Originally offered at Liberal Street Fighter
Who are we, here in this time with megalomaniacs in charge of rogue nations with too much power and too little compassion? Whither the human race?
MARGARET ATWOOD: Well, the Salem witchcraft trial is in my opinion one of the foundation events of American history. And it was an event where you can call it a clash between mythology and politics if you like. Because it depended very much on a belief in the invisible world. Cotton Mather, who was a very prominent divine at the time, wrote a book called THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD, which was all about the behavior of witches.
And the devil. And this is what people believed. They weren’t being hypocrites when they did these things. They were actually scared of witchcraft and the devil. And they believed that the devil could work his way into their community through witches, so it was serious business. But it was also a hysteria. The surprise to me has been all of the stuff I learned long ago. I thought, “Nobody’s going to be interested in this again. You know what good is knowing 17th century theology ever going to be to me? Or anybody else. Surely nobody’s interested.” And now suddenly it’s all come back. Because things do go around in cycles.
Here we are, in the twenty-first century, back to the beginning.
What do we consider holy? Our tribe/nation, is that our foundation? Could it be one particular formulation of G_D, or G_dess? Could we be … better … ? Why do we need the holy?
I think Americans used to believe that being better was a goal to be pursued. That doesn’t feel true any more. We BELIEVE we’re ALREADY better. Or as good as dirty, fallen descendents of the original Sinners can be. You can’t really get better in a world where there is something holy … people will always fall short of that standard, and advancement will have to be deferred to the next world. This tension, between fundamentalists who believed in some version of holy and enlightened, rational thinkers has been boiling under the surface of the history of the development of the country.
In a rational world, what does “better” mean? Harmony, perhaps, or maximizing the opportunities and talents of people in a society. Improving as many people’s lot in life through cooperation and agreement, that COULD be the organizing principle we follow, if we chose to have an honest, open and vigorous political culture.
The right in this country, and far too many of the silent herd that run along behind them, buy into the idea that there are hard and fast rules to follow, laid out in old, oft-mistranslated old books. Too many think that the assertion of violence and dominance is the way to settle differences in this dirty, evil, fallen old world. Too many think that might makes right, and talking too much, sitting at too many tables, trying to agree on rules are fools games. Too many love the simple-minded sports metaphor when speaking of life and other, poorer people’s deaths.
So lets talk about sports. Lets remember that there is no game if the teams playing haven’t agreed on a rulebook. The game is no fun if the playing field isn’t level and clearly marked, if there are no referees or umpires. Nobody but the dominators REALLY likes when a sport is dominated by a Yankees or a Cowboys, by teams who flaunt rules and buy championship rosters.
We quit talking about making rules that we could all agree on, preferring instead to allow the rich and the violent-minded to impose a set of rules upon the rest of us. This we can do, THAT we can’t. Don’t even talk about THAT. Don’t talk about the mountains of treasure being looted through black budgets that fund our enormous military. Don’t talk about the roots of the righteous anger fueling the rage in middle eastern insurgencies, the repeated outrages committed by the state of Israel over the course of decades. Don’t talk about how the drug war itself is destroying communities across our country, NOT the drugs themselves, the war against them. What kind of society makes war on itself? Only one insane, driven mad by musty old books and agreed upon boundaries of discourse. Only a people who had given up on redemption in THIS world would maintain such a large, growing and brutal prison system. The greedy and brutal insist on ALL of these things, wrapping themselves in the Flag and holding up the Bible before them as a shield to deflect any and all cries for change, pleas for Justice.
Back to the beginning, to Cotton Mathers who impose harsh punishment on the dark threat posed by anybody painted as a threat. A nation of people who war upon themselves, who lash out madly at everyone else around, will eventually find itself isolated and attacked, a self-fulfilling cycle that will only give those in charge an excuse to ramp up the oppression and violence, until we find all of us being burned at the stake.
Image from Queensrÿche’s – Operation Mindcrime 2.