In 1691 John Bly accused Bridget Bishop of bewitching his pig. The subject pig died after madly charging around and roaming the street, foaming at the mouth. Bly had purchased the pig from Bishop and refused to pay his debt.
During this time, several little girls were caught doing things that were not approved of by the church/government of the day. Things like chanting. Things like having fits and contorting their bodies. They accused Bishop and others of witchcraft and supposedly bewitching them.
Cotton Mather, bombastic minister-leader of the day, whipped the crowded court into a frenzy with his denouncements of hellish women who would destroy the god-fearing folk in this godless land. As a backdrop to Mather’s hate speech, fear of terrorism was the motivating mood of the day, fear of the natives who would kill, rape and steal from the godly. Even more, fear of unseen demons, instruments of Lucifer, kept people awake at night. Demons who were ever ready to torture and destroy true believers.
After a few months of being locked up, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch.
What was Bishop’s real crime?
She was a woman who owned a business. She sold ale. She openly disputed rules of the church about women’s rights and said so in well spiced descriptive language. She called the accusations nonsense and refused to give credence to those accusations. Oh, and she was also known to wear a red dress.
On July 19, 2016 we witnessed a full revivial of the Salem Witch Trials. Headed by bombastic Chris Christie, devout Ben Carson and others, we saw accusations flung across the crowd, ranging from “Hillary Clinton lied” and “caused people to die” to “Hillary Clinton is in league with Lucifer and his demons.”
The crowd was already whipped into a high frenzy by the stirring sermons and pointed speaches about all the terrible things that are out there are to fear.
Just like 1691, no credible witnesses were allowed to correct the record on Clinton. No decency was allowed. After Christie’s accusations, political correctness was banished, replaced by mobs screaming their response to Christie - “Lock Her Up.”
If she had been in attendance, would she have been locked up, waiting to be hanged or burned at the stake?
By 1692 Salem realized the hideous mentality that had driven their crimes against their citizens. People were ashamed of themselves. The hangings stopped and the accusers were shamed out of town. People poured out their shame in written repentance letters. But twenty seven people had been hanged that year including several of the most devout followers of Mather’s puritan sect.
Puritans' main staple was made of the rye. Ergot, is fungus that infects Rye. Some of the symptoms of ergotism causes violent fits, vomiting, and hallucinations. LSD is derived from ergot. So what made the Salem girls sick? Ergotism? What did the pig die of? Likely rabies or ergotism.
Did this even matter to them when they were shouting “Witch”? NO.
Does anyone care to see the facts of Hillary Clinton’s long service to the country, her advocacy for families, civil rights, education, environmentalism and progressive values that have moved us from religious bigotry and racism toward equality. Does anyone note the actual huge responsibility she has shouldered for so many years, while her accusers at the convention say she was playing around, consorting with the devil and hiding emails?
Did it even matter to them? NO.
Once people are caught up in the excitement of the hunt, of attack, they are not interested in reasoning together, the essence of “politically correct” argument. Like hunting dogs they are interested in killing the prey.
Once people drop their “political correctness” for shouting and aiming blind accusations at one another, hate follows. De-humanising follows. And when hate, racism and dehumanization replaces reason completely, it turns to killing. It promotes war against the less powerful. The Native American history shows it, the Black history shows it, the Jewish history shows it, and women’s history shows it.
Either we are a democracy with reasoned people who may intensely disagree to reach solutions, or we are a mob who kills our opponents. The Republican party, if the convention is any indication, has become a mob led by the hate zealot, Donald Trump.