Hans Baldung:
The Witches
(1510)

"Who should we believe, failing right-of-center politicians or successful witch hunters?"

I had thought this expression a tic unique to our incumbent until I read in the morning news that the son of Brazil’s former, now-jailed president also used it to explain why he sneaked out of the country after his opponent’s electoral victory. He claimed that the investigation his government instigated against him amounted to nothing more or less than a witch hunt. That phrase rang a bell because it echoed what I had imagined to be uniquely our incumbent’s tell. Maybe it’s common among failing right-of-center politicians, if that term doesn’t seem too redundant. I understand that our Vice President welcomed this witch-hunt refugee with a fresh visa, even though he came from a country our incumbent has disparaged as being a shithole. Now I wonder what it is about failing right-of-center politicians that attracts witch hunters’ attention. Do these politicians tend to travel with retinues of witches? Is their presence somehow a reliable indicator of covens? I seem to remember that when Viktor Orbán was threatened after he lost that Hungarian election, he had also complained of witch hunters. Hmm.

It might be that the very proclamation of a witch hunt amounts to a feint, an attempt to deflect attention from that infamous failing right-of-center politician crouching behind the curtain. Credible people have raised serious questions about whether witches even exist. Similar doubts have followed about whether the profession of witch hunter could even be credible, given the obvious shortages of witches and the limited powers modern churches have extended to their inquisition operations. Since at least the Middle Ages, both professions, witching and witch-hunting, have existed, if at all in sustainable numbers, in a serious recession, perhaps even a depressed state, incapable of maintaining what had apparently been a rather prominent lifestyle. Once upon a time, I gather, the profession of witch hunter garnered considerable appreciation, for they were seen as the bastion between civilization and an irreligious anarchy. In those days, a few refreshing witch dunkings helped keep the citizenry contained under proper religious control.

Now we live only on rumors of hellions hounding our towns. Except for Halloween, we find little evidence of witchery around us. Yes, I know Whole Foods maintains a stock of witch supplies, but not even failing right-of-center politicians complain that much about being harassed by spells. My granddaughter fancies herself witch material, but, I gather, only because it lets her wear black costumes to school and paint her fingernails. It’s more of a fashion statement than a formal spell-spewing practice for her and for many likewise enthralled little girls. I can appreciate the attraction. Who wouldn’t embrace a role that seems to empower little girls? Well, except for failing right-of-center politicians, especially those with shady histories, like Jeffrey Epstein’s best friend. Speaking of the Epstein matter, I heard that it was also a witch hunt, though it seems to me that I also heard that rumor from another failing right-of-center politician. What is it with these guys and their witch hunters? Hmm.

It might be that, given the severe shortage of seriously threatening witches, witch hunters have started taking contracts to track down failing right-of-center politicians, that there never were any actual witches involved, just former witch hunters. I do not intend to imply that those witch hunters haven’t maintained their witch-hunting credentials, even given the present obvious shortage of threatening witches. I’m confident those still in that profession have taken steps to maintain their underlying skills. It might even be that failing right-of-center politicians exhibit many of the same behavioral patterns once reliably exhibited only by threatening witches, so they now serve as a nearly perfectly respectable replacement, as far as witch hunting goes. This might explain why those failing right-of-center politicians so often claim to see witch hunters tracking them. Not because witches are necessarily about, but because they have become the unwitting analogs of the very prey most witch hunters seek.

I know of no reports of failing right-of-center politicians ever being brought before a sanctioned religious inquisition. None were ever actually burned at any stake. None was even placed in public stocks. It might be that these witch hunters no more exist than an organized witch union still does. Maybe the witch hunters of yore proved so successful that they eliminated the immediate threat posed by unionized covens. Maybe this whole witch-hunting contagion hounding failing right-of-center politicians amounts to nothing more threatening than figments of failing right-of-center politicians’ imaginations. Phantoms. Shadows on particularly threatening cave walls. Plaintive pleas for help from people who know full well that they are just as guilty as their accusers always insisted they’d be. Who should we believe, failing right-of-center politicians or successful witch hunters?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz