YOU ARE BLOWING IT KID

Dear Wormwood,

I was remembering how ravenously hungry I was for your flesh when I wrote you those years ago. The occasion of my writing is “don’t blow it, kid!” We got a good thing going but you’re about to overplay your hand and ruin the party. You are standing into danger!

You must remember it was not you but for me, Screwtape turned things around with my wonderful evil advice. 

I have such resources at my disposal these days. The seventh level of hell is entirely populated by political consultants, and the sixth level we call “The Meat lover’s Supreme Court” as it is entirely populated by lawyers; we often have a big-time roasting them in the eternal flames to make pizza.

What we really need down here is a good engineer to fix the air conditioning, we haven’t seen an engineer down here since the guy who invented napalm, and he likes it hot.

I know it seems like things are going well for us. You have the entire country appalled at the murder of a black man by white cops, and you got it on video! Excellent! 50 years ago, just a blink of an eye for us, all the white folk would say he had it coming. The outrage would be that a black man was allowed in a store, or that the store was owned by immigrant Muslims. I know you are quite proud of yourself over my accomplishments and those of my millions of former elected officials and esteemed members of the bar.

You are messing this up. We were roasting popcorn over Hitler watching the show on the big screen, when we saw the riots calming down, everyone hunkered down, calming voices speaking…your blowing it kid.

The advice is simple, easy and if you don’t do it you will be replaced immediately. It is three words:

PIVOT, PIVOT, PIVOT!!!

You are out of sync. Any good illusion fails if the people are looking at it in slow motion or too long. You must pivot, move their attention elsewhere before they figure it out.

People seem to be figuring out that the violence from the protests is killing more people and sending more souls down to us by the boatload—so pivot back to the pandemic!

You need to get them to look away and get spun up about the pandemic. People are starting to realize that it is not the same as the black death, so don’t stay there too long—its hurricane season, we can make a lot about that.

We love global warming down here, it's so funny to us, as hot as it is here.

I must say I didn’t think the statue thing would work. I mean, most folks don’t even know the name of the guy in the statue. That was masterful. I need to give kudos to Nietzsche; he is down here and wants folks to know he is not dead but suffering in the eternal flames, and he is ready to say there is a God now—but we just laugh and laugh.

How you managed to both keep the church buildings closed yet allow people to gather to riot is up for the Balaam Award for Deceit.

My dear Wormwood, there are several things you are neglecting. The top political advice from some of the best names in politics says you aren’t pivoting enough. There are entire areas you are neglecting.

We let Voltaire out of the ninth level of hell for a few minutes to amuse us, give us advice, hear the wonderful melody of his begging not to be thrown back in. He reminded us that he said if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

You need to pivot and blame God for this. It's his fault. I know it seems illogical, but it will work. You already have them defacing buildings and statues---and don’t forget, we have those church buildings empty.

We are sitting down here salivating at the prospects. The black lives matter slogan seems clever, how if you are not for the movement you are a racist like you think they don’t matter, but you need the brown people too.

What you need to do is get them to deface a church in Texas, where those folks all have ten guns each, and someone is bound to be trigger happy. We think if you play it right, you could start a civil war.

After you blame the man upstairs you need to invent a replacement. Our political consultants have a tried and true strategy with a long and honored tradition.

Before I explain, I need to give you some background. You know, there was a big controversy down here over your tearing down of the statues. The first thought was to recall you right then, but I stopped them. You see, that is what “He” does. Tears down idols. Look at what happened to all of our high places! Look what happened to all our pole dancers on the Asherah poles, we had to put them in the bad part of town inside bars instead of on the town square.

Pivot, pivot, pivot!

Well, you get the statues they tore down, put them all in one place, melt them down, and make a god out of them. They will worship it.

Geez, we did the same thing a few millennia back, we go them to worship this golden calf. My consultants are of one mind on making the statue god, but they are split on what the best god would be. I will give you some ideas, we may have to pivot and see what works best. One strategy is to make many gods, that works too.

The idea I like best is to make a protestor killing a police officer. That will keep the image of violence alive forever and hopefully inspire more.

Pivot, pivot, pivot!

How come you haven’t started up a major terrorist incident? It is way past time! Get on the stick, or I will put you on a stick and roast you.

Your Uncle,

Screwtape.