If you had the misfortune of living in 17th century colonial Massachusetts, it would not have taken much for you to be labeled a witch. Those suspected of witchcraft, and executed for it, did not need to be seen flying through the air on a broom. Some were burned simply for associating with other suspected witches. Some for having certain physical traits thought to be marks of witchery. Your age and gender, your social class, your family, all of these were thought to be passive clues, potentially indicating that you are a witch, or possibly a witch, or witch-adjacent.
We would like to think that things are different now in our enlightened times, but humans are humans. The witch trials were born from the very human tendency to invent new enemies in our heads, and then to suddenly find them everywhere we turn. We have many such bogeymen in our culture. They are more likely to be punished with mockery and alienation rather than incineration, but, as we have seen, the latter option hasn’t been taken off the table entirely. The actor Chris Pratt has experienced this week, and not for the first time, the wrath of the modern witch hunters. His suspected crime: being a Christian, a conservative, and, worst of all, a Trump voter.
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