong about X, that I thought I was so certain about, what else am I certain about that could be wrong?" I don't know how to do it, but I think there is value in figuring out how to balance certainty with epistemic humility. As part of this, I think there is value in not only talking about what we believe to be true, but also how we came to believe it. I have observed before that every "faith crisis" issue I have wrestled with really came down to "how and why do I/we believe that this is true." 2) I have a mixed relationship with Elder Corbridge's "Stand Forever" talk, but I generally accept that there is value in trying to identify core beliefs and values as distinguished from esoteric or inconsequentials. Patrick Mason once said that we LDS have sometimes packed too much into our "truth cart" (like Elder McConkie's insistence that anti-evolution was a core belief), and that has led to some people having a fragile faith. I think a resilient faith is able to identify core principles that have limited wiggle room for compromise, and less important principles where there is room for leniency. I think it will include the ability to shift beliefs between those categories without completely upsetting the truth cart. Along those lines, I would suggest finding ways to model how you want to relate to people who put different things in their truth cart. It will help your kids to see how you relate to people with different beliefs. It can also allow them to see that, if they should ever find themselves believing something different than what Dad believes, they can still have a relationship with Dad. 3) "All or nothing" is another thing that has been a challenge for the resiliency of my faith. Richard Ostler said something interesting in a recent podcast episode I listened to. Some say that "cafeteria Mormonism" is a slippery slope out of the church, but maybe "cafeteria Mormonism" is also a slippery slope to staying in the church. I would suggest that learning how to find reason to stay engaged with the church even when you have doubts or even disbelieve some of what the church teaches is a valuable skill to learn. I find that too many people who leave the church leave because they discovered a few things they could no longer believe and decided that, if the church is wrong about X, then the entire enterprise must be wrong. To be fair, we have promoted some of this ourselves (reference, for example, Pres. Hinckley saying that Mormonism is either true or a fraud). I often wonder if more people would be able to stay in the church if they knew how to let some things go without rejecting the entirety of the church. 4) Sometimes it seems to me that we LDS get a little hung up on the church being "true" and fail to learn how to find the church to be good. Jared Halverson said something interesting in a recent podcast with Teryl Givens about how some people leave the church because they can no longer find anything "good" in the church. I think another valuable skill for retaining a desire to be engaged with the church is to learn how to see the good in the church in spite of any flaws or errors.

I have a friend who was born in Iran. He now lives in Canada, but has family in both Iran and Israel. His comment to me was that he hopes the Israelis will do for the Iranian people what Cyrus did for the Jews 2500 years ago ("return the favor" was the phrase he used). I have no idea what religion he was raised in, only that he's atheist because of all that he saw growing up in Iran. I don't press because it's pretty clear his childhood was traumatic. His analogy seems right to me.

Oof. Add T talking about "unconditional surrender". What's happening right now in Iran isn't just an Israeli/American thing. Germany's chancellor defended Israel's attacks on Iran, expressing respect for the 'dirty work Israel is doing for all of us'. The G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and US seem pretty united about it. Antisemitism and anti-Israel notions are more out there than they've been in decades. It's nice to see so many adults in the room understanding that blowing up parts of Iran is best characterized as Israel defending itself.

There is a polish lady who lives on the ground floor of our building who literally sits outside smoking all day. When we first moved to our block of flats, we chatted with her quite a bit, then she tried selling us a home made dumpling subscription service, for £20 a week, she'll drop us off some dumplings and trying to get us to order from her new fish and chip shop (which failed.) After these 2 encounters I became alot more skeptical of her friendliness and reduced the level of chat I engaged in accordingly. Then, once our baby was born, getting in and out of the flat was alot more effort than it was before, and we accidentally left the glass doors into the building open a few times, and she had a snap at us calling us inconsiderate because we were letting the cold in and yada yada. So I reduced the already limited chat to one word "Hello's" as we walked past, we also started occasionally using the other set of doors to come in if she was smoking, because we have a baby now and I didn't want her breathing in smoke. Today, we walked past her and I didn't say Hello to her. We were trying to get the car seat, baby, pram and a few bags of shopping in, so I wasn't really paying attention, and she was out hanging her washing on an airer so I didn't think too much of it. She snapped at us saying we didn't have any manners, were avoiding her, acting like she has the plague and topped it off with a "I think you're racist" Needless to say this experience has left me with some mixed feelings.

Yeppers. https://primerogueinc.com/blog/the-pentagon-pizza-index-behavioral-osint-national-security-and-the-geopolitics-of-takeout It certainly spiked earlier as Israel attacked. I'm hearing people talking that's its currently spiking now, but haven't seen anything definite. Trump leaving G7 early, showing up on camera bemoaning Iran's lost opportunity to sign the deal, and flat out telling Iran to evacuate Tehran, coupled with the months-long multibillion dollar repositioning of military assets into position, might also be an indication of things. Or it could just be how T engages in dealmaking on the global scene. A lot depends on Iran I suppose. Related: UAE129 yelled "Leeeeroy Jenkins!".