Life in The Age of Moral Panics

There was something about Mary.

She was too attractive. She was too wealthy. She had too many kids. They were too healthy. So in 1674, Mary Bliss Parson's friends and neighbors started accusing her of witchcraft. The local court brought her up on charges, then acquitted her. But the accusations and rumors just kept coming.

The Parsons had to move.

It was strange living in early Puritan America. If you were rich, it meant God liked you. If you were too rich, and nobody liked you very much, it meant you had some secret deal with the devil. If you were too outspoken or independent, then someone needed to hang you. It’s no accident that the way to dispose of a witch became the default method to dispose of other vulnerable groups.

Right now, the current administration is operating in outright defiance of our federal courts and declaring them powerless. By all marks, we’ve entered the early stages of full-blown fascism. And if there’s one thing we know about fascism, it’s that wars on the vulnerable keep them fired up. You’re already seeing so many pundits and opinion columnists scratching their heads, wondering how we got here. When you look at the history of this country, there’s not much of a difference between 17th-century puritanical America and fascism.

We didn’t “get” anywhere.

We were always like this. We’re a country of moral panics and scapegoating. We didn’t learn from Hitler. It was the other way around. He studied our history and built Nazi power using us for inspiration. If you’d like to know a little more about the history and psychology behind moral panics in America, and how the elite have always used scapegoats in order to consolidate their power and keep the public distracted from real threats, I’ve got quite a post for you.

Now, here's some irony: