There’s a simple reason for the recurring pop-culture theme about being the last kid chosen for the sports team, or fearing dodgeball, or being called a cruel nickname: nearly everyone feels the weight of being an outcast, usually by the ninth grade.

Yes, some carry that weight much longer than others, and often for reasons beyond their control. But some outcasts speak with such frequency about being outcasts that it appears to become central to their identity and actions. That brings us to “The Rise of Progressive Occultism,” a deeply researched longform report by Tara Isabella Burton in The American Interest.

You may remember that some witches joined in a collective hex against Brett Kavanagh, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, when he was but a nominee. You win some and you lose some.

The most serious practitioners of the dark arts are not mere political dilettantes, but people who believe a counter-narrative to Christianity (which they consider patriarchal) and who call on their ancient spiritual forces for supernatural assistance. This being the age of Donald Trump, well of course the 45th president serves as the bête noire (or bête blanc, if you prefer) in all of this:

In one Brooklyn zine, author and non-binary witch Dakota Bracciale — co-owner of Catland Books, the occult store behind the Kavanaugh hexing — celebrates the potential of traditional “dark magic” and outright devil-worship as a levying force for social justice.

“There have been too many self-elected spokespersons for all of witchcraft,” Bracciale writes, “seeking to pander to the masses and desperately conform to larger mainstream religious tenets in order to curry legitimacy. Witchcraft has largely, if not exclusively, been a tool of resilience and resistance to oppressive power structures, not a plaything for bored, affluent fools. So if one must ride into battle under the banner of the Devil himself to do so then I say so be it. The reality is that you can be a witch and worship the devil and have sex with demons and cavort through the night stealing children and burning churches. One should really have goals.”

As with the denizens of The Satanic Temple, Bracciale uses the imagery of Satanism as a direct attack on what he perceives as Christian hegemony. So too Jex Blackmore, a self-proclaimed Satanic feminist (and former national spokesperson for the Satanic Temple) who appeared in the Hail Satan? documentary performing a Satanic ritual involving half-naked worshippers and pigs’ heads on spikes, announcing: “We are going to disrupt, distort, destroy. … We are going to storm press conferences, kidnap an executive, release snakes in the governor’s mansion, execute the president.”

Thank you for the heads up.

Keeping up: Journalism word games, slogans, euphemisms and misdirections

Journalists’ need to nurture professional skepticism should apply to the latest partisan lingo.

Examples from showbiz and advertising are legion. Are drivers of cars other than Subarus unloving? If a TV drama announces that the events and characters are totally fictional, the viewer automatically thinks “this story must be about real events and characters. Otherwise why the disclaimer?”

Public discourse on politics, morals and religion is full of such word games, slogans, euphemisms and carefully calculated misdirections.

In politics, during the Great Depression conservatives coined a classic still with us, the “right to work law,” which actually means the “right to refuse union membership or dues-paying,” and in reality “the right to have a weak union.” Ask your Guild rep. The Jan. 17 New York Times Magazine ran down the ways different eras have proudly embraced or shunned “progressive” and “liberal.” “Left-leaning” becomes cautious journalistic usage when “liberal” is a slur. Has “socialist” suddenly become benign now that 43 percent of Iowa Democrats accept that label?

In other up-to-the-minute canons, oppressive-sounding “gun control” is now “gun safety.” Insurgent Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio is magically an “establishment” candidate. In current campaign speak, “amnesty” means whatever immigration policy the other guy wants -- or used to want. Newswriters are now expected to replace “illegal” immigrant with “undocumented.”

Turning to moral and sexual conflicts, the Stylebook from The Religion Guy’s former Associated Press colleagues has this stumble (unless it’s been corrected in the latest edition): “Use anti-abortion instead of pro-life and abortion rights instead of pro-abortion or pro-choice.”

My take: "Anti" sounds negative while “rights” is positive for Americans. Better for journalists to use parallel terms that leaders on the two sides accept as their labels, “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice,” admitting that the latter skirts what action is being chosen. Meanwhile, conservatives borrow that helpful “choice” slogan when it comes to schools.