The Irony

As we enter into October (I’ve lost the book I was walking through, it’ll turn up when I’m done unpacking), I’m reminded that it’s now the time for ghosts and goblins and whatnot. That always brings me back to the old days of when I was a mere high school student and the tail end of the last great old fashioned witch hunt: the Satanic Panic.

It wasn’t great, and it wasn’t fun but it sure was an actual witch hunt. Mainly because it turned up no witches. See that’s the difference between a “hunt” and a “witch hunt” the former actually has something that can be found. The problem was that we weren’t hunting witches we were hunting a vast underground network of child abducting abusers that were also murderers and whatever else can be plugged into that. You know, the same stuff that the former lunatic fringe of the right claims about Hillary Clinton (I say former because they are not the fringe anymore). The Satanic panic believed a number of fantastical things, and like Alex Jones looking for errant data in footage of a mass shooting they had a whole host of symbolism and secret codes that the average person could decipher to know that the Satanists were living in their neighborhood.

It’s funny to note that these “Satanists” only seemed to stalk white neighborhoods in the suburbs. They didn’t operate in cities, they didn’t operate in rural areas; if what these people were saying was actually the case, we could have all freed ourselves from their omnipotent eye by changing economic status or shifting down/up the highway.

I came from a white suburb that had zero crime excepting traffic violations of course. Aside from a scuffle with some neighbor kids or bike accident, the happenings in my neighborhood could be roughly described as non-existent. Everyone went to the same Catholic church as far as I could remember, and the few that didn’t–went to a different one that was a little further away (the Parishes have since merged). Some kids spray painted one of the stop signs once and that was a big deal.

Other than myself, I didn’t think that anyone knew about the panic gripping the nation. I was aware because I was a night owl then, as I am now, and in those days there was very little on the television but right wing religious nuts past midnight. Believe me, I ate that shit up because it was so foreign. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this in the ten years I have been writing this blog with an atheism focus, but one of the reasons that I was so religious as a young person was because of the strange mythology concerning the end of the world, the legions of angels and demons, and the seeming magic behind it all. Now, I wasn’t a complete nutter, I didn’t think much of it was true because even as a teenager I kind of thought that it was no different than Greek Mythology or the stuff I read in Dungeons and Dragons. They were super hero stories, not much different than comic books, only that we were supposed to accept them with a certain amount of belief. Not total belief, we were Catholics not Evangelical Heretics, but some kind of nebulous “truth” was at the center of it that we were supposed to be able to find. My religion teachers could never explain it or answer my questions regarding that “truth” so I spent a lot of time struggling with my grade in religion class when I wasn’t tossed in the hall for asking wrong questions.

One week all the parish kids had to go to a special seminar on a Sunday night to hear a talk about Satanism. I WAS IN.

It was utterly silly. We were given a sheet of Satanic symbolism that had the logos of rock bands which could hardly be considered Satanic. C’mon, Led Zeppelin-my parents made us listen to that on the Oldies Station. Apparently if it has an electric guitar it meant Satan was behind it. We were supposed to be on the watch for graffiti, groups of people that we didn’t know, and really just about anything out of the ordinary. It wouldn’t have been hard to spot, because ordinary is what my neighborhood did. There was nothing to it, ever. Anywhere.

I was in high school, during puberty, and they told me that these Satanists were going to lure me in with promises of sex and that’s what I should be careful about. During our hormone fueled “decision” making one of my friends commented that they might have a convert if they can offer sex instead of boredom for one hour a week during church. He got in trouble because we weren’t taking it seriously.

Which is funny because we absolutely shouldn’t have. No one should have. It was fiction based on the very darkest fears of the ultra conservative right who spoke of it, and still do, to such a degree that it begins to seem like a desire. A cop spoke about at the seminar too, but she said that while we should be careful and be safe there was a tendency to jump to conclusions without evidence. She talked about a pile of dead animals found on the road side and that a neighbor called the cops because of animal sacrifice when it turned out that animals were just dumped by the highway department cleaning road kill.

The expert came on and talked to us about the national Satanic underground network. I didn’t understand then that this was just a conspiracy theorist whose expertise consisted of making things up or repeating other things that someone else made up. Interestingly they told us that if someone tried to abuse us we should report it to our parents, the police, or a priest.

I was wrong though, there was a vast underground network that secreted abusers around the country and protected them from the law. They even had their own symbolism. It’s just that they weren’t secret about their presence. In fact, we were all unwitting members, it wasn’t called Satanism though, it was called Catholicism.