It’s the clarion call of the Christian scaremongers: somewhere deep in the bowels of the earth, some dark thing conspires to control and warp not only the adults, but the children. Oh, think of the children!
If I have been unclear in the past, I shall reiterate: conspiracy theories are for the large part pure hokum. Not being a psychiatrist of any sort, I can only speculate why people become so heavily vested in them. There’s a wide variety out there. There’s the 9/11 wackaloons who are convinced that our government purposely brought down the Twin Towers, there’s the JFK assassination enthusiasts, then there’s the Bilderburg balderdash, the Zurich Gnome manure – the list is exhaustive, and many of you have heard these before. The huge percentage of these are in excessive violation of Ockham’s Razor. This is not to say conspiracies don’t exist – just that the cottage industry is glutted with so many entities, it boggles the rational mind. For the most part, it’s not a battle for hearts and minds. Pursuit of the almighty dollar? Most definitely. But intricate long-term plots to control the world? Please. People are greedy. Ergo, they pursue money, sometimes with a sociopathic fanaticism.
But above all others, the ‘occult conspiracy’ is probably the most pathetic of all. That shadowy taloned fingers are slowly inching towards your ‘soul’ to enslave and/or gobble you/it up? Honky, please.
We’ve all encountered these paranoid people before. Some of us may have relatives that will, without any prompting whatsoever, began slathering their blathering on anyone within earshot. It’s ridiculous. I could cover all the old worn ground like so many times before: the bible has no authority whatsoever, energy isn’t destroyed but proof that information somehow survives death is non-existent (as is the proof that there’s anything remotely resembling the ill-defined ‘soul’), etc. etc. ad nauseum ad infinitum..
If anything deserves ridicule, it’s this comic book conception of our ontological significance.
This garbage has a long history, dating all the way back to when our ancestors attained self-awareness while huddled frightened around primitive campfires, starting at bizarre noises outside the circle of light, and the slightest mishap could make one a predator’s meal. Introversive as our species is, it’s a small leap to assume the world at large has it in for us. And again, the entities multiply needlessly.
Even today, we hear about how playing D&D can lead our children down the path of witchcraft, Ouija boards are the gateway drug to demonic possession, and even how Harry Potter (a fictional person) can pollute our kids’ precious bodily fluids.
So I bring you this blast from the past: one Phillip Phillips (I defecate thee not), who, in the 1980’s, did this bit of idiocy (courtesy of Dribbleglass):
Phil Phillips is the author of Turmoil in the Toybox (1986), Halloween and Satanism (1987), Saturday Morning Mind Control (1991), and Dinosaurs: The Bible, Barney, and Beyond (1994). Turmoil in the Toybox is about how the Smurfs, Care Bears, My Little Pony, He-Man, Mighty Mouse, Cabbage Patch Kids, and Rainbow Bright are all WICKED DEVIL TOYS STRAIGHT FROM THE PIT OF HELL ITSELF leading our precious children into ruin! The other three book titles speak for themselves. Halloween and Satanism includes some perhaps unwitting but still overt anti-Semitism on display in the author’s choice of images and captions.
Typical 1980s sensationalism for the Christian paranoia market. His books were sold in every Christian bookstore, on prominent display right next to those of Texe Marrs.
Phil and his wife Cynthia have since authored Miracle Parenting, on the subject of “Biblical parenting”, and a book on Attention Deficit Disorder called ADD: Welcome to Our World. The book (also available in audio version) is based on Phil’s personal testimony of finding out, as an adult, that he was ADD.
Really? Seriously? Yes, seriously. The Smurfs were a part of some vast Satanic conspiracy. As were the Care Bears, He-Man, and…MIGHTY MOUSE?!?!?
Sad. Just sad. Can’t use the word pathetic often enough. I think the best illustration (and best summation) of this folderol was done by Robot Chicken:
So, if you’re ever within earshot of some wild-eyed stupid conversation about this topic, just do what I would (or will) do: point and laugh hilariously.
Because all opinions are not even CLOSE to being equal.
Till the next post, then.
Stardust
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Apocalypse Pony. That is a keeper.
I remember that turmoil in the Toybox crap. Back when I was a young impressionable child and my mother decided I should be a devout baptist, “Christian radio” had just come to our area. Well needles to say Christian radio and all the horrors that came with it(Specifically Dobson and focus on the family) were the central entertainment of our household because we didn’t have a TV. So they did had a program all about that “Turmoil in the toy box” and I was strongly encouraged(forced) to listen. After all was said and done I was SOOOO afraid that my toys were possessed by Satan and were going to come alive at night and kill me that I threw 90% of my sizable toy collection( A lot of Masters of the universe and D&D toys) in a trash bag and threw them away. My mother approvingly watched as I did this gave me hug after and said I did the right thing. To this day I have issues with her and a disgust for the hell I went through because of her ridiculous beliefs.
I kind of lucked out on this one. My mother, though very religious, has never been one to see the forces of “TEH EBUL 1!!” under every rock and tree. Still, I grew up knowing people who weren’t allowed to play D&D, because it was going to make them worship the devil or something.
And that video was perfect.
I’ve entertained a daydream where I encounter one of these nutjobs and after hearing their spiel, I demand to see their “stash,” connecting their insanity to a drug addiction. If they bring up some favorite author who gave them those delusions, I facepalm, groan, and comment, “Oh, you’re with the flying saucer cult.” If they protest that there aren’t any flying saucers in their belief, I inform them that there’s another flying saucer cult well-known for keeping its low level followers in the dark about the aliens. I wonder if such a thing would discombobulate them as badly as it does in my fantasy.
Of course, I probably wouldn’t do it as in-depth as I would in the fantasy, but in general, all fundamentalist groups look like flying saucer cults to me.
The razor guy was Occam, not “Ockham.”
To me, this phenomenon just screams of adults who never got over being afraid of the dark. It’s just a more socially acceptable (but still pathetic) way of saying “there’s a monster in my closet!!”
Also, there are many versions of this problem that have little, if anything to do with religion; I know a person who is convinced that Obama is actually a closet Republican who is bent on singlehandedly bringing about the financial collapse of Western civilization. He never misses an opportunity to expound his theory, much to the the dismay and annoyance of family and friends. I’m only a nurse, not a psychiatrist, but this behavior seems to indicate that this person is using this as a proxy cause for his real fear, anger, and worry. I think that many people would rather think about distant, imaginary problems rather than deal with real problems closer to home. This is just an out-of-my-ass theory about why people are fascinated with UFOs, Bigfoot, government conspiracies, ghosts, and the supposedly imminent apocalypse, but it makes sense to me.
fred:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
Occam’s razor, also known as Ockham’s razor
Being a hardcore Scrabble player, I adore alternative spellings. I get more points when people challenge.
Yeah, Mighty Mouse totally snorted coke! Okay, it’s red because it’s a dried-up tomato. Note that the impetus behind the “shocking scene” was the Reverend Wildmon, the same loon who promoted “Satanic back-masked lyrics” crap at the time. And not just in rock songs. No, he said there were Satanic lyrics backwards in the the theme song to Mr. Ed! (I’m hoping they went “Oh, Satan is Lord, of course of course, and no one defies the Lord of the Flies, of course!”)
The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse is Netflixable, and I recommend it highly. It involved the early work of John Kricfalusi, the Ren & Stimpy guy. Each episode got more and more insane.
The first half is somewhat believable to me, if you measure according to something like the actual Ronald Reagan (not the mythical one), but the latter half is, of course, quite silly.
Slightly OT, but a closely related subject: I was about 10 years old and living about an hour away from Bakersfield when the whole McMartin Preschool/Ritual Satanic Sex Abuse panic started up in 1983-84.
Even at 10 years old, I knew it was entirely 100% stupid, and watched horrified while supposedly rational adults gorged their fevered imaginations on rancid bullshit. Lives were destroyed, millions of dollars wasted, and unthinking fear was promoted at the expense of all of us. Whole new million-dollar industries sprouted up, so that insane and/or lying and fraudulent christians could make millions of dollars, gain political power from irrational fear, and ruin more lives by promoting fear and hatred toward a non-existent threat. That’s pretty much their whole game though, isn’t it?
And of course, no prosecutor, accuser, or media flame-fanner ever suffered a tiny little bit for the all the horrors they caused, nor was there ever any big outcry about all the media hype or dishonest marketing going on.
On a happier and more topical note, I was raised vaguely culturally christian, but fortunately in a sane and intellectually healthy manner. My mom actually bought me a Parker Bros. Ouija board for christmas one year (yeah, Mom is damn cool) and it was great silly fun. Then my friend’s mom found out and forbade him from spending the night at our house on weekends, though I was still welcome to go to theirs (and of course, their conservative baptist church the next morning.) It still bugs me that dragging your kid’s friends to your cult meeting is treated as expected and innocent, but if my mother had dared to raise a single peep about silly beliefs regarding cardboard toys, or even defended her actions, the only result would have been me losing a friend.
I remember the McMartin case. Big write up in Time magazine. They recounted what was considered ‘bizarre behavior’ – which turned out, was all quite normal, just spun to sound weird. The ‘satanic conspiracy’ crap was debunked eons ago, but the stories are resilient.
Back in 1985 we had a good group of friends who enjoyed D&D. One guy stopped showing up, we found out later that he had been forced to accept that D&D was worse than Satanism by his Evangelical family. It annoyed the hell out of the rest of us, we were only 13, but we knew stupid when we heard it.
Is the documentary titled “Witch Hunt”, that Shawn Penn narrated about the McMartin Preschool/Ritual Satanic Sex Abuse case? If so, I read a book about it at least ten years ago and would have to say that the local prosecutor named Jangles is a psycho. In the book it said that the first boy who started the whole thing was accusing all kinds of adults under very suspicious and leading interviews, and while being lead out of the interview room at the prosecutors office he began pointing at other prosecutors and facility and saying that they had abused him too. Of course they ignored those people and went after the adults that he incriminated in the interview. Any ass could see that the child was telling them what they wanted to hear…that adults abused him, but when it came to their own being accused…than the child was wrong. Typical religious mantra, “WE are right and everybody else is wrong and we will believe whatever the hell we choose to believe…screw the facts!”
That guy Jangles should have received life in prison for what he did to all those children and families…all for publicity!
Ed Motherfucking Jagels. Read it and weep. Then follow the additional links and weep some more. Conservative corruption and irresponsible self-righteousness at its finest!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Jagels
The inbred conservative elements of “red county” California are every bit as bad as what you can find in Texas or the South. I still live in CA and have no plans to move, but if anyone feels like nuking Bakersfield, it’s fine by me.
Jagels was psychotic, power-mad, and oblivious to evidence (the perfect republican)…also a highly popular man among Bakersfiled conservatives. They re-elected him as DA 6 fucking times, even AFTER all but one of his satanic/sex abuse convictions were overturned and exposed as complete obvious frauds, and cost the county 10 million dollars in lawsuits. Though it never got much attention either, he was also known for railroading all blacks/hispanics as “gang members” to get enhanced sentences, and consistently seeking long sentences for victimless drug crimes. A huge supporter of three strikes laws (of course), he prosectuted a three strikes case wherein a man who hadn’t had a felony since the 1970′s received a 25-year sentence for stealing a pack of donuts worth less than a dollar.
If i thought I could get away with it, I’d gladly run him balls-first through a hand-cranked meat grinder in front of his whole family. Sorry- I didn’t mean to sound like a corrupt republican DA there, but truthfully he deserves no less. I would bet good money that he has ruined more innocent lives through his lying, corruption, and fanaticism than could possibly have been saved by taking any number of criminals off the street.
And for the record- I haven’t seen it yet but from what I understand, the movie “Witch Hunt” isn’t actually about the McMartin case specifically, as none of them were ever convicted of anything after a years-long trial. It’s about the 25 OTHER people who Jagels wrongfully railroaded for similar fantasy-land sex crimes while the McMartin trial was still playing out. You’ve probably never heard of them, of course… the national media, (and the local uber-conservative media, for that matter) didn’t waste too much time worrying about the huge amounts of collateral damage caused by their bullshit panic campaign.
Putting on my slightly cynical skeptic glasses, the common-sense reading of available facts tells me that Jagels was using the incredible media sensation of the McMartin case to get the courts and the public to go along with the possiblity of all of these absurd accusations being a real and pervasive criminal threat, in order to more easily bring excessive and hardly believable charges and obtain questionable convictions and long sentences on cases which were almost as ridiculous as the McMartin case but not as well-defended. The moral panic made it easier to railroad ANYBODY accused of doing ANYTHING to a child, with the child’s coerced, vague, and often contradictory testimony as the only evidence. For a prosecutor, what’s the problem? The devil is being dealt with with righteous thunder, conviction rates go up without all that bother of collecting evidence, and Jagels looks like God’s own man…even after it’s all shown to be bullshit. No matter what he may have believed himself, he knew damn well that in a semi-literate, highly religious conservative stronghold like Bakersfield, he would never in a million years be held accountable for anything.
I’ve never been closely or personally involved in any of these issues or cases, but even as a kid I couldn’t ignore what was going on around me. I realize that this particular moral panic affected people all across the country, but you have to understand…the San Joaquin Valley is full to the brim of poor, angry, uneducated, bigoted, highly religious assholes and semi-literates, and it used to be even worse than it is now. Racism, homophobia, extreme political conservatism, and distrust of the educated were the norm. “Tough on crime” and various other conservative hysterics are an election-year art form there. Not only was there an ignorant, highly religious, reactionary public totally primed for a witch-hunt, but this panic also had the unexpected sting of happening not in dirty Los Angeles or pervert-ridden San Fancisco, but RIGHT HERE AT HOME. Witnessing this panic take hold of friends’ parents, powerful authority figures, and even a few religious and gullible adult relatives of my own was a truly scary experience that has stayed with me this whole time. I only got a small glimpse of the mask that people use to cover their rational humanity so that they can indulge their fears and their hatred, but even so- the face of the inquisition is a terrible thing to behold. Especially if you had thought you could trust the judgement of the person wearing it.
Neil…the title of the documentary, “Witch Hunt”, makes more since now. When you have a community that is as religious as you say they are it is no doubt that they all fear the evil Satan and believe he is a constant threat to them everyday. This is exactly the same scenario the Salem Witch Trials were all about…the mystical Satan infiltrating their everyday lives. And that is what religion does…creates enemies where their are none to install fear…a fear that can only be cured by the church…after you give them 10% of your hard earned $$$.
This psycho Jangles must have support further up the food chain or someone would have been looking to investigate him for all the wrong he has inflicted. From what I remember reading there was all kinds of prosecutor misconduct throughout those trials…This is a perfect example of what a theocracy would bring should we continue to let the religious right enter our political system.
And when I look at the republican candidates that are running…it seems the further right they are the dumber they are.