The Salem witch trials were not isolated events led by crazed puritans in an otherwise rational world. They were part of a phenomenon that swept across Europe, all the way to Russia.
Was it the last gasps of a disappearing world of superstition, witches, and wizards, or a mass-psychosis?
Either way, it marked the end of an era and the beginning of the new world, where man moved beyond an age ruled by fear.
In 1720, a book was published cataloging with firsthand accounts of the trials that happened in England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Sweden, Germany, France, and Turkey. Reading it gives a glimpse into an almost foreign world, separated from us by only time. Reading the accounts within, one is struck by how different the collective mindset was, and the absence of any evidence-based inquiry or reason.
Today, as we witness the fall of America, we see the return to a similar experience, absent of reason. This is witnessed in our response to the pandemic. Scientific data is dismissed in favor of the everchanging proclamations of vaulted sages – our appointed medical experts. These “experts”, our modern-day oracles, are used to empower the tyrants of the day. Data and objective inquiry take a backseat to the most recent words and mandates from the anointed.
In the 1720 book, The History of Witches and Wizards: giving a true account of all their trials in England, Scotland, Swedeland, France, and New England; with
their confession and condemnation, the author W.P., wrote: “This small treatise cannot be thought unreasonable in this age to inform you, that there are really magicians, conjurers, and witches, who have commerce, and familiarity with evil spirits, is so clear and plain, both from Holy Scriptures, councils, cannon, and civil laws in all nations; that none, but those atheists who would endeavor to persuade themselves there are no spirits; and consequently, no other life after this, ever deny it; but since the reality of this converse with demons, and their appearances and professions have been so clearly demonstrated in former ages, but especially in this, by persons of most acute judgment and learning; wherein they have fully answered all objections to the contrary.”
The fascinating accounts in the book rely solely on the accusations and statements of these persons of “most acute judgment and learning”. In no case was any actual evidence presented, preceding the hanging and burning of innocent women and men. Despite the claim that all objections were fully answered, they were never asked. The experts of the day spoke, and all evidence was taken on faith. Much like the words of our experts today. “Trust the science” in actuality means to trust the word of our anointed experts. They need not show the science itself. Anyone that dare raise an objection is banned, exiled, and at risk of feeling the flames themselves.
On Friday Newsmax reporter Emerald Robinson asked White House Principal Deputy Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to explain how the CDC is testing for this variant. How does the CDC know when they come across a delta variant case? This completely knocked Karine Jean-Pierre off her feet. She ends with, “Because the experts say so.”
It doesn’t matter that actual science and reason show masks don’t stop viruses, it only matters what the experts say about them today. The fact that there is no evidence of so-called “asymptomatic spread” is irrelevant. The claim was made and now all healthy individuals are deemed guilty of harboring the virus. The experts speak and we follow.
As a collective society, we no longer read the data. It is censored and hidden while we are too busy or uninterested to find it. Fear was drilled into us by a complicit and relentless media and we don’t know how to let go of it. Doing the cost-benefit analysis of taking an experimental medication still in trials for a disease with a 99.5% survival rate is beyond our abilities. Even if we have already survived the disease and built up natural immunity, we do what the oracles tell us to do, despite the science. If they haven’t told us the risks, they must not exist. We assume the experts have our best interests at heart.
Our two-thousand-year march toward individual liberty and peak America, where all men were created equal, endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, has taken a U-turn, and we move back toward a time of fear, superstition, and darkness. No longer a free society, we show our papers for permission to travel and even eat.
Those leading the march to strip us of our liberties and would even have us again believe that we are born with original sin. Modern teachings from our schools, governments and even corporations tell us that no longer are we born equal. We are born bearing the weight of our fathers’ sins. Our finest academic institutions now say, even babies can be racist. The evidence of our actions is meaningless, our skin color tells all. Whether we are the oppressed or oppressors.
It becomes more apparent every day that we are no longer a nation of laws, but one where the designated vaulted individuals make the rules as they go. Sometimes they employ the written laws we used to live under, while other times they act regardless of them.
Carl Sagan wrote: “I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have
lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…”
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
It’s unclear if people can extend or transcend these ages, how much they are determined by their own rhythm, or what it takes to end the mass-psychosis. But our forefathers took a lot of human agency to help usher in the age of reason and the rise of America, and it’s now on us to use our own agency to forestall their demise. We owe it to the generations yet to come to do what we can to maintain the blessings of liberty that generations of the past have secured for us with their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.
By: Tom Schneider
Tom Schneider is author of the new historical fiction book, WITCH HUNT 1730, based on America’s last documented witch hunt. He has recently published a new edition of the 1720 book, The History of Witches and Wizards, in honor of its three-hundred year anniversary.
Both books are available in paperback and ebook formats on Amazon. More of Tom’s work, including tales encompassing Washington’s crossing the Delaware, and Betsy Ross’s role in the nation’s first female spy mission, is at storm1776.com.
