Churchhoney

No, they were Vision Forum, at least for a time. At root, the same thing, but the outer trappings and milieu a little different. More focus on being different while looking cool enough to be admired by society as a whole, kind of, for one thing.

Yeah, but they love it, though, since it means that they're making others miserable and that their control can be relatively complete as long as people remain on the premises. I'm being autobiographical again. But I can't possibly overstate the semi-secret bliss my control-freak relatives get out of watching and commenting on every tiny move anyone makes. I don't exaggerate when I tell you that, several decades of living mostly away from these people, I still expect someone to ask me what my problem is or make a nasty comment about my "nervousness" when I slightly shift my weight from one part of my leg to another while reading on the sofa. That level of surveillance and mini-torture looks like a lot of work but it's a lot of work undertaken out of strong personal motivation for pleasure and satisfaction.

Well, I don't mean that he necessarily picks them out, just that he is probably quite determined to stand as a gatekeeper, given his controlling nature. Your description is the way it happened, certainly, but I still think that Boob would scramble to find some way to drive suitors away. no matter what the circumstance, if he felt they were strong and independent people who'd stand up to the Duggar way. It wouldn't be hard to do that, really. And I can't believe that a variety of guys haven't come after the Duggar girls -- and yet the two who've ended up with daughters have both turned out to be very easily subsumed into Duggardom. As usual, I'm biased by my experience in a family with gatekeepers who remind me a lot of Boob -- and radar for people who are too strong to handle as well as for people who are weak, along with millions of underhanded ways to drive the strong away and allow only the weak in, is strong in them. Boob may not be similar to these people, but he sure gives me the vibe that he is. So .... mileage may vary.

I don't see how they could, really. When your entire social life has involved your whole family traveling in a group, with severe restrictions even on what you say to each other, and then you're shoved into a now-you're-in-a-quick-runup-to-eternal-marriage relationship with somebody you barely know, there's no way you'd have the skills, the confidence, the emotional development or the emotional balance to have a normal relationship with that person.

This times 10. It's quite clear from years of evidence that everybody in the cult most likely had some idea, long ago. And I see no evidence at all that anybody who remains -- especially anyone who's in power -- is interested in "cleaning up," considering the way they've treated Gothard since the stuff became more public, the kinds of statements they make, the way the people who claim harm continue to be regarded, etc. They're interested in papering it over, pretending that nothing happened, and continuing to make whatever money they can off the deal. ETA: Sorry, Dangerousminds. Don't know how I got your name up there. And of course I can't delete it....

We're clinging to the antiquated notion that you have to have contact with people to claim friendship with them. TLC and Duggardom have clearly moved beyond this limiting concept.

JB probably has a good eye for potential spouses who can be cowed, run over and manipulated. Sick, disordered people are often very good at that.

Or his self-chosen horrifying fate is getting to him?

I'd call your point the main point of the whole thing, really. A parent in his or her right mind wouldn't do this. But a parent with a severe personality disorder? -- You betcha. A parent with a severe personality disorder is all about doing this.

Maybe they were expecting a loaves and fishes type event. After all, they've gone to all the trouble to move to a dangerous land to convert the popish heathen. Surely God could help out with a little food miracle here and there, to help the process along. Surely He could spring for dessert at least -- a few Oreo balls or something? Well, Gothard offsprung males are supposed to own a house without debt when they marry, right? (ha! ... but still) .... So I'm thinking that having JD own a house is intended to be ATI chickbait?

There are Christian stores that sell communion bread and wafers. I doubt you have to be certified in any way to buy them. ... Back in the Stone Age when I was a kid, though, I think ladies of the church just cut slightly stale Wonder Bread into cubes. (.. it was Wonder bread, after all...)

If you've been locked up physically and mentally long enough and have enough spies in the household and massive enough explosions if you move a millimeter off the allowed line, you may just go through the teen years causing and experiencing a lot of external and internal rage and depression explosions (which they wouldn't show on tv) without actually doing much of the usual teenage stuff except what can be done by extreme stealth in a max-security prison -- like Josh's porn-watching on workplace computers. That's how it mostly worked in my household. And anybody in the Duggar household who let depression or rage or protest be detected apparently gets quickly shipped off to Alert or Journey to the Heart. Josh's teenage porn watching was one of the few truly normal things I've heard of a Duggar kid doing, I've always thought.

Oh, okay. Thanks. I misunderstood -- thought you were in the line of conversation that was finding a hidden headship-v-helpmeet implication secreted in the quote! You do have more respect for Duggar IQs than I do, though, I think. I believe that they're actually so stupid and self-deluded that they don't even consciously know they need smokescreens. I see them as so dumb and self-deluded as to actually believe that they follow that quotation and the other biblical injunctions they love citing. But maybe you've got it right -- because, honestly, you wonder how anybody could be that dumb. .... I look at Jim Bob, though, and I've always seen a person who really thinks he really is one of God's right and chosen ones .... so, no smokescreens needed.

Yep, I agree that it's definitely got the quiver thing as one of the meanings, but not the only one -- and not in this quotation, right? Since the He in the quotation is God. Says here that as a verb it tends to have the "ordinary meaning" -- For example --" International Standard Bible Encyclopedia INCREASE in'-kres, (noun), in-kres' (verb): Employed in the English Bible both as verb and as noun, and in both cases to represent a number of different words in the original. As a verb it is used in the ordinary sense of the term. As a noun it is usually used of plant life, or of the herds and flocks, to denote the fruitage or the offspring; more rarely of money, to denote the interest. As examples of the different terms translated by this word, students who read Hebrew or Greek may compare Deuteronomy 7:22 Proverbs 16:21 Job 10:16 the King James Version; Job 12:23 Numbers 18:30 Deuteronomy 7:13 Ezekiel 22:12 in the Old Testament, and John 3:30 1 Corinthians 3:6; Colossians 2:19 Ephesians 4:16 in the New Testament. Russell Benjamin Miller" http://biblehub.com/topical/i/increase.htm

Okay, see I'm baffled. This is the Duggar family blog, isn't it? So you're thinking that the blog is written by and only from the point of view of some angry snarking female Duggar? And that she'd take the quote from the gospel of John, which is a very commonly used quote and clearly uses "He" to refer to God and "I" to mean everyChristian, to instead make some kind of nasty secret point about Jim Bob's ego? Wow. I can't see any of the Duggars being ironic enough, literary enough, subtle enough or publicly ungodly enough to do that. Not in a million years.

The influence of God in my life must grow while my own selfishness must shrink, I think. I really don't think this quote would relate to a marriage on the rocks, unless the Duggars really really really don't understand it. And I expect they do understand it, or at least know what sorts of occasions it's used for. As far as I know, it's a pretty common thought that generally expresses how Christians are to behave. I'm quite familiar with it, and I've been an atheist for decades! Pretty sure it's just one of the many we're-affirming-our-conviction-that-God-comes-first things that they quote.

C'mon now. They almost certainly don't dust anything off. Or provide chairs.

Say what? Ben's going to tell them the modest way to wear your sidehat? And Jessa will extol the modesty potential of flip flops?

Well, based on my own family history, he actually could. Not saying that there wasn't anything skeevy with his parents, but there didn't have to be. In my family, it clearly happened only because some people born with very strong wills to power -- and we all have those, just in different quantities, I think -- were born into the right situations to allow those qualities to develop unchecked. In my family's case, young kind first-time parents didn't see these people coming, were nice to their kids and had a few more children so that the will-to-power ones secretly honed their skills by quietly bullying a few babies while pretending to be sweet as pie. The parents ended up overwhelmed by the unexpected presence of a shark in the family gene pool and tried to cope with the adolescent shark by giving it everything it asked for-- basically throwing red meat to the lion to keep it from attacking anyone. Didn't work, of course -- when you have such strong cravings for control, I guess, you just keep trying to control more, no matter how much power you have over people already. It was just an out-of-the-blue thing where somebody was born with an outsized trait and got enough opportunities to exercise it. That's pretty common, I think. My guess would be that something similar happened with Jim Bob, but it's always possible that he is the way he is in response to some deep childhood pain or something. Such a background is absolutely not necessary to create one of these folks, however. I'd bet she ostentatiously spilled a bucket of paint on it and dumped it in the trash. About two weeks after it was awarded to her.

Good question. I'm not sure, but my guess would be that they're no longer able to for the reason you mention -- too much ass kissing and long-term enabling that's done nothing, and continues to do nothing, except reinforce and reward their very worst tendencies. (I'm looking at you, TLC, Gothard group, People magazine, Mike Huckabee et al and leghumpers, Duggar audience) I don't get a really clear picture of the differences between them or who's worse, although JB pings my "born a malignant narcissist, always a malignant narcissist" radar really really hard while Michelle doesn't really. I wouldn't put a lot of faith in that impression being right, however. It and some other things, though, leave me sort of believing that Michelle was probably once capable of a little questioning and changing, while JB never ever was, at least from the time he was in late adolescence. And the ship has sailed with Michelle by now, I expect, since I think she's simply gone round the bend and lost touch with reality completely some time ago.

Beating my dead horse yet again, I'd say that since Ma and Pa Duggar are psychologically quite similar to the insane people who brought me up (in my opinion, anyway), the things you mention here are exactly what they would never ever ever encourage or allow. These eventualities -- which, as you say, would happen if the kids were permitted to live anything like normal lives -- seem quite inconsequential and benign to people who've lived anything like the average life. However, they're exactly the kind of unpredictable, uncontrollable thing that would threaten JB's total psychological and physical control over his family. The only reason he lets them go out into Gothard land a bit is because Gothard land is set up for the sole purpose of driving offspring and female spouses back into the eternal and total control of their patriarchs. It's what the whole damn cult is based on, and so the cult is the only outside exposure that isn't deeply threatening. In JB's mind, his very being depends on maintaining that control at all costs. The kind of life you're describing for the young "tv family" Duggars is likely completely unthinkable for their father (and maybe their mother, too). JB's so greedy, too, that, perhaps, big big big big big money might tempt him to allow something else if finances got exceptionally tight, but I'm skeptical that even that would change things. I'll bet that his psychological mania for control outweighs even that consideration, as it certainly would have in my family. I think this seems close to unbelievable to most who weren't also raised by malignant narcissistic control freaks. But there it is. For much the same reason, they'll also never ever ever tell their any of the family truths -- about their beliefs, their activities or anything else -- to the world's dangerous outsiders. And it's also the reason why they never discuss their reasons for doing things or analyze anything. Allowing people to think about the "whys," even of their own behavior, is deeply deeply threatening to control-freak narcissists, always. Because they realize, down inside, that they have no way of knowing or controlling what you might find when you raise even the simplest question. So questioning and discussing or having a real conversation of any kind -- even about seemingly benign subjects -- would also constitute betrayal of JB's total fortress of control, and it's why Gothardism is 100 percent based on recitation. JB's (and BG's) deeply disordered narcissistic personalities can't abide any such opening of windows. They're terrified of it.

Guessing that's because it's an actual story and not, you know, whatever those things are that they do deign to show and/or discuss.

Dare I hope that they're using Spanish words with Izzy all the time and trying themselves and encouraging others to speak to him in Spanish often? This would be great for them -- help motivate them in their learning and maybe even speed it up -- and a wonderful thing for Izzy, for the rest of his life. He'd take to it like a duck to water and possibly bring his parents along with him a bit in his wake. Anybody who truly has a heart for homeschooling would be thrilled with this opportunity and try hard to take advantage of it ..... So I suppose I dare not hope -- but I'm going to hope anyway.

Great ideas! They could call it America's Next Top Duggar or Big Jesus House or something.

You're 100 percent right about that, of course. But there's something disconcerting about it -- to me, anyway -- when the completely manufactured reality is supposedly showing the reality of people who are very devoted and very morally upright Christians who talk for years about how their show is a ministry and intended to help people come to the true faith and so on. .... And when -- apparently -- a bunch of earnest dumb bunnies believe this and hold them up as exemplars of morality and of the faith. You really shouldn't warp and mess with what you hold as your highest truths like this or do false things that actually mislead others when your supposed aim is to lead them to the right, seems to me. If you have a "ministry," it shouldn't be a giant pile of phogna bologna. And, in my opinion, if the Duggar kids were quicker on the uptake, they might realize that a Bible quote -- "The truth shall make you free" -- is most relevant to their situation. And would prove true for them, if they were willing to take a leap of faith to try it.