So Now the Right Wing is Going After a Twelve Year old Boy and His Family

This is outrageous, and people should be outraged, about what these people are doing to 12 year old Graeme Frost and his family. They are being stalked and threatened with violence simply because he went on the air and told how his life was saved by S-Chip in response to Bush's radio address..

That being said, there are people out there who do outrage better than I do. Heck, they just plain write better than I do, people like Ezra Klein, Lower Manhattanite of the Group News Blog, Jim Henley, Tbogg, John Amato of C&L, and pretty much anyone else on the internet.

Instead, I want to look at causes, and precedents, and I founc a very old one, Maenadic rites, the charismatic worship of Dionysus, where "The mysteries of Dionysus inspired the women to ecstatic frenzy; they indulged in copious amounts of violence, bloodletting, sexual activity, self-intoxication, and mutilation."

There were no drugs. A large group of women woud get together in the woods, and begin to pray, and chant, and laugh, and sing, and slowly, as a group, they would work themselves into a frenzy, and then they would then typically find some animal or animals, and rip them to pieces and eat them raw.

There were no drugs, nothing but music, dancing, group hysteria, and catharsis.

Once they were finished, they would look at themselves, and see their bodies covered in blood, and they would be relieved, but they would also be ashamed. It provided release, as ancient Greek women lived very secluded and regimented lives, and needed release, and it created shame, which kept them in line.

It was central to how the Greeks controlled their women, and the Romans, with a far more emancipated role for women, eventually prohibited the worship of Dionysus by more than about a dozen women at a time, because they neither needed nor wanted this form of bondage for their women.

The right wing has created its own Maenads, and it is not a pretty site.

In fact, it is their model for the United States, and its citizens for the future.