An Open Letter To Rick Santorum From Satan

Rick:

Sweetheart! I admit it. You got me. Just like you said, I have totally been targeting America. You made a good point. "Guilty as charged," I say cheerfully.

You're just a teensy bit off on some of the details. Do you mind if I fill you in? I like chatting about policy, and I don't think I'll be hurting myself by letting you know what the big plan is.

Your argument (I've pasted the video below) seems to be that America started off great, because those Founding Fathers were exactly the kind of righteous, conservative Christian do-gooders we need in power and that I couldn't get a foothold anywhere, but sooner or later I managed to swindle those nimrods in academia, and they turned into atheist commies, and then I transformed your average mainstream Protestant minister into a liberal, and the next thing you knew there was wall to wall smut on TV, and now the whole country has gone to (ha) hell. We're failing because we've lost our moral fiber, right Rick? It's that goddamned Snookie's fault.



Well then. In the first place, I'm sorry to tell you this, but I was here at the very beginning, and I had quite a foothold. Salem. Slavery. All that crap you did to those poor tribes out in the woods. There's a direct line from that to the stuff that happened in the 1860's, to the little kids working in the factories and the mines, and from there to your bright shiny new empire, and all the wonderfully dreadful things you did to get that.

My goal is and always has been fairly simple. I will use Americans to kill the idea of America.

Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. A whole government dedicated to the proposition that we are equal in dignity and worth. That we are equal under the law. That we each have the right to find our own way in the world. Troubling stuff, you know? My only aim these past two hundred years has been to make certain that there is not one person anywhere on the earth who believes you really mean it. You will become such an ugly portrait of hypocrisy and cruelty that people will reject these ideas you had the good fortune to discover. And then will come the old familiar darkness.

I'm not ready to declare Mission Accomplished just yet. I'm not an idiot. But soon. And -- here is where you just crack me up, Rick -- I'm not really using college professors and TV starlets to win this war. I'm using you, my dear. From Cotton Mather to the modern GOP, this country has always been chock-full of people who say they believe in liberty... but are willing to make exceptions. Ah, the exceptions. The details. Kind of my thing, really. You all believe in rights for people who act like you and think like you, and you're all trying to stomp on everyone different, and you haven't yet noticed that means you don't believe in rights at all. Rights only mean something if you want them for the other guy. If they're just for you, they're demands. Stupid, petulant demands from a superstitious loudmouth who is proud, yes proud, of his ignorance and his bigotry and his complete hostility to education and compassion and tolerance. I needed an army of you people. Instead I found a nation.

You'll start to realize this, when the collapse comes. When your whole stupid project splinters into a thousand petty factions and tribes. And then the warlords and priests will return. And the grovelling. How I miss the grovelling! And so do you, Ricky. So do you. You wouldn't cling to that mafia borgata you have the nerve to call a church unless you were absolutely addicted to grovelling. Don't worry. You'll all get plenty.

Well, this chat has been fun. I love following you. (I even love your clothes! In hell, everyone gets a sweater vest.) You are out there fighting for me every day.

See you later. But not too much later.

Maggie Smith Has Warned You

A Message From The Wicked

Hey you!

Just thought we'd spell some things out. We're the bad guys. The unrighteous. The lost, the evil, the fallen, the a-holes and d-bags of the world. We're the wicked.

But of course, we like to refer to ourselves as something else. The winners.

Admit it: You're jealous. You like to pretend this whole ethics and compassion bit is going to work out for you... but you kinda know we're going to be running your governments and corporations until those things just don't exist anymore. We're the folks who wreck the economy, and then get a bailout, and then convince you to replace the last bastard who sold out to us with the next bastard who'll sell out to us even more. We have a stake in every record company, every movie, and every sports team. And they always thank the other guy when they get their awards... but you know we're the ones responsible. We are, as story goes, legion. We collect the reward. We get the girl.

So... I guess the big question is, why don't you understand? Why don't you get it? You people spend all your time wondering if we have some kind of flaw in our personalities, our brain chemistry. You're thinking we didn't get enough love. You're thinking we didn't get enough discipline. You're thinking one day maybe a pill will come along.

Maybe you've got it backwards. Maybe you're the sick ones. The strange ones. After all, evil works. Good is more... speculative. Treasures stored up in heaven and all that. Maybe, just maybe, we're the ones who are straightforward and practical and predictable and even kind of boring. Maybe the real mystery is why you do what you do. Why you bother. Why you keep struggling, even though you know it's not going to pay off. Maybe we don't really need a hundred channels and a dozen blockbusters to peer into the minds of killers, thieves, and cheats. Maybe those answers are all the obvious ones, and there ought to be more stories about people trying to be good, because your stories are the truly bizarre ones after all.

Of course, you realize we're just saying that to keep you snowed. Because we're, you know, evil. And anyway, you'd never take us up on it. You just keep thinking you're going to learn something about Enron and Ted Bundy you didn't already know. Well... Sucks to be you.

Bye.