AndrewLongman.com

My Dearest Wormwood,

I would like to congratulate you on persuading David Barton to support the occult missionary rally you orchestrated on the national mall, and to speak so forcefully on Frank Pastore’s radio program that the occult missionary was bearing “good fruit”.  It is the perfect example of how The Enemy’s symbolic language can be twisted to the purposes of Our Father Below.

But we couldn’t agree with Barton more.  Beck is leading millions to view all our doctrines that we wrote for my patient, Smith, with great ardor.  Which “good fruit” was Barton referring to?  While we suspect that it is political power, you must run and find out securely, so as to keep a ready supply of it flowing to him.  Press on until we hear him quoting Brigham Young!

But your patient Barton has, for all practical purposes, come into the fold.  We all laughed with hysterics when he said that matters of holiness and judgment were just “labels” and that the fruit, which we suspect might mean just the popularity, demonstrated that Beck was wonderful.  How quickly they eat the candy when we offer it to them!  How long do you suppose it will take for Barton to agree with you that a Mormon wife’s salvation is controlled by her husband?

It’s startling how these moderns follow the Galation example and become quickly bewitched.  In Barton’s case, he nearly begged you for it on condition only that his big rally be a success.  For all their rhetoric about their love of the real J****, Barton and Palin and others quickly surrender the Enemy’s doctrine when we allow them to retain both the public reputation of being in the Enemy’s camp and the crowd’s adulation. Private and real love of the Enemy’s doctrine was swapped out in a heartbeat when rhetoric and labels were preserved – breathtaking! We here are so impressed with the depths to which you have fallen.

Now, of course, you must continually appeal to pride.  Focusing on people who’s private efforts have not been in proportion to their public success is, in our view, the right path, though it is utterly orthodox and prosaic.  Yet, it’s working for you, and Our Father Below has chosen not to berate you for being predictable.  Even a mediocre devil like you is no match for the average patient, once he has been through our Plan for Vague Love and Gauzy Thinking.

Of course, now, all the Enemy’s power will leave Barton and you must be quick to infuse him with a measure of our own. Never let him miss a moment. With the adroitness with which he abandoned his “first love” (sneer implied) he will not miss the leaving the presence of the Enemy, so long as you are very quick to supply appearances on major TV programs, vouchers for which have been authorized by the Anti-Home office.

Our Facsimile Religion is working out splendidly.  It controverts every major fact about the Enemy (virgin birth, Omnipotence, exclusive ‘salvation’, etc) but supplies a comprehensive cultural and political supplanting.  So, our trade is obvious.  We offer cultural and political ascendancy in exchange for the Real J*****.  If they make the trade, lavish them with the cultural and the political (fornication and money are appropriate later when they no longer doubt their own importance) so that they are not tempted to reverse themselves, save their souls.  If any of them speak against our successful franchise, mock them as hard as you can, and threaten to exclude them from social circles.  This reflects Our Father Below’s proverb that bad company corrupts good character only so long as there is enough of it.

We admire your national work and your work on the radio show host Pastore.  We were beside ourselves in knots of laughter when he simultaneously spoke of our franchise as being “Of” Our Father Below and yet something his audience ought to partner with as a cultural ally.  You really have done a remarkable job and its precisely that sort of convoluted nonsense we want to hear about you everywhere – keep them confused, self-contradictory, clueless, and above all feeling the ‘need’ to be relevant.

As for your infantile concern that the patients are not ignorant of our schemes, (and you needn’t quote the Enemy to me again) I remind you that our position has nothing to do with knowledge at this point.  Barton and many of his followers in the crowd pride themselves on having extraordinary knowledge of the Enemy’s precepts.  But the operation you are running appeals to pride.  As the Enemy is fond of saying (and I shall quote him to you to terrify you) “knowledge puffs up”.  So, increase their knowledge exponentially and don’t fear if that knowledge even publishes our plans.  All that matters is that neither obedience nor humility intrude.

May they know it all, but follow none.

With fear and loathing,

Uncle Screwtape