The Decline of Satan as a Political Force

It occurred to me today that you really don’t hear much about Beelzebub in a political context anymore. I was thinking about my childhood (and gaming in particular – and by gaming I don’t mean video) and remembered all of the dire warnings hurled at me regarding the dark lord.

Dungeons & Dragons was a tool of Satan. Heavy metal music was a tool of Satan. Alcohol was the Devil’s elixir. It seemed like just about everything you might enjoy doing was a tool of corruption placed on Earth by Satan.

You just don’t get that much anymore. I mean, in some pockets, I’m sure those charges are still leveled. They just don’t enter the mainstream consciousness the way they used to. Video games are allegedly bad, but not because they’re a tool of Lucifer, they’re bad for much more concrete reasons. People rage against video games because they claim they rot the minds of our youth or they lead to school shootings, or they’re a gateway drug to heroine. They are no longer simply written off as a tool of the dark arts.

In some ways, that makes me kind of sad. Satan is no longer the guilty party in any activity today’s youth engage in. I actually miss a world where every issue was discussed and debated in terms of Satan’s presence. Even if you partook of the devil’s playthings, there was a certain comfort in knowing it was all part of a great cosmic Yin & Yang. Now we have scientific studies of kids who go on to commit crimes and whether too many hours spent playing Sonic the Hedgehog was to blame. It has become all too sterile, and it’s just not the same.

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