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Jim Bennett has opted out of the GOP, leaving these parting words: "The Republican Party that was near and dear to my heart for most of my adult life bears very little or no resemblance to the party of Trump."

You can feel the bewilderment pouring out of him. But Bennett's parting words shouldn't sound unfamiliar. Nothing good can come of the overflowing restaurant dumpster that the GOP nominated for president, this year. But, thanks to the 2016 Republican Crapfest, a whole lot of Utahns now know exactly what it's like to find themselves pariahs in a tradition they thought was theirs, and this discovery means the possibility of a new world of mutual empathy in the Beehive State.

On Aug. 13, a handful of people gathered in City Creek Park park to opt out of the LDS church. Many of them grew up in the church, believing in the way that believers do. I would guess that many of them still believe, in some way or in some thing. Many of them, I'm sure, once regarded LDS-Mormonism as their spiritual home. In just the way that Bennett acknowledges his experience of the Republican now, lifelong LDS-Mormons, increasingly, find that the current version of the tradition bears little resemblance to a way of life that was, even recently, near and dear to their hearts. And increasing numbers of them have discovered the family they have known and loved glaring back at them, suddenly and sharply, with hostility.

Never mind the expression of schadenfreude that this situation might call for. Rather, the following is an invitation to LDS Republicans who feel that they've been robbed, that pirates with tiny hands and grotesque comb-overs have overrun their ship and turned it into the storm, that boorish, orange brigands have bound and gagged them and tossed them off the coach.

Consider the anxiety, bewilderment, and indignation you feel as a consequence of the political movement you have always thought was your own jamming its finger in your eye. Consider the shock that your political home turns out to care little for you, as an individual, and regards you as a stranger no matter how conservative you are and how deeply you think you know conservatism. Consider how quickly the party that you have held dear — to which you have given your time and talents — has turned, with little warning, into something repugnant.

Now consider how similar must be the experience of your fellow LDS-Mormons who have been made strangers within the tradition they have always known as theirs. Consider how well you now know the shock and outrage they feel at being marginalized, or worse, in their spiritual home, as though their lifetimes in the church mean nothing. Consider the possibility that you have felt something akin to what they have felt as the rug has been removed from beneath their feet.

Just as you rage silently (or loudly) that you have not left the GOP, but that the GOP has left you, many of the Mormons you regard as heretics feel they have not left the church, but that the church has left them. If you are an LDS Republican who cannot vote for Little Prince Pumpkin, consider how your LDS fellows must feel when you tell them to leave Utah, or to start their own churches, or simply to shut up, if they can't toe the party line.

The GOP's Giant Candied Yam will stumble to an electoral humiliation unknown in the past century. The damage this defeat will do to the Republican Party is almost worth the crippling shame that this loudmouthed loser could be a legitimate nominee for president of a country that has always vaunted its honesty, bravery and goodness.

More valuable, perhaps, to the peculiar American subculture that is LDS-Mormonism is the door that the Gamboge-Headed Boobie has inadvertently opened between estranged communities. The LDS Republicans now wandering in political exile can surely appreciate the condition of their LDS and post-LDS fellows for whom the LDS church has become an uncomfortable, if not hostile, house.

David Mason is Chair of Theatre and Director of Asian Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. He is the author of "Brigham Young: Sovereign in America and My Mormonism." He writes the "Aestheism" blog at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/aestheism/