You said:
"The whole concept is a contradiction in terms. Were they persecuted – yes. Are they capable of visiting the same persecution upon others – in a heartbeat! Where is the virtue in that?"
There is no virtue in it. I see the Jehovah's Witnesses as a sick group of people who have abandoned their own will to the will of their cult. The members of the Jehovah's Witnesses allow the Brooklyn headquarters to dictate how they dress, what music they listen to, what jobs they have, who they will be friends with, who they will marry, what medical treatment they will accept and what "message" they will repeat from door to door. This egotistical, arrogant, ignorant organization that tells you to stop speaking to parents, children, relatives and friends because they are critical of this group, well, they fit every defining description of a cult. They are no better than or worse than the Garbage Eaters, the Moonies or any other cult. I personally had to fight a desire to go and whip an elder whom I thought had advised my daughter not to speak to me. If I allow myself to dwell on it my anger wells up inside me to the point of really wanting to hurt someone. I have a very powerful hatred for the Governing Body, that sick group of hypocrites that have ruined so many families, destroyed so many marriages, caused so many women to live in risk of disease, caused so many boys to go to prisons where they were abused, allowed so many men, women and children to die. Any group that can turn a mother against her own child, well, suffice it to say, I despise them. This kind of hatred could lead me to persecute them which would be fair game for a book if everyone who felt my anger did the same across the country or around the world.
While I feel only pity for these poor dubs going out pushing the party line, I feel only contempt for their leaders. I would greatly enjoy riding the Governing Body out of New York on a rail, covered with tar and feathers. Maybe the book is propaganda pushing the WT point of view, maybe it really documents what people who feel as I do sometimes did to the closest Witness they could find. I don't know. Copernicus, I always trash any Watchtower or Awake I find. I know what they are. I always approach any Witness I see and try to engage them in conversation, I know what they they believe and I want to try and show them the lies they are pushing and some of the truths they deny.
Grunt.