Burning witches in the modern era

Plenty of people are willing to incite a mob if it earns them a little more celebrity, power or influence — regardless of who gets burned at the stake as a result.

When we look back on the “logic” of identifying witches in the 16^th century, one can easily conclude that, several hundred years ago, humans were pretty much idiots.

The truth, however, is that we’ve never really stopped being idiots — our unprecedented access to better ideas, information and knowledge notwithstanding. Tell us a story we want to hear, give us some lofty-sounding rationalization for our worst impulses, and (as a group) we’ll believe just about anything. (Or burn just about anyone.)

Mobs, as it turns out, are pretty easy to incite.

Intrinsically, we seem to know this basic principle about our fellow man, which is likely one of the reasons “fake news” is such a concern in our modern era — we know just how easy it is to whip people into joining a deranged throng of villagers clamoring for someone to be burned at the stake.

And, apparently, there are plenty of ways to profit for those who are willing to incite such mobs — as is evidenced by the recent drama over Fox News peddling election-fraud conspiracies that the network’s hosts, themselves, privately admitted were outlandish.

Of course, it would be a mistake to think such grifting disregard for actual facts only occurs within the newsrooms of America’s “conservative” news organization. Indeed, fact-tethered journalism has long been on the decline. During the pandemic, for example, news organizations were more than happy to discredit any voice that raised reasonable skepticism about the government’s official talking points — even when, as Jon Stewart pointed out in hilarious fashion, the government’s explanations were patently absurd on their face.

Increasingly, it seems we live in an age where peddling outrage and controversy — inciting mobs and breeding contempt — is a profitable business for those seeking wealth, celebrity or political influence.