In high-control groups, unchecked hunger for power can never be sated; its ultimate destination is violence. Granted, most cults implode or dissipate first. Yet the Puritans did arrive at such a terminus: the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693. Some scholars believe the craze developed specifically in response to the MBC’s strict patriarchal structures. “The hysteria began with the most powerless among the powerless.”28 Accusations were lobbed by children, females, and servants, that is, exactly those most controlled by the colony’s system of family governance.
