The Wake

In a recent Gallup poll, they found that twenty percent (that’s one in five) of Americans believe in witches.

Fucking witches.

I would’ve understood if something like 0.015 percent of Americans believed in people with supernatural powers and flying broomsticks and talking cats as I’m sure that 0.015 percent also has been hit in the head with baseball bats over and over again until they became very brain damaged and gullible at some point. I feel like twenty percent is an unacceptable number. There’s only a twelve percent difference in the number of people who believe in witches and the number of people who believe in our president. Luckily, the president is still beating out sorcerers in numbers. Not because George Bush should have more people on his side, but I would expect (and sort of hope for) riots if that were true.

It’s easy enough to take this statistic for its face value, which is essentially that we are a country of absolute morons. But it’s hard to believe that a nation of people that are (supposed to be) reasonably well educated by the time they finish their compulsory education would buy into this. Pick four friends, and apparently one of you is surprised that criminals like the Wicked Witch of the West haven’t worked their way onto the government’s most wanted terrorist lists. Obviously twenty percent of the people and your one dumbass friend don’t represent everyone, but we’re talking witches here. Twenty percent is as good as a hundred.

So why, oh why would we believe this? There’s something so obviously unreal about magical powers that no one should believe it. Puritans may have had their witch crazes, but we have advanced so much in technology and understanding of the world around us that using mysterious invisible forces to explain everything isn’t necessary or justified. When my roommate microwaves a burrito, I won’t try to pitchfork her in the gut for using Satan’s fire to cook her tasty Mexican snack.

But it’s not as though mysterious and invisible powers aren’t around in my life, and I’m not even a terrified farmer in the 1500s. This whole witch deal is a lot like religion. I myself am Christian and believe in a God and that his son died and was resurrected. It isn’t any less ridiculous to believe than that my roommate summoned up the Prince of Lies more quickly heat her burrito. The major difference here and only saving grace of any religious person, who would deny the existence of witches, is that religion is similar to ghosts in that it is right there in the definition that you can’t see it, feel it or hear it. When a witch turns you into a frog, however, I would expect you to feel it or for someone to see it or hear your distressed ribbiting cry.

So religion, something that is undeniably prevalent and a major motivation of every society on the planet, is one reason. But this isn’t twenty percent of the world, this is twenty percent of people in America. I doubt the typical cynical Spaniard believes in witches, and the number of witch supporters in America is high enough that I wouldn’t so much call them a “minority” as much as “a lot of fucking people.” It’s like an adult believing in the tooth fairy, who in it’s self is one big lie we’re all expected to believe.

Most of these lies occur when we’re children. We’re told a lot about the ways of the world in a pretty short amount of time. Before our third birthdays most of us learn that there’s a fat man in red suit who runs a magic sweatshop at the north pole and gives us presents. This isn’t the only lie, though, and religion still has a tentative grasp on Christmas and the fat man. When we’re young we’re told that Columbus discovered America, that the president is always respectable, that you have to wash your hands to kill germs, that your parents are always right, that boys play sports while girls play dress up, that the world is fair and that babies come from storks. Some of those things are true. A lot are not. And as we grow up, we are just expected to know which is which. Most of the time the truth isn’t differentiated from the lies for us. Instead, we have to figure it out ourselves or face living a life of ignorance. Of course, Santa isn’t real. It would be impossible for one person to watch the whole world all the time and make that many presents and travel that fast in one night. But we were able to travel to the moon in outer space which has no air and goes on into for-fucking-ever. There are tiny, tiny organisms on your skin that are trying to infect you, but a bird couldn’t possibly be able to carry a newborn from heaven or wherever to your parents. Dumbass.

It’s the same way grammar works. When a little kid says he “runned” to the store, he isn’t being stupid; he’s trying to follow the rules we’ve taught him. It doesn’t make sense that this one word would break the rules but because it does, it does. As we grow, we learn more about the way words (and the world) work and eventually get it right most of the time, but no one is ever right all the time.

There seems to be some sort of lesson in all of this. I’m not sure how valid a lesson involving people who fly on bristly sticks and command the elements by waving their hands and screaming “abracadabra” or some such shit is. Try to work with me for a minute. Maybe I shouldn’t chastise these people for believing in witches. Maybe it’s just another view of the world that is just as well thought out and logical as mine is. Maybe we should all just calm down with all of the “certainties” or “absolutes” we believe about the world and accept the fact. I mean, at one point, I was absolutely sure that the only people who went to college were smart, eloquent, mature scholars, but yesterday, I tripped on a boy who was lying passed out in front of the Walker Art Center who then apologized for being in the walkway by throwing up on me.