Fly by Night

for labrys:

Look at the faces
Listen to the bells
It's hard to believe
We need a place called hell
--Devil Inside, INXS

I was an ordinary man with ordinary desires
I watched TV and it formed me
I was an ordinary man with ordinary desires
There must be accountability
--Hunting for Witches, Bloc Party

Quick to judge,
Quick to anger,
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear walk hand in hand
--Witch Hunt, Rush
__________________

The U.S. reaction to 9-11 has parallels to the Salem Witch Trials.

The witches were portrayed as evil incarnate; ditto terrorists today. Witches were said to worship a foreign God, like today’s terrorists. Witches were linked to devil worship, and they were said to consort with “familiars” who functioned as intermediates.

Although the witches never attacked or destroyed anything, they were still seen as an existential threat to the community. Mass hysteria overtook their communities, leading to a fight response which manifested in kangaroo courts and subsequent executions of the evil ones, The Other.

Irrational fears stoked by flimsy evidence provoked the fight reflex, resulting in dead women. (Interestingly, our friends in Saudi Arabia still execute women for the crime of practicing witchcraft [Saudi woman executed for "witchcraft and sorcery".] They are just a few hundred years behind us.)

If you accept this analogy, the overreaction can be seen as emanating from a religious fervor, a hallmark of all inquisitions – something which the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) resembles. Inquisitors could jail, torture and hold prisoners indefinitely until they were either killed or released.

The trials for the domestically-accused terrorists in America have been as unfair and rigged against the defense as were the witch trials. Once accused, there was little chance of proving oneself innocent of preposterous charges. Like the alleged terrorists, even if guilty the women were harmless and no threat to anyone except possibly themselves.

Inquisitors in the U.S. today work for the President rather than the high priest, but they look similar despite the powers served. Fear, human weakness and depravity emerge when a people enter their survival mode of thinking. Fear enabled both the Witch Trials and the PWOT.

Witches also underwent their own “waterboarding” test in which the verdict was, damned if you do, damned if you don’t: Sink, innocent; float, we've got to kill you. Sorry.

We have not come very far since Salem.