Tuesday, August 26, 2025

Rock Star Takes Down Trump’s Communications Director

 

Apparently, Steven Cheung, White House Communications Director, took issue with Jack White’s criticism of all the gaudy gold in the Oval Office. White is a rock star, guitarist, composer, actor, producer, and record label owner. Cheung: “Jack White is a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career. It’s apparent he’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’” Pretty typical response by Trump or his minions to any criticism of the Orange Authoritarian. But Cheung should be careful about his targets. This time, he got more than he bargained for. Here is White’s fairly lengthy response:

“Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of govt, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake ‘gunshot to the ear’ that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc.

… “No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the [expletive deleted] DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults. How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this admin get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’? Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving! Well here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being. He’s masquerading as a christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy. He’s been masquerading as a businessman for decades as nothing he’s involved in has prospered except by using other people’s money to find loophole after loophole and grift after grift.

… “His staff of professional liar toadies like Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt have been covering up and masking his fascism as patriotism and fomenting hatred and division in this country on a daily basis. And I have ‘ample time on (my) hands’? That orange grifter has spent more tax payer money cheating at golf than helping ANYONE in the country. Improve. Anything. There is no progress with him, only smoke and mirrors and tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.

… “So maga folk, enjoy your concrete paving over of the rose garden, your 200 million dollar ballroom in the WH, and your gaudy ass gold spray painted trinkets from Home Depot, cause he ain’t spending any money on helping YOU unless you fit into his white supremacist country club rich idiot agenda. Wow, he hates who you hate . . . good for you, be proud of yourselves, how christian of you all. No intelligent person can defend this low life fascist. This bankruptor of casinos. This failed seller of trump steaks, trump vodka, trump water, etc. This man and his goon squad have failed upwards for decades and have fleeced the American people over and over. This professional golf cheat, this grifter who has hundreds of thousands of deaths from his inaction of the pandemic on his hands, this man that the majority of the country somehow were fooled into supporting and voting into office (through the flawed electoral college) and their love of reality TV stars.

… “Being insulted by the actual WH that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves. And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.”

Well, Cheung got what he deserved: a large helping of the truth.

Wednesday, August 13, 2025

The Last American President, a Book Notice

 

Thirty years ago, Berrett-Koehler Publishers published my book Economic Insanity: How Growth-Driven Capitalism Is Devouring the American Dream. Berrett-Koehler was founded by Steve Piersanti, who started the company when he was fired as president of Jossey-Bass for refusing to lay off employees. I ran into Steve during the one year I worked as a literary agent. It was a reunion of sorts because Steve and I had been youth in the North Ogden 5th Ward. Steve is three years than I am, so we never went to school together, and I didn’t know Steve all that well back then. But Steve is one of the finest people you could ever meet. His publishing company is a leading-edge publisher of books on leadership, ethics, and organizational issues.

I have submitted a new book manuscript to Steve. It’s a follow-up to my now-thirty-year-old Economic Insanity. In the intervening years, the book market has changed dramatically, so Steve can’t afford to publish a book like mine that wouldn’t sell very many copies. I am, after all, a no-name in the market this book seeks to land in. I can live with that. But a couple of weeks ago, Steve sent me an email asking for my help in publicizing a book that Berrett-Koehler is releasing soon. It is by Thom Hartmann, who has a large following and a radio program, and he has written lots of very fine books.

This one, though, is probably the best and is undoubtedly the most timely and important. It is titled The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink. Berrett-Koehler has made some sample pages available. They quite effectively summarize the book. The link to these sample pages is: https://berrettkoehler.sharefile.com/share/view/s038b78b6b8f444ffaba5aa0640460cd7.

I’ll copy the contents page here, so you can see what this book covers.

Contents
Introduction: The End Begins with a Smile   1


Part I The Making of Donald Trump   5
Chapter 1 Queens, Cruelty, and Fred Trump   7
Chapter 2 Roy Cohn’s Apprentice   17
Chapter 3 The Mask of Success   27


Part II The System That Built Trump   39
Chapter 4 The Party That Sold Itself Out   43
Chapter 5 Powered by Plutocrats   55
Chapter 6 The Death of Democracy Is Profitable   69
Chapter 7 From Birtherism to the Big Lie   81


Part III The Global Damage   95
Chapter 8 The Heist of Democracy: How America’s
Voting Rights Were Stolen in 2024   99
Chapter 9 America Ungoverned   105
Chapter 10 Autocrats United   113
Chapter 11 The Climate Collapse Presidency   123


Part IV The Last American President   125
Chapter 12 The Nightmare Scenario   129
Chapter 13 The Empathy Deficit: Democracy’s
Essential Ingredient   141
Chapter 14 Reform, Resist, and Remember   145


Epilogue   163
Notes   165
Acknowledgments   195
Index   197
About the Author   209

 

I’ve read Thom Hartmann before. He does excellent research and writes engagingly for a general readership. I would encourage everyone who sees this post to read the sample pages and, when it’s available, purchase this book.

Monday, August 11, 2025

Personality Types and Trump Support

 

A friend sent me a link to an article on the ZME Science website that I found both fascinating and disturbing. I checked out ZME to see what kind of reviews it gets. Turns out that ZME is based in Romania but publishes news on science in English. A media bias website considers it factual and reliable, albeit pro-science (which is good). This particular article, “This Study Finds a Chilling Link between Personality Type and Trump Support,” by Tudor Tarita, dated July 30, 2025, reports the results of a study led by University of North Texas psychologist Craig Neumann.

The article begins with this teaser: “In the years since Donald Trump emerged as the face of American conservatism, psychologists have grappled with a vexing question: why do so many Americans remain loyal to a morally questionable leader? Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims, he had an affair with an adult star, and consistently misused donations, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg; yet, he maintains a cult-like loyal following.” Since the study, Trump has conducted a wholesale attack on the institutions of democracy, unleashed a cruel deportation crusade, and has offended most of our former allies, and that’s still the tip of the iceberg. And yet his support among the MAGA faithful remains strong, although his overall approval rating is tanking. So, what explains this fervent devotion among the MAGAts? (No, that’s not a misprint. And they really are feasting upon the rotting corpse of the Republican Party.)

Neumann’s study was published in July in the Journal of Research in Personality and suggests that at least “part of the answer may lie deep within the personalities of his supporters. . . . The study analyzed responses from over 9,000 U.S. adults in two large surveys conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed questionnaires that assessed their political beliefs, empathy levels, and personality traits. The results consistently showed a pattern: the more favorably someone rated Trump, the more likely they were to display traits like narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy—traits grouped under what researchers call a malevolent disposition.” But the reverse was also true. “Participants who scored higher on benevolent traits like humanism, faith in humanity, and respect for others tended to oppose Trump and lean politically liberal.”

Interestingly, these results were consistent across gender and racial groups, as well as income, education, age, and minority status. There were some differences, though. “White men who scored higher on psychopathic traits also showed stronger support for Trump and conservative ideology. Among men of minority status, however, psychopathy did not predict political ideology. This variation, researchers propose, could stem from differing lived experiences with social power, privilege, and marginalization.” This makes sense, and I’ll extrapolate on later on what this may mean for Latter-day Saints.

“The study also looked at empathy, and the findings were disturbing once again. Trump supporters reported significantly lower levels of affective empathy (emotional concern for others) and higher levels of dissonant empathy (enjoyment of others’ pain). Interestingly, their ability to understand how others feel (cognitive empathy) remained intact. In other words, they know what others are feeling, they simply appear to care less, on average. They enjoy others’ pain more as well. This adds a chilling nuance to the political landscape. It’s not that supporters of Trump can’t understand suffering—it’s that they may find it unimportant, or even gratifying.”

Tarita points out that psychologists have long noticed a link between conservative ideology and authoritarianism, but this new study extends that link to more extreme traits like “callousness and lack of empathy.” Trump’s specific approach to politics, however, is not traditional conservatism. There is a cruelty in Trump, seen in such acts as mocking disabled reporters and separating children from their parents, that speaks of a wanton disregard for other people, a clear indication of psychopathic tendencies. “The fact that so many people view these actions positively,” says Tarita, “reflects something deeper than policy preference. It says that many people agree with such dark acts.”

But what about traits on the other end of the spectrum, benevolent traits? The study indicated that “these traits were strongly linked with liberal political beliefs and a rejection of Trump. . . . These individuals exhibited a distinct psychological orientation rooted in affiliation, care, and prosocial behavior. In contrast, Trump supporters showed the opposite pattern: higher scores on malevolent traits and lower on benevolent ones, shaping their political identity.”

Predictably, men were more likely to display malevolent traits and to more strongly support Trump. Women, on the other hand, were more benevolent and “showed weaker links between personality and politics.”

The authors of the study “are careful to stress that their findings reflect group averages, not individual labels. . . . Still, the patterns are meaningful.”

This brings me to my main question. What does this study say about LDS support for Trump? It would be interesting to conduct a similar survey among just Latter-day Saints. Support among Mormons for Trump has been weaker than for other Republican candidates, but, still, they voted overwhelmingly for the convicted felon over the career prosecutor in the 2024 election. I know many Latter-day Saints who support Trump, despite everything they know about him. I know ever more who held their noses and voted for Trump because they somehow imagine that things would be even worse under any Democratic president. (I’d love to see a study on how watching Fox News affects LDS political beliefs.) Most of these Trump-voting or Trump-supporting Latter-day Saints are not psychopaths. They are good Mormons, as far as I can tell. Of course, I don’t know what goes on in the hearts of my fellow Church members, but I know enough to believe that they would not reflect the results of this study.

My own suspicion is that many LDS voters have been brainwashed for so many years (thanks, ETB) into thinking that Democrats are evil, perhaps primarily because of one particular issueabortionthat they cannot imagine themselves voting for a Democrat. My own parents, habitual Fox News viewers, probably fell into that camp. My mom died in 2013, though, so she never had a chance to vote for or against Trump (but she was very concerned about all of “Obama’s czars,” apparently something she had heard on Fox). Before my dad’s dementia set in (sometime after he broke his hip in 2020), he was a Republican but not a Trump fan (“I wish he’d just keep his mouth shut”). Still, I wonder how my dad voted in 2016. I never asked.

What I find most striking about this study is that Trump’s most ardent support group is Evangelical Christians. This study indicates that, by and large, most of these supporters have personality traits that are completely at odds with the traits Jesus both demonstrated and encouraged his followers to embrace. This is a damning sign that Christianity is failing its adherents at a very fundamental level. And Trump’s behavior in his second rodeo, after the surveys used in this study were all completed, is far more extreme than during his first term in office. So, his supporters are excusing much more egregious behavior and policies (if we can call them that) this time around. But the results of this study indicate that Trump’s supporters are not just gullible. They haven’t just been duped by Fox News and the endless disinformation streaming out of the Trump propaganda machine. Many of them actually embrace and enjoy the malevolence and cruelty that Trump has brought to the Republican Party.

How, I ask yet again, can any Latter-day Saint or any would-be Christian be a Republican in Trump’s America?

Thursday, August 7, 2025

Book of Mormon Questions #6 (History, Geography, DNA, etc.)

 To see the context for this and other questions in this series, please see the introduction, parts 123, and 4. 

Who Were (Are) the Lamanites?

 

This is a very complicated question. It involves a few different topics: Book of Mormon geography, DNA studies, internal Book of Mormon history and prophecies, and statements by Joseph Smith and others. Too much here for one post, but I’ll at least lay out the parameters for now. Later on, I may explore some of the topics hinted at here.

 

Internal Book of Mormon History

It may appear at first glance that the Lamanites in the Book of Mormon are pretty easy to identify: they are the descendants of Laman and Lemuel and all who followed them instead of Nephi. This group was cursed with a dark skin to differentiate them from the white-skinned Nephites. (Yes, I know that some modern readers have tried to explain this curse away, but their efforts are unconvincing at best.) Things start to get messy, though, with the missionary efforts of the sons of Mosiah, who convert King Lamoni and many of his people (and presumably others), who then join the Nephites in the greater land of Zarahemla.

Things get even more messy in 3 Nephi 2, where the Nephites and “all the Lamanites who had become converted unto the Lord” (v. 12) combine to defend themselves against the Gadianton robbers, at which point the curse is taken away from the Lamanites so that “their skin became white like unto the Nephites; and their young men and their daughters became exceedingly fair, and they were numbered among the Nephites, and were called Nephites” (vv. 1516). Presumably, there were still dark-skinned Lamanites who were not converted, but Mormon’s record is fairly silent about them. We do read in 3 Nephi 1:29 that some of the Lamanites’ children are led away by the lyings of the Zoramites to join the Gadianton robbers. We can only assume that they remain dark-skinned. But the Nephites under Lachoneus defeat the robbers and put to death all who refuse to enter into a covenant to forsake their ways. In 3 Nephi 6:3, some of the robbers who have entered into the covenant desire to remain Lamanites, so they are given lands, and peace begins to prevail.

Before long, however, the people become unequal and the church breaks up, except “among a few of the Lamanites who were converted unto the true faith” (v. 14). It is unclear who these Lamanites are. If they are the Lamanites who had joined the Nephites to defeat the robbers and had become Nephites, why would they now be identified as Lamanites? Or if they are the Lamanites among the Gadianton robbers who entered into the covenant to forsake their ways, do they suddenly become more righteous than the Nephites who defeated them and pressed them into the covenant? A bit problematic either way.

Regardless, in chapter 7 Nephite society falls apart. The people have largely become evil again, and a new group of wicked lawyers, high priests, and judges combine to murder the chief judge (governor), but instead of taking over the government, they are unable to hold things together, and the people divide up into tribes based on family and friend relationships. A large secret combination makes a man named Jacob their king, and they flee to the northernmost part of the land, where they set up a kingdom. No indication if there are any Lamanites among them.

This is the state of affairs when the Savior destroys most of the Book of Mormon peoples. He then appears to those who are left, who are somehow the more righteous part of the people. How the massive destruction spares just the righteous is not explained, but whatever. The resurrected Jesus then teaches these people his gospel, sets up his church, and leaves his twelve disciples to manage affairs after his ascension. We then have about 166 years of peace (from Jesus’s appearance in the thirty-fourth year until the two hundredth year). Sometime toward the end of this peaceful stretch, however, “a small part of the people who had revolted from the church and taken upon them the name of Lamanites” broke away, “and there began to be Lamanites again in the land” (4 Ne. 1:20).

This is a really odd development. After all the intermixing, for nearly 200 years, and after the Lamanites became fair-skinned, all of a sudden we have a groupthat would have had to be a mixture of Nephites and Lamanites and Mulekites and whatever elsebreak away and take the name Lamanites. And it wasn’t just Lamanites. The Lamanites once again included Lemuelites and Ishmaelites as well (4 Ne. 1:38), almost as if the previous centuries of genetic mixing had not happened at all. And the Nephites weren’t just Nephites; they included Jacobites, Josephites, and Zoramites (4 Ne. 1:36). It’s a big stretch to believe that these groups were descended purely from the original Laman, Lemuel, Ishmael, Nephi, Jacob, Joseph, and Zoram (apparently Sam had no posterity). So, which of these could be considered descendants of the original Lamanites? Probably all of them. But these divisions apparently held until Mormon and all his people were destroyed (except for Moroni), and these new Lamanites then inhabited the promised land, wherever that is. But what color was their skin? We read of no new curse.

 

Book of Mormon Geography

So, where did the Book of Mormon account take place? Right. If you think I’m going to wade into that swamp, you’re crazier than I am. So I’ll just stick a toe in without getting too slimy. I’m pretty much a Book of Mormon geography agnostic. I’ve looked at the various options, including my favorite (the Malaysia theorymy favorite only because it’s so preposterous, although the geography does work better than any of the others), and the only conclusion I have reached is that all of them have disqualifying problems.

Internal evidence is pretty clear that the majority of Book of Mormon history took place in a very limited region, and that this region’s dominant feature was that it was a peninsula. I appreciate the efforts of Tyler Griffin and the Book of Mormon Virtual Scriptures Group, who came up with a map based solely on what’s in the book (see https://rsc.byu.edu/fall-2019/visualizing-people-places-plates-book-mormon). Their map shows where various places mentioned in the text are, in relation to each other. Significantly, their map strongly hints of a peninsula, but they conveniently blur the bottom of the map in cloudy mist and cut it off before the peninsula ends. Gotta keep those Mesoamerican theorists happy, I suppose. But it is obvious in the text that the Lamanites are trapped to the south in the land of Nephi. Nobody ever goes south from the land of Nephi. If the Lamanites could have, they would have expanded to the south, but they don’t. They’re always trying to go north. But the Nephites guard that narrow neck of land. So, I pretty much accept that the story takes place largely on this peninsula, with only the Nephites being able to push northward.

Some have assumed that the narrow neck of land was Panama and the land southward was the whole continent of South America, but the internal travels of the two main populations restrict the geography of the Book of Mormon to a fairly small region.

The Baja California theorists accept this limitation, as well as acknowledging that the story occurred on a peninsula, but their theory has other problems, primarily population. The Mesoamerican theorists have to distort the geography in the book as well as the points of the compass to force fit the narrative on their preferred geography. And the Heartland theorists have the same problem as well as the problem of scale to deal with. So, I’ve never seen a geographical model that can’t be disqualified by some pretty significant evidence. This leads to the problem of what modern pronouncements indicate.

 

Moroni and the Lord Weigh In

Of course, all of what follows in this section came through Joseph Smith, so we have to factor that into the equation, but both Moroni and the Lord have something to say about who the Lamanites are now (or at least who they were in the 1820s and 1830s). Let’s start with Moroni. When he first appeared to Joseph Smith, he told Joseph about “a book deposited, written upon gold plates, giving an account of the former inhabitants of this continent, and the source from whence they sprang” (JSH 1:34, bold added). Joseph obviously believed that the Nephites and Lamanites in the Book of Mormon record were the ancestors of the peoples he knew as the American Indians. This belief was confirmed in several of the early revelations he received.

In what is now Doctrine and Covenants 3:18, the Lord tells Joseph that the purpose for which the plates have been preserved is so that “this testimony shall come to the knowledge of the Lamanites, and the Lemuelites, and the Ishmaelites, who dwindled in unbelief because of the iniquity of their fathers.” In D&C 10, the Lord tells Joseph that what we know as the small plates of Nephi contained another account of what was on the lost 116 pages of the original manuscript and that the authors of that account had extracted a promise from him that “my gospel which I gave unto them that they might preach in their days, might come unto their brethren the Lamanites, and also all that had become Lamanites because of their dissensions” (v. 48) And who are these latter-day descendants of those early people?

We find the answer to that question a couple of years later, when he called Parley Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer Jr., and Ziba Peterson to “go into the wilderness among the Lamanites” (D&C 32:2) to preach the gospel. And where were these Lamanites? As explained in Richard Dilworth Rust’s article “A Mission to the Lamanites” in the Church’s “Revelations in Context” supplement to the Sunday curriculum, “Because of the Indian Removal Act passed in May 1830, the new territory for relocating American Indians was to be in present-day Kansas and Oklahoma. Thus, these missionaries to the Lamanites planned to go west from Independence, Missouri, into Indian Territory.” In Pratt’s autobiography, he describes a visit to the Seneca Indians in New York, while the missionaries were still in the United States. They then continued on to Kirtland, where they found Sidney Rigdon and his fellow Reformed Baptists, who were open to the missionaries’ message. In Kirtland, Frederick G. Williams joined the four missionaries, and eventually they made it to Independence. Leaving Whitmer and Peterson in town to earn money, Cowdery, Pratt, and Williams crossed over into Indian Territory, where they preached the message of the Book of Mormon to the Shawnee and the Delaware tribes. The Delawares were receptive, but a federal agent expelled the Mormon elders from Indian Territory. They sought authorization to return but were unsuccessful. So ended the mission to the Lamanites. They did, however, find Independence, Missouri, which Joseph’s revelations soon identified as the location for the city of New Jerusalem.

The salient point here, though, is that Joseph and his early followers considered all American Indians to be Lamanites. This can be seen also in Joseph’s “Zelph” experience with Zion’s Camp and in the Saints’ encounters over the next several decades with the tribes of the Great Basin, whom they also identified as Lamanites.

The Book of Mormon supports this view, especially in Nephi’s vision of the future of the promised land, in which he sees the coming of the Europeans to the New World and their impact on the native inhabitants of the land. “I beheld many multitudes of the Gentiles upon the land of promise; and I beheld the wrath of God, that it was upon the seed of my brethren [Laman and Lemuel]; and they were scattered before the Gentiles and were smitten” (1 Ne. 13: 14).

So, it is apparent that the Book of Mormon itself, Moroni, Joseph Smith, and even the Lord considered all native North Americans to be Lamanites. But how does this square with what we know from other sources about the Native Americans?

 

Archaeology, Linguistics, and Genetics

Archaeological evidence indicates that Native Americans began arriving in the Americas 60,000 years ago and continued until about 12,000 years ago. Obviously, this presents challenges for the Book of Mormon account. While some apologists find evidence in the book for other inhabitants of the “land of promise,” the account itself is strangely silent on such an important point, especially if the Nephites and Lamanites absorbed indigenous populations, as apologists argue, in order to make the numbers work out (population growth and such). You would think that the record keepers would have mentioned these indigenous groups, but they didn’t. We learn only of the Mulekites and the Jaredites (who were extinct, except for Coriantumr and, we assume, Ether, when the two groups had a brief encounter). The Book of Mormon speaks of the land of promise, especially in Nephi’s vision, as the entirety of at least North America, which would seem to indicate that all of the Native American tribes here are descended from Lehi. But if the Lehites intermarried over the centuries with not just the Mulekites but also scores of Native Americans, to the point that their genetic footprint has completely disappeared, how can we even consider Native Americans to be Lamanites?

The linguistic evidence is equally problematic. According to Wikipedia, “Over a thousand of these [Native American] languages are still used today, while many more are now extinct. The Indigenous languages of the Americas are not all related to each other; instead, they are classified into a hundred or so language families and isolates, as well as several extinct languages that are unclassified due to the lack of information on them.” There are various theories about the origins of indigenous languages. One theory is that there was a single, one-language migration to the New World, but this theory is rejected by most linguists. The large number of seemingly unrelated language families indicates a long history of linguistic development (and splintering), far longer than the period between the end of the Book of Mormon account and the arrival of Europeans in the New World.

I am fairly ignorant in both archaeology and linguistics and am relying on information summarized online. I am even more ignorant in genetics, but from what I can gather, using DNA to try to find a link (or prove no link) between living Native Americans and potential ancient semitic ancestors is a fool’s errand. According to Wikipedia again, “The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism has also said that haplogroup testing is not a valid means of determining Native American ancestry, and that the concept of using genetic testing to determine who is or is not Native American threatens tribal sovereignty. Author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science, Kim TallBear (Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate), agrees, stating that not only is there no DNA test that can indicate a tribe, but ‘there is no DNA-test to prove you’re Native American.’” TallBear writes, “‘Native American markers’ are not found solely among Native Americans. While they occur more frequently among Native Americans, they are also found in people in other parts of the world.”

Identifying genetic markers for ancient Jewish people is also a nightmare because of all the intermarriage and migration over the years. So, identifying any genetic markers for Lehi, a descendant of Joseph, would be impossible. A good summary of the futility of DNA research in this area is David Stewart’s 2006 article, “DNA and the Book of Mormon,” published in the (FARMS) Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 18, no. 1. This is, of course, an apologetic piece, and Stewart attempts to show that the lack of evidence actually supports Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, but his summary of DNA research is quite informative and shows instead, I believe, that DNA evidence is not helpful to either side in this debate.

 

Conclusion (or Not)

I think it is pretty obvious that the indigenous peoples of North and South America were not all descended from Lehi, even though the Book of Mormon and statements from Moroni and the Lord (filtered through Joseph Smith) seem to indicate they were. And claiming that the Nephites and Lamanites intermarried with local, already present tribes in a small geographical area goes beyond what the Book of Mormon account says. A plain reading of the text indicates that there were descendants of Lehi, Ishmael, Zoram, Mulek, and Mulek’s party in the narrative. As far as the record attests, no descendants of the Jaredites survived and passed their genes on to the Nephites or Lamanites.

Skeptics will, of course, insist that the Book of Mormon is just another attempt (among many) to identify the origins of the American Indians, including an explanation for why they have a darker skin than their European invaders. I must admit that this explanation does have its appeal, especially considering all the other questions I have about Mormon’s book, but, as I confessed in the introduction to this intermittent series, the Book of Mormon is a complex and perplexing text. I’m not ready to claim I have it figured out.

So, who are (or were) the Lamanites? Beats me.