We don’t often talk about religion on this blog, because our political views are often divisive enough so why toss gasoline on that fire? But every once in a while, a religious topic comes up that is so absurdly amusing that we must talk about it.
Apparently, according to the “Freedom Caucus” at the state legislature, Satan is a clear and present threat to our wonderful state and must be eradicated.
Has there been a rash of Satanic altars put up on state property recently, so much so that it warranted a legislative response? Of course not. But it wouldn’t be the first time that politicians have invented a problem in order to deliver a solution.
In this case, the brainiac who is delivering this critical bill to the good people of Arizona is none other than Senator Jake Hoffman. For those who are unaware, Hoffman got a lot of heat for operating “troll farms”, operations where he hired scores of teenagers to post misinformation, to pose as people other than themselves, and set up all sorts of fake accounts and groups in order to muddy the waters of the collective conversation and mislead potential voters. While some social media platforms used questionable bans to limit speech they disagreed with, in this case Hoffman’s subsequent bans from all major social media platforms was well-earned.
The Satan Problem has actually been one that we covered on this blog: as you can see in our coverage, Scottsdale came perilously close to falling into the evil clutches of Satan and becoming the Dark Capital of Hades. If your definition of “perilously close” is a couple dozen 20-somethings wearing black, selling Tarot cards, and listening to Norwegian death metal that is. So perhaps we should thank Hoffman for delivering us from this mortal threat.
Hopefully the sarcasm comes through on that last paragraph. There doesn’t seem to be any case of Satanism getting a significant foothold in modern society across the entire first world. It is another example of the time-honored tradition of politicians not taking the difficult route of bringing together stakeholders to build real solutions to real problems, but instead using taxpayer resources to cravenly cater to a special interest group with no actual benefit to society.
While this wouldn’t be the first case of a solution inventing a problem, it’s easily one of the more amusing ones. That said, the fact that we can laugh at this doesn’t make it less absurd and less of an indicator of a feckless politician desperately looking to get attention (especially considering that he can’t use social media to do so). We deserve serious leaders doing serious work, and this ain’t it.