I have finished the Singular book When Men Become Gods about the FLDS communities on the borders of Arizona and Utah. The only time I was near those towns was back in grad school, when I went on an Episcopal mission trip to the northern edge of the Navajo Nation. That was an interesting trip, but it had nothing to do with polygamy. Polygamy is a fundamentally unbalanced social mechanism; the assignment of many women to one man excludes the other potential husbands from marriage unless you swap women around like oxen and she-asses. The assignment, and especially reassignment, of women, eviscerates any pretense of a system of family values; but there are politicians to the left of the FLDS who are equally hypocritical, if not on such a grand scale. Polygamy especially does not mix well with the founder effect, but perhaps a polygamist society could overcome this with overbreeding, the Eleventh Commandment as it were. In the backstory of the FLDS and its steady reduction to monarchy or tyranny, I was surprised that nobody brought up Samuel's denunciation of the concept of kingship.
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