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Our modern Salem Witch Trials in 2018

Back in the 1690s, Salem, Massachusetts, was the home of notorious intrigue involving witchcraft (following a similar hunt for “witches” throughout Europe). In the end, twenty innocent people from Maine to Massachusetts were executed, and as a result a great deal of changes were made in judicial procedure.

Much has been written about the Salem Witch Trials, so its history will not be repeated here. But the way it happened is instructive, because we like to think that today, in our modern age and nation, nothing like it could happen. And yet, the same thing is happening now, only under political guises.

The essence of the Salem witch trials is that a person would become suspect as a “witch” simply upon someone’s baseless accusation, with some finger pointing and rumor mongering. The accusation could have its genesis in not liking someone’s personality, a personal feud, not agreeing with them on some minor point or other, or on financial matters. Then a howling mob would be ginned up, assemble, and demand that the “witch” be killed.

At best a show trial would be arranged, in which the “witch” would have an opportunity to defend herself (occasionally himself) against baseless accusations, including the testimony of ghosts. There was no real evidence, just accusations and whipped up emotional fervor. Most accused witches died, with the survivors being those who admitted to their guilt and begged forgiveness.

Here at the end of the most modern age of 2018, which is some 330 years after all the witch hysteria business in Salem, one would like to think we are in an advanced mental, scientific, and legal state, not prone to supporting howling mobs seeking immediate retribution for some wild accusation without any evidence. And yet, you would be wrong about that. It seems that we are just about where Germany was in the late 1920s: A nation too big, too successful, too advanced to fail. And yet, Germany did fail, spectacularly, and with enormous costs.

Looking back over 2018, we have seen the same kind of behavior that caused and surrounded the Salem witch trials: In a sea of literal hysteria and insane cries, wails, and screeches of people clawing at the doors of the Supreme Court and the US Senate, Justice Kavanaugh was falsely accused of things he obviously never did (two of his accusers have since recanted); President Trump is blamed for every little thing that could possibly be construed to be wrong; people who disagree with political extremists are called “climate deniers” amid calls for their execution or incarceration by professors and professionals. Even the Koch brothers, with whom I share only some views, are demonized by the Left the way Germany’s Jews were demonized by the Nazis.

All of this political persecution relies on the presumption of guilt rather than of innocence, and the use of simple accusations and whipped up hysteria. Nothing good can come of it, and yet America has one political party dedicated to this approach of resolving political differences.

Apparently, at least half of America is made up of “witches.”