The scene is a small drab office on the outskirts of Hell. It’s Monday morning, May 25, just hours before a Minnesota man’s fatal encounter with a rogue cop. Screwtape, a senior devil, talks with his underling, Wormwood. We first met these two, of course, in the moral fiction of C.S. Lewis.
Screwtape: Scum, you’re a minute late again. That will be an extra week of kitchen duty. So out with it, let’s hear your report. How did it go with your undercover reconnaissance of spiritual conditions in America right now?
Wormwood: Forgive me, Your Malevolence, it won’t happen again. Our scouting mission in the USA was honestly discouraging. It’s a resilient country, idealistic, goodhearted. We didn’t spot any vulnerabilities leading to your goal of making it a less desirable place for Americans in all their diversity to live, make a living, and make a life. To poison their hearts and minds by the tens of millions? I don’t see how.
Screwtape: The obvious way is to inflame race relations, idiot. Surely that’s plain to you? We set them against each other, demoralize them, drive the cycle of recriminations, devalue all that’s been accomplished, magnify imperfections and make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Wormwood: Easier said than done, sir. A little time on the ground makes it clear America is the best place in the world today, or ever in history, to be nonwhite or a person with disabilities or an immigrant, any kind of minority at all. They have bad blemishes on their past, sure. But they’ve come so far so fast since the 1950s in redressing the wrongs formerly done to minorities. No society has ever done more. If it’s such an awful place to have a dark skin, why are 7 of every 10 immigrants today nonwhite? They’re flocking to get in.
Screwtape: Wormy, dear boy, your lack of imagination wearies me. Must we send you for a remedial class in soul-seduction? Demoralizing them will be easy, I tell you. The point of attack is their proud tradition of being a country where a person is able to rise based on what they can do, not how they look. An idea they got, by the way, from both their Father and his Son (see I Samuel 16:7 and John 7:24). We do a judo flip on that and convince them it’s been a lie from the beginning—how someone looks is the only thing that matters after all.
Wormwood: I get it now, sir. Brilliant. Get them to generalize wildly from the tendency of a few in any human community to judge on appearances alone, that delicious invention of ours called racism. Start everyone painting each other with that same foul brush, victimizers and victims alike. No room for goodwill, patience, forgiveness, or introspection. A massive meltdown to gladden any demon’s heart.
Screwtape: Individual moral responsibility, another of their Father’s insufferable notions, an obstacle to our designs ever since we put Cain up to killing Abel, codified again in both of their disgusting testaments (see Ezekiel 18:4, 5, and John 3:8), must be replaced with group grievance and group guilt. Humans are pathetically easy to fool, you know. Swamp one group with self-pity, simply based on what they see in the mirror, and consume the other group with self-flagellation, simply based on what they see in the mirror. Then stand back and watch the accusations fly.
Wormwood: Beautiful to behold indeed. And it occurs to me that both groups, the self-pitiers and the self-flagellators, can oddly have in common a shared sense of self-righteousness and self-glorification that only worsens their sickness of soul. If we keep egging them on, a brisk trade in blaming and apologies, gloating and groveling, will spring up. Every interaction, supposedly meant to even the score, only rubbing feelings more raw for black and white alike. This could be our finest hour, Chief--promotions in store for both of us.
Screwtape: For me anyway. You’ll be on kitchen duty, remember? But pack a bag and be ready. I’m sending you with a special detachment to Minneapolis as soon as things explode there. We have it all scripted. The America where material and cultural conditions for minorities have been the envy of the world, where nonwhites enjoyed a rising standard of living with ever more opportunity and dignity and social peace—that America is in for a nasty surprise when the blame cycle starts.
Wormwood: Truly an honor to serve under you, sir. Every meeting is like a graduate seminar in subversion. I mean it. And how exciting to think of the God-saturated United States being brought low over race resentments. Their complacency will be their undoing. Just so no one reminds them of Dr. King’s lethal words: “Hate can’t drive out hate. Only love can do that."
