Sure: Kids have
friends who smoke weed; if you lie to them about weed, they
will find out that you're lying. How likely are they then to believe what you tell them about
heroin or
crystal meth? Not very.
But that's
beside the point. This has no rational connection to
stopping kids from taking drugs, or persuading them not to, or whatever. It's not about informing people, or disinforming people, or anything like that: This is
sympathetic magic.
They're
driving out the demons by screaming at an
effigy.
It's easy:
Create something that represents what you fear. Burn it, throw rocks at it, throw your
Newspeak Dictionary at it, or whatever. If you want to be a little more
cerebral than that, accuse the
effigy of
crimes against the people and give it a good stiff lecture.
Mock trials are always good.
The details are infinitely variable, but
schematically it's a very simple
rite:
- With solemn mumbling of spells, load all the Bad Things onto the effigy;
- Ceremonially degrade or humiliate the effigy.
And that's it. The
Bad Things have been defeated! The demons have been driven out!
Catharsis for all!
We've been
driving out the demons that way for ten thousand years, and we're still going strong. Remember the
Cultural Revolution? They put
dunce caps on arbitrarily-chosen "
counterrevolutionaries", made them "confess" their "crimes", and not infrequently beat the crap out of them. Remember the
impeachment thing last year? The perceived sins of our nation were ceremonially piled on the hapless
Bill Clinton, and then they ceremonially humiliated the
poor dumb bastard. But they didn't get to light him on fire at the end, so the
right wingers are still dealing with the heartbreak of
catharsis interruptus. It's no joke. They're feeling genuine pain.
I feel their pain, ha ha! :)
I could go on for hours, and there are far uglier examples than the above, but you get the idea. There are more benign examples as well; what is a "
protest"? A ceremony. A spell. Frequently with
literal effigies, just to drive the point home.
Yeah, this phenomenon is already called "
scapegoating", but it's too easy to label something and stop thinking about it.
daz eddy: You've got those demons on the ropes now! Give 'em hell!