I out-Reutered Reuters there!
This is the “news service” that insists on using scare quotes when it writes words like “terrorism,” since according to Reuters, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
But I used the scare quotes around “death threats” for a different reason. I have a theory about “death threats,” and that is that with very few exceptions, anyone who publicly claims to be receiving death threats is lying.
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Why do I believe this? Because these public claims almost always come from people who have found themselves in the news for doing something wrong, or at the very least extremely unpopular. The claim that you’re receiving “death threats” is the quickest way to turn you from villain to hero, especially when sympathetic media will run with the the claim uncritically.
So do note: If the witches hoping to hex Brett Kavanaugh had claimed they were being threatened by terrorists, Reuters would clearly have applied scare quotes to the operative word. But let them claim “death threats,” and they can count on plenty of sympathetic reporting:
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The planned casting of an anti-Kavanaugh spell, one of the more striking instances of politically disgruntled Americans turning to the supernatural when frustrated by democracy, has drawn backlash from some Christian groups but support from like-minded witch covens.
“It gives the people who are seeking agency a little bit of chance to have that back,” Madara said. The ritual was scheduled to be livestreamed on Facebook and Instagram at 8 p.m. EDT on Saturday (1200 GMT Sunday).
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Seated at a desk phone among bird skulls and crystal balls at Catland Books, the occult shop she co-owns, Madara said the Kavanaugh hex is expected to be the most popular event the store has hosted since its 2013 opening, including spells aimed at President Donald Trump. Madara declined to provide details of what the latest ritual will entail.
More than 15,000 people who have seen Catland Books promotions on Facebook have expressed interest in attending the event, vastly exceeding the shop’s 60-person capacity.
You didn't prank call the coven and read them Acts 19:17-20, did you?Not everyone is a witchcraft fan. Madara said she had fielded numerous irate calls from critics, with at least one threatening violence. “Every time we host something like this there’s always people who like to call in with death threats or read us scripture,” she said.
As you can see, to a witch, being read scripture or being threatened with death both fall into the same category. That’s actually not surprising when you consider the spirits you’re really addressing when you phone up the coven and start quoting Acts 19. They don’t like that and they don’t want to hear it. You’re invoking the very authority under which they cannot stand.
But back to the “death threats.”
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You might almost call it understandable that “every time we host something like this” (trying to put a hex on someone), there might be some people out there who are ticked off about it. But what kind of people would actually be concerned about it?
Well, of course, we talked about this on Friday. If you understand the workings of the supernatural at all, it’s because you’ve done your biblical homework and recognize that these fools are cavorting with demons even if they have no understanding that that’s what’s going on.
Now, if you have that much understanding of the supernatural, then you also understand a) threatening to kill someone isn’t going to do a bit of good because someone’s temporal existence is beside the point; and b) threatening to kill someone means you are now messing around with the same demonic business you’re supposedly objecting to in others.
I suppose you might counter that not everyone who hears about this and doesn’t like it has such an advanced understanding of the spiritual implications, and that’s true, but this brings me to the second reason the “death threat” claims are nonsense:
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There is no longer such a thing as an anonymous phone call. If you call someone for the purpose of threatening to kill them, their number shows up on your phone. It can be reported to the police, and if the threat is real, it will be. Even the biggest lunkheads know this.
So if our witch friends were really getting death threats via phone, they could easily show us the phone numbers of those who called in. But they won’t, because there were no death threats.
They’re just playing that card like most malefactors who can’t figure out any other way to turn themselves from creeps into sympathetic figures. And they know the media will play right along.
The “witches hex Kavanaugh” story is not one the media wants told, because it makes their side look evil and ridiculous. The “witches receive death threats from Christian conservatives” story is much more to their liking, and they don’t even have to demonstrate that it’s true.
Which is a good thing for them, because they can’t, because it’s not.
