Like What?
I’m still wondering if I should feel slightly offended by a recent New York Times article profiling the abhorrent crimes and mental breakdown of Army Specialist Robert H. Marko. Marko, who believed he was an “alien dinosaur-like creature, and that he would transform from his human form into his Black Raptor form on his 21st birthday”, had a history of neurological problems but was still classified as “deployable” by the Army. NYT reporters Dan Frosch and Lizette Alvarez then chose a somewhat insulting descriptor for Marko’s worldview.
“After joining the Army, his “unusual beliefs” in his Black Raptor alter-ego resulted in his being referred for psychiatric evaluations three times. Ultimately, the beliefs came to be viewed by his mental health evaluators as a religion, of sorts, like Wicca.”
Like what? I’m not sure how I should read this, that a demented philosophy that drove a troubled young man to rape and murder people is somehow “like Wicca”? That “Wicca” is now a easy way to convey a non-typical belief system? Was “Wicca” as a descriptor used by military mental health evaluators, or was it placed there by the NYT reporters?
Whether it was the military who classified a delusional man with a “history of behavioral health issues” as having a Wicca-like religion, or it was the reporters searching for a way to describe someone who thought they were a dinosaur, we have a problem. Either there are Army psychiatrists who feel Wicca is little better than mental illness (which could harm Pagan soldiers needing help), or we have journalists who think describing a mentally ill killer’s worldview as “like Wicca” is acceptable.
8 responses so far
I feel very mad about that statement. >:(
I wonder if their is someplace I can complain?
Nasty.
Well it is painfully obvious that the term Wicca is now entirely too broad to mean much of anything in the larger culture. I have much sympathy for my traditionalist Wiccan friends who fiercely defend their religion against the watered-down, barely recognizable copycat spiritualities that also claim the name.
New York Times huh? I would be worried if that article was from a respectable source. :/
Quote from the article: “His chain of command all shared concern over his mental state,” the document said. Their understanding from his evaluations, though, was that “Marko’s delusions represented an alternative belief structure — the equivalent of Wicca or some other alternative religion.”
The article constantly references the text of an “internal Army document,” which is where the above quote apparently originates. To me, this sounds like the military is the one equating his delusions with “Wicca or some other alternative religion.”
My email and response from author:
ME:
I realize you were repeating what what is in the psychiatric evaluation, but Mr. Marko’s belief system has no more in common with Wicca than it does with Judaism, Christianity or Buddism. Twice in the article, his beliefs are compared to Wicca, and this person had nothing to do with Wicca or Paganism. Pagan belief systems are often misunderstood and feared by the general public, and reporting like this only makes it worse. This is bad journalism. It is unnecessary to repeat and lend credance to defamatory misinterpretations. Associating Wicca to a delusional rapist and murderer where there is no real link is just plain wrong.
——————
Hi.
You are right. I was quoting what was in the Army report. It was not my association. I hear you. You might want to take it up with them.
Thanks for your comment,
Lizette
Regardless of who made the comment, it just shows we pagans have a long way to go to achieve any kind of understanding among the general populace.
I recently heard through that a “friend” of mine, a liberal Christian pastor actually, described some of what I’m exploring this way: “Oh, I used to live in California and a lot of people were drawn toward crap like that but it ended up not being all that fulfilling in the end.”
Crap? Not fulfilling? I guess he prefers that I return to a religion that was unfulfilling, one that believes in angels, demons and a virgin-born god/man who rose from the dead–none of which we can see or prove. But Wicca is “crap.” You betcha.
What bothers me the most is the framing of “alternative religion” by the military. Our beliefs are being shoe-horned into the rantings of a dangerous psychopath!