I’ve argued in Shield and a Weapon that the Depp v. Heard trial is a modern day witch trial.  

My argument is that the steady drumbeat of Conflict Theory in society, and within Amber’s feminist network, would have been a lens to view Johnny Depp as a monster-oppressor rather than a loving husband, provider, partner, or mentor.

From 1st wave feminist interpretations (Stanton,1895) to Enchanted Feminism and Sociologist Wendy Griffin, and the 2nd wave of feminists to 3rd wave’s, Charmed, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Harry Potter, feminism has been concerned with the stereotypes of witches.

For at least 120 years, literary, historical, biblical, and art criticism techniques, as well as Critical Theory by feminist and Marxist academics and social critics have decried the use of these stereotypes and tropes as a means of oppressing women.  

Some proponents believe these stereotypes are often historical warnings of outlier female behaviors that undermine society if not observed.  Those people are often dismissed as heretics in the modern orthodoxy of correct thinking of the last century. 

Post Darwinian Conditions

Incredible medical achievements over this same period have reduced infant mortality rate.

At the same time, Statista reports:

“…life expectancy (from birth) in the United States has risen from 39.4 years in 1860, to 78.9 years in 2020. One of the major reasons for the overall increase of life expectancy in the last two centuries is the fact that the infant and child mortality rates have decreased by so much during this time. Medical advancements, fewer wars, and improved living standards also mean that people are living longer than they did in previous centuries.

Despite this overall increase, life expectancy dropped three times since 1860; from 1865 to 1870 during the American Civil War, from 1915 to 1920 during the First World War and following the Spanish Flu epidemic, and it has dropped again between 2015 and now. The reason for the most recent drop in life expectancy is not a result of any specific event, but has been attributed to negative societal trends, such as unbalanced diets and sedentary lifestyles, high medical costs, and increasing rates of suicide and drug use.”

It’s possible that modern feminism, with its focus on abortion, aschewing marriage and child rearing for young women to focus on career objectives, trans-ideology / surgery for children, political lesbianism, female political power without responsibilities of citizenship, open borders, use of sigils, false narratives (aka lies) and an obsession with power, may be precisely why these academic feminists are concerned with obscuring and subduing these female witch stereotypes.

With the first drop in life expectancy in 100 years due to “negative societal trends”, feminists may yet again become very concerned with their depictions as modern day witches.

Evolutionary Psychologist Edward Dutton in his book Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West argues that witch persecution may be driven by a collective evolutionary desire to limit social contagion of group fitness damaging ideas and behaviors.

Source: Graphic Anatoly Karlin | Data

This map by Anatoly Karlin show’s Women’s and Gender Studies around the world.  Breanna Fahs at Arizona State University suggests in a paper in Hipatia Press, the nature of these disciplines is akin to a virus.  

This is, of course, a view that I share.

Whether biblical, medieval, or pre-industrial ages, social contagion of pathological, maladaptive ideas that undermine a society’s stability and fitness seems to be driven by Darwinian pressures at the societal level.

Superstitious or religious beliefs aside, the women who would be most likely to be accused of witchcraft would be those with physical, emotional, or personality problems that seemed most likely to spread them.

During times of great turmoil, anxiety, and stress, societies across the world have publicly executed women who had knowingly or unwittingly spread pathology. 

One idea that has some foundation in truth but taken to such an extreme to distort reality for everyone is that men and women are the same.  While men and women are largely similar, the differences in aggression, temperament, personality, biochemistry, mating and competition strategies are so wildly different that an assumption of similarity leads to insanity.

Over the last 120 years we have suffered witches that under normal Darwinian circumstances would have been publicly burned as a warning to others, or exiled to die alone.

I speculate that a century of unhindered spread of group fitness damaging and pathological ideas has undermined society and is causing great stress and even mass hysteria. 

Rather than hold witches to public account for spreading pathology to deter others, we’ve celebrated and raised them up. There are openly feminist teachers in your child’s school, lawyers and judges in family courts, counselors, psychologists, and they’re openly serving in Congress and Senate.

They’ve taken over our critical institutions. 

The solution to handling these modern day witches is beyond my reckoning. The public Defamation trial of Amber Heard is showing that the public has had quite enough. 

The #MeMeMeToo’s invocation of “all women” is starting to lose its glamour.

Despite the realities of Amber’s clear abuse of Johnny Depp, over 50 mainstream media articles and op-ed pieces have come out encouraging others to support this behavior.

Perhaps it’s time we reevaluate the positions of power these modern day witches and their flying monkeys hold.