Salem Witch Trials: When Residents Blamed their Problems on Witches instead of their own Incompetence.
Updated: Aug 7
Imagine you experience strange things around you. Your dog is barking inexplicably, as if pissed-off by an imperceptible presence. Your crops are failing, despite residing in a well-watered cup of pavement crumbles on the piss-splattered toilet bowl. And most importantly, the noisy neighbor with the shit-proficient dog has been gossiping about the state of your tomato garden to the local villagers, prompting rage, drama, and the desire to accuse the proximal rumormonger of unconfirmed witchcraft -- an accusation likely to result in public hanging in Salem Massachusetts. Residents of an IQ-deficient suburb utilized this technique to resolve domestic complications, whether from genuine delusions of sly enchantresses to attempted payback against the wrinkly, potato-shaped dolt, who ate 13 of the 18 mini-donuts at the post-church-service concessions.
Most adults stopped believing in witches in elementary school; spells are only casted by emotionally-
unstable teenagers in Dungeons and Dragons, cauldrons are used by grandmothers with tomato soup recipes, and the old women with static-y hair and tattered clothing are just homeless biddies on methamphetamines. But temporarily, in the 1600s, a collection of confused Puritans of a wood-bound town in Massachusetts halted all rational thinking and put their neighbors on trial for allegedly talking to ghosts and casting spells on each other's chickens. This was not a single, isolated incident; gaggles of riled-up dullards desperately searched for witches with the dedication of a 17-year-old dork dashing through oncoming traffic in pursuit of water-based Pokémon in 2016. An effort proven to be effective, as they not only searched for broom-riders and warlocks, but they caught and murdered nineteen of them -- which constitutes 100% of the witch population as well as nineteen humans.
Watch a credible documentary displaying
methods of confirming witchcraft in Salem Massachusetts.
Or buy a Stuffed Evil Bunny from Monty Python and
the Holy Grail Movie.
The screening process for witchcraft deviates from the US judicial system in its simplicity; it is brief and clearly defined -- instead of being innocent until proven guilty, you are guilty as soon as you sneeze in someone's direction -- justified with the realization that if you murder anyone who acts, talks, or floats like a witch, then eventually, there will be no witches or weird people. Neighbors with spice collections and decorative herbs were detained for possession-of-paprika; confused canines were publicly hanged in front of a cheering audience for spontaneous barking, even though incoherent barks often indicate hunger, a full bladder, or bugs squirming in their *** from writhing in dirt; and women were accused because they are, indeed, witches.
Since witches were notorious for strange mannerisms and unpredictable behaviors, women were the most likely culprit. Any man who has maintained a heterogeneous relationship exceeding the two-week honeymoon phase, has, at some point, questioned if the woman he loved was possessed by the devil. Women alternate personalities faster than a goat can flatulate; from making double-beef tacos with the tranquility of a butterfly dancing in a brilliant meadow to a sporadic psychotic episode triggered by something you did in her dream -- a thing she does not remember, but she knows happened -- rendering you incapable of determining if she is hyper-sensitive, delusional, or a potential witch.
You may say: "how did modern, civilized humans delude themselves into believing their neighbors were witches? Did they not implement logic and sound reason?". No. If Facebook exposed anything besides user-data, it's that an ordinary human maintains several layers of intermingled quarrels -- neighbors, in-laws, large mutts that manufacture chocolate surprises on the communal sidewalk, wives who finish the thin mints before her hungry husband returns from chopping trees, undisciplined men who cannot learn how to navigate their eyes; sometimes the only way to settle a domestic dispute is by strapping cinderblocks to the offender's ankles and tossing them in a covered well. Why bicker with the biddy next door who insulted your potato salad when you can accuse her of witchcraft and have her stoned to death while her family watches?
Following several reports of unconfirmed witch-sightings -- an event as unlikely as bigfoot, the Lochness monster, or a woman inside my apartment -- citizens of Salem conducted tests to determine if their neighbors were consorting with the devil or depressed teenagers with candle collections. The most effective test to definitively eradicate the potential witch infestation is to toss the woman in a lake, with cinder blocks tautly strapped to exposed ankles -- to test the perceptible buoyancy of the potential witch; this test does not prove the presence of a witch, but kills both witches as well as depressed teenagers, so this test is very advantageous to the community.
The two primary factors that sparked the Salem Witch Trials were the sudden realization that sometimes the only way to solve a problem is with murder, and the underwhelming IQ of the accompanying lawyers and judges, who allowed murderers to manipulate them into diagnosing witchcraft by comparing perceptible buoyancies to that of a floating duck -- a process as scientifically-sound as catching a box of puppies on fire to determine if they are made of wood. But considering an American politician's incompetence, and the nation's tendency to compete in public stupidity, such as eating Tide Pods and twerking in grocery stores, accusing others of witchcraft is just another headline on a newspaper of shitty headlines.
Additionally, Americans will willingly eat a bowl of mass-hysteria like Honey Bunches of Oats. So easily, in fact, that you could convince millions of Americans that a newly-manufactured Coronavirus strain will destroy civilizations, cited because a handful of wrinkly, elderly folks flirting with the grim reaper perished of flu-like symptoms. This engineered hysteria can then convince hysterics to shelter in place like insects hiding under a dirty log, inject themselves with needles by shady "nurses" under the bridge, brawl with middle-aged Karens over the last package of two-ply toilet paper at Walgreens, and hide from anyone not wearing a silk diaper strapped across their faces. In retrospect, this proves that humans remain the same and are still bound by mass hysteria.
Though many people were mercilessly killed during the Salem Witch Trials, an important lesson was learned. Just because your crops are failing, does not mean your neighbor is casting spells on your dying lilacs -- she just makes too much noise and you don't know how to plant a pot of fuckin' soil. So next time you want to blame your problems on witches, consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, it's not witchcraft causing your crops to fail. It's your own incompetence.
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