Mike Pence - Evil Wizard?

The 2020 Vice Presidential Debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence was held the evening before last. There's plenty of analysis and commentary out there with respect to the issues discussed by the candidates, and the effectiveness of the format and moderation. But of course this is Augoeides, so I'm posting about the effing fly.

About two thirds of the way through the debate, a housefly landed on Pence's head and just sat there for a couple minutes. His hair is white, so the black fly was really obvious. Where this enters into paranormal territory is that apparently there's an old superstition that flies like to land on evil wizards. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but it's funny, so I'm going with it.

According to conventional Christian theology, you aren't supposed to pray for specific things. You're supposed to be humble and have faith, and trust that God has your best interests in mind. The classical example of this is the Lord's Prayer, which is what Jesus demonstrated for his disciples when they explicitly asked him how to pray. But this message has gotten pretty distorted in some modern Christian circles.

What I'm talking about is a practice called "imprecatory prayer," which is engaged in to obtain specific material results. Some of these intents clearly fall into what is generally considered "evil," like this guy who claims that his prayers were responsible for Ruth Bader Ginsberg's recent death. I'm not even going to quote from that - you can go and check out the link for yourself if you want.

Yeah, killing an 87-year-old woman who already had pancreatic cancer isn't much of an achievement and the prayers of evil Christian wizards might not have had anything to do with it at all, but my point is the intent. Killing sick little old ladies isn't something that will ever fall under the conventional definition of "good." It's murder. There's some debate over whether "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in the Ten Commandments should be read as "Thou Shalt Not Murder," but there's no ambiguity at all in this case.

My point here is that as I noted on Facebook the other day, if Pence engages in "imprecatory prayer" he's a wizard. And if he engages in "imprecatory prayer" with the intent of killing or even harming his political enemies, he's an evil wizard, at least according to the conventional definition of the term. Engaging spiritual forces to destroy enemies isn't nice, even if you have little actual skill to get it done.

Pence, of course, would never describe himself as a wizard, let alone an evil one. But as I've posted here on numerous occasions, a prayer that is made with a specific practical intent is a spell. They're the same exact thing. We ceremonial magicians employ more elaborate casting techniques, but that's only because our procedures our better optimized to obtain those results.

All snark aside, Pence may not be a wizard at all. He strikes me as the sort of Christian who lives in terror of committing even the smallest of sins, things that no reasonable person considers sinful at all - like sitting at a table next to a woman he doesn't know or accidentally saying something nice to a gay person. One would think that reticence would translate to avoiding "imprecatory prayer," especially such "prayers" directed at harming his enemies.

But you know, the fly may be trying to tell us otherwise.