A Brief Personal Note

One of the most important things that we get from thinking about the past is a future-oriented view of events. History is an infinite string of moments in which very angry people have said some version of, “Well OF COURSE Goodie Proctor is a witch, you MORON! Didn’t you hear the witnesses!?!? SHE CONSORTED WITH THE DEVIL DOWN BY THE RIVER, IDIOT!” And because you show up after the event is over and read about the first day of the mass madness with foreknowledge of the ending, you see what the very angry people didn’t see, which is that the thing everybody except fools and monsters believed turned out to be the thing that was actually foolish and monstrous, and the fools and monsters were right all along, because they were the people who actually weren’t fools and monsters. It’s like wandering around Berlin in 1939 and telling people, “Just so you know, it’s not really gonna be a thousand-year reich.” You can’t argue with the people in the peanut gallery while the witnesses describe Goodie Proctor’s devil-consorting, because they want it, they like it, and they’re nowhere near ready to give it up. Even better if you actually get to be the lucky bastard who burns the witch, ‘cause power feels good, and who in the act of applying power wants to hear that it’s unwarranted or misapplied?

So here we are again, folks, and wow is it tedious. I have great confidence that I’ve seen this play…

…and I know how it ends.

WE HAVE TO SEND THEM TO THE CAMPS SO WE CAN BE SAFE, YOU IDIOT

So I struggle, man, I really struggle to care sometimes about making an argument against obvious madness. It sometimes feels like trying to use logic against a fever. And there will be the occasional silence as a sense of exhaustion overcomes me. Sorry ‘bout that.