The dumbing-down of America hits a nerve

Lincoln Courier
Sat, November 20, 2021

“What's going on here?”

That's what I was wondering last week when a bunch of emails showed up in my Inbox, all related to the column I had written and submitted for last Saturday's edition of The Courier. You see, those messages began to arrive on Thursday, a few days before my column was scheduled for publication.

Hmmm, I wonder if there are some folks out there who can see into the future and know exactly what I wrote – long before it appears in a public forum. That sounded far-fetched – and it was. I turned to Leisa Richardson, executive editor for the State Journal-Register and this newspaper, for an answer.

She explained that the newspapers are digital-first, meaning that columns and stories scheduled for print editions are first published on newspaper websites and that, per an agreement with Yahoo News and Apple News, those Internet outlets have publishing rights for newspaper content. I then replied to a couple of those email writers, asking them where they had read my column. Turns out, it was published on the Yahoo News website prior to the Saturday publication date.

I received more than a dozen responses to my column from total strangers, some even asking if I were a real person or someone using a fake name to write this type of column.

In case you didn't read it, the column was all about the dumbing-down of our great country, as evidenced by Harvard-educated U.S. Senator Ted Cruz from Texas picking a fight with Sesame Street's Big Bird over a COVID-19 vaccination promotion aimed at kids by the yellow-feathered critter, and also highlighted by the gathering of a QAnon throng in Dallas awaiting the return of John F. Kennedy Jr. Never mind that JFK Jr. died in a 1999 plane crash. He obviously was a no-show.

Word had circulated among the QAnon disciples that the young Kennedy was returning to his worldly self to declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election and that he – JFK Jr. – would serve as his vice president.

Pretty silly stuff, huh? But let's not kid ourselves. Hundreds of thousands of Americans still believe Trump won the election and never mind that JFK Jr. was brought up in a famous American family with strong liberal viewpoints far removed from far-right philosophy. I can't help but wonder if many in that Dallas throng wouldn't delight in having a well-roasted Big Bird on their Thanksgiving table next week.

I'd like to share bits and pieces of some of the emails I received from throughout the country. Most writers were supportive of my viewpoints, but then, there was Muneerah Aoudad, whose email address describes her as “one nice lady1.” I don't believe Ms. Aouad was especially nice to me. Here's what she wrote:

“Mr. Tackett, I read your dumb article. Yes sir, it's just plain dumb. It's obvious in your old age that you still do not have a clue what is going on in this country. I made the sad, sorry mistake of being a democrat for years. I watched as they destroyed the lives of Americans.

“Perhaps you should take a trip to Los Angeles and then you can see what the DemoRats have done. Los Angeles, up until about 1990, was a thriving city and the largest post-production center in the world for the movie industry. Now, they do not film in Los Angeles.

Dan Tackett

“Meanwhile, the stupid DemoRATS continued to keep the southern border open and they made sure that Los Angeles was infected with millions and millions of illegal aliens who all got welfare, HUD housing, food stamps and our American jobs to the point that now in 2021, white or Black Americans cannot get a job in Los Angeles, which is ran by Latinos, including a Latino idiot mayor. Los Angeles has the worst homeless crisis of Americans sleeping on the streets of any place in the world!

“Do you think you can fly over and get a hotel in Los Angeles? Give it a try. Your hotel neighbors will be homeless drug addicts. I went to the east coast when I saw LA slipping into the muck in 2000 only to return in 2013 and to discover that I would never get a job there. I left and moved to the San Francisco Bay area, which is now being attacked by the Latinos.

“Very soon I will need to pack up and move. This time out of the U.S. And the DemoRats said we seniors would get dental care, eyeglasses and hearing aids. Now all that was a lie. What is true is that our Medicare is going up Jan .1 from $144 to $170, and I will never get my dentures, because no one regulates the cost of dental work and it now costs more than going to a doctor!

“Thank you DemoRAT!”

Folks who sided with my column threw out plenty of reasons why they believe American sanity is on a slippery slope. Here's a sampling:

From David Hildy: “This nonsense all began with Karl Rove. I'd forgotten that he castigated Max Cleland on the discussion of patriotism, but there's your lead in to QAnon, which led up to John McCain being accused of not being a hero because he got caught.

“Thank you for your article and it would seem to me that the Democrats need a ‘Joe the Plumber’ mouthpiece to counter the dumbness. Intellectuals will not be heard – needs to be a no-namer who's used by Democrats to spout common sense.”

From Michael Murray: “Unfortunately, you are 100% correct. These days I am continually asking myself, ‘How did we get here?’ There seems to be no end in sight. I wonder if it is all just one really bad dream.

“Thank you for your insight. I am not going crazy.”

From Manju Rupani: “Thank you for your article. Could not agree more.

“I would blame technology for dumbing our country as well. When the large tech companies are promoting themselves as leaders of science and goodness, we have a major problem.”

From Carroll Shirkey: Loved what you had to say. You’re right about the events and clowns involved. I’ve been saying America needs a re-boot – quickly.

From Tina Roeser: “I came across an article you wrote talking about America being dumb. Interesting. I feel we've been dumb for awhile.

“A few months ago, my husband and I were watching a program on PBS about Woodstock. In it, we noticed that nobody there was fat. The narrator said they ran out of food at the event rather quickly. People in surrounding towns were asked if they could help out with food. They sent eggs and oatmeal. I thought, ‘What, no chips?’ None of the junk we exist on today. Junk filled with additives and preservatives that the Food and Drug Administration has OK'd for consumption. Interesting

“Didn't the Food and Drug Administration say opioids were safe without being addictive, too? That went well, didn't it? Worked really well for those raking in the dough.

“But wait, here comes COVID. That really took the focus off opioids, didn't it? The problem is still with us, but you don't hear about the deaths from drug overdoses in the news anymore. All of my life, I'd hear ‘my doc say, ‘It's just a virus. It has to run its course,' if I asked about antibiotics for a cold or flu.

“There is no denying this virus is real and it is deadly. I think the vaccines were pushed through for profit. Hearing about side effects that can happen with them is frightening. Who wants a blood clot or inflammation of the heart? That's just two of them.

“America is getting dumb? I think we've been dumb for blindly following the FDA.”

From Anne Augustyn: “Gee, Dan, you missed a couple of obvious ones, like all of the media talking ‘heads who called the left-wing riots of 2020 ‘peaceful protests’ or of Joe Biden's plan to pay certain illegal immigrants $450,000 per person, both of which seem dumb to me. But I guess those examples don't seem dumb to you or at least don't support your agenda.”

From Steve Verbancsics: “Having read your column, you might find the following interesting (depressing? Not unexpected?)

“After the Dallas follies I couldn't help but reply to someone who took it all seriously: ‘You know of course that this is all being run by Ben Franklin and The Hellfire Club from their headquarters underneath The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier.’

“I doubt that you will be surprised that the person I replied to started a serious discussion of what I had said.

“The other thing is that having at one point been a night watchman for the Sesame Street set when I was going to Columbia in the late 60's, I can attest that even asleep Big Bird is more intelligent and a better conversationalist than teedie mexi-cruz.”

***

I'd be remiss if I didn't take the time and a few drops of printer's ink to sincerely wish you all a wonderful Thanksgiving and a blessed holiday season.

Dan Tackett is a retired managing editor of The Courier. He can be reached at dtackett@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Lincoln Courier: Is American sanity on a slippery slope? Readers voice their opinion

WitchTok: the rise of the occult on social media has eerie parallels with the 16th century

October 28, 2021 

It’s 1.30am in the morning, and I’m about to watch a duel between magicians. One is a “demonolater”, a word I have never heard before, someone who claims they worship demons and can petition them in return for knowledge or power. The other describes themselves as a “Solomonic magician”, and claims to be able to command demons to do his bidding, as some Jewish and Islamic traditions have believed of King Solomon, who ruled Israel in the 10th century BC.

I first discovered this debate because, in the course of studying 16th century books of magic attributed to Solomon, I had found, to my astonishment, that “Solomonic magic” is still alive and well today, and growing in popularity. Twitter had suggested to me that I might be interested in an account called “Solomonic magic”, and a few clicks later I had found myself immersed in a vast online community of young occultists, tweeting and retweeting the latest theories and controversies, and using TikTok to share their craft.

To my further bemusement, it seemed that the tradition of Solomonic magic had recently faced accusations that its strict and authoritative approach to the command of demons amounted to a form of abuse, akin to domestic violence. As I had made a note in my diary of a public debate that I wanted to attend out of sheer curiosity, it seemed astonishing to be asking myself whether Solomonic magic, the same found in books of necromancy dating back hundreds of years, was on the brink of cancellation in 2021.

At 28, I’m slightly too old to be familiar with the platform Twitch, mostly used for live video streaming, but tonight I’ve managed to get it working for this particular debate. As an atheist, I’m very likely in the minority, though I’m not the only Brit to have turned up in spite of it being such an ungodly hour this side of the pond. The chat box is buzzing as occultists of various stripes arrive to hear the arguments.

My mum would hate this, I can’t help thinking to myself. She didn’t even let me read Harry Potter.

When people ask me what I do, it’s always fun to tell them, “I study magic at Cambridge University.” It’s technically true. I’m researching the representation of magic on the early modern stage, and am interested in the ways in which dangerous, forbidden or “occult” knowledge was theorised by Shakespeare and his contemporaries. My research combines my fascination with the mechanisms of belief with my love of storytelling and the stage. When I’m not researching plays, I’m writing them: I’m an award-winning playwright, whose work has been performed across the UK and abroad.

British painter George Romney was only one of many artists whose imagination was inspired by the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Suspending disbelief is my forte, but actually believing is something I’ve never been very good at. The history of magic fascinates me because it is a history of people – of human faults and foibles, vanities, hopes and needs – rather than because of any genuine investment in the esoteric. This is why I’m here to listen to articulate and likeable young people across the globe discussing theories of knowledge and the supernatural – beliefs to which I myself cannot subscribe.

Even more astonishingly, these Generation Z occultists, with their substantial followings on Twitter and TikTok, are about to debate a form of magic that lies at the heart of my research into Shakespeare’s England.

This story is part of Conversation Insights
The Insights team generates long-form journalism and is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects to tackle societal and scientific challenges.

The rise of WitchTok

While the most watched TikTok videos may appear asinine to anyone who doesn’t enjoy teenagers lip syncing to popular songs, some surprising subcultures have arisen since the platform’s inception in 2017. One of these is the “WitchTok” community. Videos labelled #WitchTok have so far clocked up an impressive 18.7 billion views.

I accidentally found WitchTok because I had – to my shame, I’ll admit – found it calming to watch compilations of Cottagecore TikTok videos in my breaks during PhD research. Cottagecore is a popular fashion and lifestyle aesthetic that evokes the bucolic idyll of country living. Cottagecore videos are saccharine and safe: jam is preserved, mushrooms are picked, and flowing dresses stream across ripe fields while a girlfriend holds the camera and gentle music plays.

Cottagecore TikToks are perfect means of escapism, featuring castles, fields, elf ears, and magic flutes, among other elements of wonder.

In short, it is pure escapism, and so is WitchTok; creators of WitchToks often also make Cottagecore videos. Yet, where Cottagecore offers hope for a good, green world that just might be baked and planted into existence, WitchTok audaciously skips past the bounds of possibility, and promises supernatural means of making life more bearable.

The abundance of magic on TikTok piqued my interest, representing as it does a new frontier in popular belief. It has also caught the attention of mainstream media. In April 2021, for example, the Financial Times consulted anthropologists and theologians who scrambled to interpret this strange turnout of events. Its author noted with astonishment that #WitchTok had surpassed #Biden by over 2 billion views and is now leading by around 6 billion and counting.

Practical magic

TikTok allows its users to make 15-second video clips, or a string of 15-second clips of no more than 60 seconds in total. This format lends itself to fast-paced, visually appealing content, and this has shaped the kind of magic found on WitchTok. Spells using candles, bottles, crystals and herbs make for snappy and succinct tutorials which can be readily imitated by the viewer.

Tarot reading has become a viral trend on WitchTok.

Interactive WitchToks are particularly popular, usually using tarot cards or pendulum boards, where a crystal is dangled over a set of words, supposedly swinging over the truth when asked a simple question. By urging the viewer to participate, to “think of a question you want an answer for”, creators are conspicuously gaming TikTok’s algorithm, keeping people watching and encouraging engagement, while claiming that it was supernatural power that drew them to a video.

Brevity is the soul of WitchTok, where complex tarot spreads are abandoned for a one or three card message told to an audience of millions in 30 seconds. Carving a magical symbol into a candle upstages convoluted and expensive ritual magic from more formal, structured esoteric systems, where a single spell can take a day or more.

What, then, are TikTok users looking for in their magical clips of 60 seconds or less? The most common functions of a spell seem to be love, money, healing or revenge, particularly vengeance on behalf of a loved one, whether wronged by a school bully or abusive husband. Magic appeals because life is unfair, and power is a pleasant fantasy. In this regard, WitchTok is no different from any other magical tradition.

Witchtok hunters

The occult subculture is a controversial one, and the witches of TikTok are a particularly powerful magnet for outrage and mockery. They have come under fire from three main types of enemies who appear in turn as caricatures in WitchTok videos.

The first one of these is an interloper who I’ll call “the angry Christian”. When pantomimed in a WitchTok, the angry Christian blazes with furious indignation, railing against the evils of magic, till they are silenced with a sassy retort or threat of a hex. The angry Christian believes in magic, in Satan and in the occult. They simply think you’ll risk your soul if you engage with it. The Christians I grew up with are cut from precisely this cloth.

Less common than the angry Christian but occupying a similarly villainous role is “the smarmy sceptic”, the unbeliever who has no interest in any kind of faith. WitchTok videos often dramatise fantasy conversations with them, imagining ominous retorts: “Don’t believe in curses? Sure! Just give me a lock of your hair then … no?” In some ways the smarmy sceptic is worse than the angry Christian, refusing point blank to be “spiritual” at all. I’m afraid this is probably the category into which I would be placed.

Intriguingly, however, a third opponent has arisen from within the occult community itself. This is what I am calling “the learned magician”, a practitioner who takes the occult seriously as a complex and scholarly pursuit, delighting in the theory, the complexity of rituals, and the broader philosophical implications of their beliefs.

Not quite so TikTok-friendly, they tend to make an occasional appearance when the trends of WitchTok deviate from the logic of a particular magical system, stepping in to correct the new “baby witches” and expressing exasperation with controversies that will sound familiar even to those with no interest in the occult. (Is it cultural appropriation to wear an evil eye pendant? Does calling for discipline in magical ritual equate to a form of fascism?)

Learned magicians sometimes take to TikTok to set the record straight for ‘baby witches’.

Some learned magicians are attempting to bridge the gap. Gen-Z occultist Georgina Rose or “Da’at Darling” – who has convened the debate between the demonolater and Solomonic mage to which I am about to listen – puts out a prolific array of content ranging from introductory YouTube lectures to witty tweets and TikToks.

Upset by the “rise of anti-intellectualism in Generation-Z heavy online occult spaces”, she responded, appropriately, with a successful TikTok hashtag: #DefendOccultBooks. Perhaps not an outright “enemy” of Witchtok, after all – as “Da’at Darling” puts it, “it is important to reach this platform, so new practitioners can have good information on the occult” – the learned magician is still, at best, tolerant of the trends of TikTok spirituality.

Here, then, is a new theatre of ideas where innovative technology has not quelled ancient magical practices but has advanced them, giving rise to new forms of faith and schism. If the unbelieving reader is asking themselves how a new age of occultism has arisen in a supposedly enlightened modern age, when surely the tech-literate young know better than to return to ancient superstition, they need look no further than a parallel series of events in Shakespeare’s England. This was a time when innovations in technology and culture served to reinvent and energise ancient magical beliefs.

The occult renaissance

In medieval England, getting your hands on a book of magic was a tricky business. Prior to the invention of the printing press, handwritten texts were passed around in manuscript form between those lucky enough to have been taught how to read. Costly and time-consuming, the production of a book was simply not worth the effort unless the contents truly mattered.

In spite of this, from the mid-13th century onwards, a series of treatises that dealt with occult knowledge were translated into Latin and various European languages, slipping covertly between the personal libraries of wealthy men. If the Renaissance can be characterised more widely as a period of translation of classical wisdom, so too was it an era when occult “wisdom” began to circulate more widely than before.

Grimoires, or ‘spellbooks’, had a great influence on science and religion. 

Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Books of magic, or “grimoires”, a word which derives from the French grammaire, promised, like ordinary school grammars, to teach the reader the rudiments of a new language, though this was the language of spell-making and devil-raising. Grimoires were frequently attributed to famous men of esoteric learning, and the wise king Solomon in particular appealed to Christian readers. If Solomon had authored such a text, could not the wise Christian reader likewise practice the occult without endangering his soul?

Rumour of the grimoires and their grim rituals would circulate widely throughout the medieval era while the actual, often comparatively bland contents, remained obscure.

The occult reformation

The introduction of printing press technology to Europe in the 15th century revolutionised the speed and scale by which all texts could be produced. It was the printing press which facilitated the Protestant Reformation, and it was also the printing press which was responsible for the introduction of the occult grimoires to a larger audience than ever before.

Surprisingly, this occult reformation was enacted not by magicians themselves, but by a series of sceptics who believed that, by revealing in print the content of infamous esoteric manuscripts, they could expose them to the ridicule that they deserved.

Dutch scholar Johann Weyer’s Latin treatise De Praestigiis Daemonum or “On the Tricks of Demons” was published in 1563. It was one of the first great sceptical works debunking magic, criticising notorious witch hunting manuals like the Malleus Maleficarum and, indeed, successfully curbing some of the continental witch trials. Weyer’s work had a huge influence on one Englishman in particular, Reginald Scot, who borrowed from it in his own book, The Discovery of Witchcraft, first published in 1584.

The Malleus Maleficarum is a manual for hunting witches that would serve as guidance for 15th century witch trials. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Scot’s The Discovery is a thrilling exposé of both the folk magic practised by witches and the “learned” magic found in grimoires, particularly those attributed to Solomon. Weyer had included, as an appendix to De Praestigiis Daemonum, a direct translation of a Solomonic grimoire which listed the names and ranks of various demons, and how a magician might go about conjuring and commanding them as, supposedly, could Solomon.

Scot “Englished” much of this appendix for his book, concluding scathingly: “He that can be perswaded that these things are true … may soone be brought to beleeve that the moone is made of green cheese.”

Though by no means an atheist – nobody was, at least not openly, in the 1500s - Scot was certainly a smarmy sceptic, and The Discovery shares the exasperated horror of Richard Dawkin’s The God Delusion (2006) at the excesses of superstition and belief. Joined by George Gifford’s A discourse of the Subtill Practices of Deuilles by Vvitches and Sorcerers by which Men are and Haue Bin Greatly Deluded (1587) and Henry Howard’s A Defensatiue Against the Poyson of Supposed Prophesies (1583), Scot’s treatise seemed to ride the crest of a new wave of scepticism concerning the whole project of magic in general.

Surely the genie was out of the bottle (or demon out of the brazen bowl, as the Solomonic grimoires would describe it). Now that occult beliefs had been so thoroughly exposed and ridiculed, how could they possibly survive?

King James and the witches

In 1597, King James VI of Scotland, who would inherit the English throne in 1603, published an extraordinary treatise: Daemonologie. The book was not, as the name might suggest, a grimoire-like guide to the conjuration of demons, but rather a serious study of demonic power and the harm it could inflict. King James did not accept the suggestion that any man, even if he was as wise as Solomon, could seriously practise magic without risk to his soul. Nor did he believe, as the smarmy sceptics did, that there was no real threat whatsoever.

James was an angry Christian, a man who believed, sincerely, in the power of the occult and felt duty-bound to protect his people from it in all its forms. He had nothing but contempt for the likes of Scot, whom he regarded, in much the same way as a modern Christian fundamentalist might regard an unbeliever, as a dangerous mocker who did the Devil’s work for him by dismissing the real threat that magic posed.

Even worse, Scot and his fellows had inadvertently introduced into printed English, for the first time, the detail of dangerous grimoire magic which had formerly reached only limited circulation. While it is a myth that James ordered copies of The Discovery to be burned, extracts from the text were indeed consigned to the fire during the witch trials of the 17th century, when sections were found, freed from their original sceptical context, in the documents of those accused of witchcraft.
One devil too many

My PhD looks specifically at the fallout of this fascinating cultural clash in the work of the early modern dramatists, and I am particularly interested in the overlooked presence of Solomon in these debates. Most famously, it was Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus which sparked a vogue for plays that dealt with the question of the learned magician.

Doctor Faustus raised many objections due to its interplay with the demonic realm. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Written in around 1588, Doctor Faustus drew on Scot’s The Discovery in its representation of magic, yet discarded its dismissive tone. Faustus succeeds in summoning the demon Mephistopheles, and signs away his soul in a contract written with his own blood in return for 24 years of power. After wasting his time on petty vengeances, greed and lust, Faustus is finally sent to hell.

Rumour circulated that an extra devil had been seen on stage during the play, a fact which the Puritan William Prynne would gleefully repeat as proof of the evils of theatre in his Histriomastix, 1632. Magicians who both did and did not achieve their hoped-for Solomonic command of occult forces would populate the English stage for decades.

Scot and the sceptics had indeed laid bare the detail of occult belief, and their work was highly influential, but it had precisely the opposite of their desired effect. Advances in technology, accessible English translations and an entertainment industry hungry for a good story had conspired to democratise magic. The process they unwittingly began continues today on TikTok and elsewhere.

Solomon on trial

It’s a strange truth that grimoire magic is more widely available in 2021 than ever before, and that it is the internet which has popularised exactly the same material that was hidden in a handful of libraries for the first few hundred years of its presence in Europe.

With the debate about the ethics of Solomonic magic underway on Twitch, I hardly dare imagine Scot’s horror, much less King James’s, to hear phrases like “pro-demon rights” from a young person describing themselves as a “demonolater” and “magic is the scientific study of conversations with spiritual beings” from a self-professed “Solomonic mage”.

The latter has done a good job of persuading the Twitch stream that commanding demons is not inherently disrespectful, though a poorly-judged comparison between the authority of the magician and that of the policeman sparks momentary indignation in the chat.

Nevertheless, the debate is civil and ends with discussions of new online editions of the rare grimoires. It seems the magical incarnation of King Solomon will live to exorcise another day, and I can’t say I’m surprised. The historical inability of sceptical dismissals and technological advances to do anything other than encourage belief in magic has persuaded me that the fundamentalists are right in one respect: speak of the devil and he shall appear – and that goes for TikTok too.

Author

Rebekah King
PhD Candidate, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

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COMMENT

Ian Tully

masuk via Google

Superstition (folk religion) has always been there, and perhaps one of the reasons why there is such an outbreak of witch-hunting in the early modern period is that the superstition tolerated and incorporated in the Roman Catholic Church was challenged by the Protestant Reformation. There is something quite similar 500 years earlier when the Church, led by the reforming monk Bernard of Clairvaux, attacks pagan folk religion as Satanic.

One can also point to other periods of stress as in the late-18th century when alongside Enlightenment Rationalism there is a flourishing of Rosicrucian belief and the semi-serious Satanism of the Hellfire Club among others. Folklore and ‘Gothic tales are popular just as rational science is making its greatest strides. Again the same trends can be found at the Fin de Sciecle when there is a flourishing of Rosicurianism and other exotics, Satanism in France and Germany, and Spiritualism especially after the slaughter of the Great War, which marked the end of much male Church attendence and a radical decline in the safe magic of British Masonry. The attraction of magic to some Nazis is well-known and they were the products of this period.

There is really no difference between this and the Witchdoctor led beliefs of the non-Western world. They all draw on the same ideas and they can all point to some “proofs” because if people believe, and fear is a good basis for belief, they can experience psycho-physical effects. I knew of a Dyak soldier who was quite literally dying from a curse because he believed in it. The growth of fringe Christian sects, notably in the Third World which appeal emontionally and sometimes as with the Properity Churches economically too, meet a gap that reformed Religion (even the contemporary Roman Catholic one) does not address. Teenagers are particularly susceptible because they both feel powerless and have a desire for power which is often associated for them with sexual power, hence boys especially have been drawn to the Occult. This is rather different from the silly cartoon stuff although that can be an entry point, just as we have recently been reminded that the anti-rationalism of “New Age” thinking can lead to extremist Right-Wing political positions.