Decades ago, back when I was young, another crazy Satanist pedophile conspiracy theory went around, only it didn’t get connected to politics in any way.

Supposedly, a worker at a preschool somewhere had sexually abused children while performing satanic rituals. Lots of professionals got involved, including mental health workers and so forth, who lent credence to the whole thing.

Then before anybody knew it, reports were popping up all over the country of satanic pedophile rings.

People’s lives got destroyed.

But in the end, it turned out none of it was true, not even the original case. No children involved in that case had been sexually abused, and obviously no satanic rites had been performed over them.

A lot of people still remember those couple years of hysteria. The whole Q Anon thing may owe something to it. But whether it does or not, it demonstrates the human tendency to give credence to fearful stories.

If we can’t be afraid of the things that are really hurting us, then we will believe that other things, scarier things are true.

I suppose it’s some kind of psychological transference.

I don’t know what the answer is, but back when I was a kid the Satanic pedophile thing burned out eventually as more and more calm voices of reason spoke up.

I hope this one does too.