Demonization as a Political Process

The Salem Witch Trials are a lesson in history under reenactment.  What essentially was an attempt to discredit and remove rival interests led to the atrocity of unbridled accusation and slander easily accepted as truth.  Fear drives such engines, and the power to promote such trifling with reputations is unlimited in its uncritical acceptance by the masses.

The ploy of demonization is a tool that succeeds only when credibility is not sought out.  In the case of the witch trials, twenty lives were lost on the simple fact that an authority assumed too much, that it was inerrant in its pursuit of truth.  Today, anything that opposes progressivism is no longer the "loyal opposition," but an ulcer in need of removal.  And the removal process begins with the premise that such views are not worth holding, that they are antiquated not so much as they are hate-driven, monstrous, enslaving, degenerative, and debased in thinking.

We have made it a logical short circuit to credit the other side with the shades of despicable.  It is the course of politics to criticize the President.  It becomes racism if that president is black, sexism is that president is a woman, homophobic if the president is or supports the gay agenda.  The facts of the matter need not be discussed if this blockade to honest exchange is utilized.

The first thing that matters is to address the root cause, as it would have been in Salem centuries ago.  Fear.  We fear the defeat of progressivism and all the promises it advances, and all the lofty goals towards which it strives.  But we stifle an equally important fear, the fear of unwelcome progress, of dangerous progress, of progress in which more is lost than gained.  But the idea is not to demonize the whole of progressivism, but to offer second opinions of where we wish to go, or even where we wish to stay.

It is the issue of the path, the passage, the travel, the destinations, the stays, that must be given due consideration.  All of the trappings of safe, sane travel planning.  The passengers need to offer their insights and input, and disagreements on the flow of the trip must be expected.

Labeling one a churl for disagreeing on the most recent turn of the wheel belittles the trip, and makes for strained traveling.  People encased in moving vehicles would know of this tension as most unpleasant.  This is the tension we must cope with, and name-calling is this hallmark of immaturity.  And who wishes to travel with the immature?