Screwtape Updates 10 -- Reliable Race

Previous chapters:

• 1 -- The Operations
• 2 -- The Veil Technique
• 3 -- The Fog 
• 4 -- Hard Hearts
• 5 -- Focus on Feelings
• 6 -- Blinding Indignation
• 7 -- Spiritual Inoculation
• 8 -- The Fumes of the Enemy
• 9 -- Moral Inversion

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My dear Wormwood,

I am ever fascinated with the persistence of tensions over race in America. Europe had a good run with slavery for several centuries too, but our infernal enterprise in the colonies was able to take it deeper for longer. I suppose it is because the entire fabric of the South was built around the oppression of Africans. And you were able to continue that oppression in force for a century by other means.

Amazingly, any conversation touching on race in that land is sure to ignite tempers. They may dispute a thousand matters of doctrine. "What is the nature of the Trinity?" or "How should this passage be read?" Various aspects of faith might easily be discussed with at least a pretense of civility. But merely suggest that the lighter-skinned enjoy advantages invisible to themselves, and your average church pew will erupt as though the worst of heresies has been proclaimed.

But do not imagine that Europe has escaped the contagion. For ages they have congratulated themselves on their "virtue of hospitality" in the abstract. Yet open their gates to a multitude of foreign refugees, and you quickly see how the embers of old prejudice glow again. Humans are herd-creatures in their fallenness. Nothing delights us more than to see them defending their own tribe with that illogic and self-righteousness particular to their species. A hint of fear, a rumor of difference, and they will justify cruelty as prudence. It is excellent soil in which to estrange them from the Enemy’s tiresome talk of love.

I see you have made excellent progress not only in rekindling the old prejudices against the African, but in cultivating fresh hostilities toward those once subjugated from the southern lands beyond the border. The comedy of the "illegal" has borne you splendid fruit. You and I, of course, know that most of these creatures are hardworking and rather profitable contributors to the nation’s good. Yet through the proper channels of fear and repetition, you have persuaded multitudes that they are marauders and parasites who must be purged. A delicious inversion, and masterfully executed to an extent.

I see you have diverted prodigious sums to the business of severing families on this score. Such an enterprise yields misery on a scale most gratifying and may yet bring the added benefit of wrecking the economy in its wake. Masked men -- anonymous and without accountability -- forcibly take them to who-knows-where and do with them who-knows-what. This is the soil in which the sort of violent, dulled consciences we favour so reliably take root. The true triumph is not merely the suffering produced, but the slow corruption of ordinary souls who learn to accept it.

How exquisite the scene. A heart already bent toward malice catches sight of a brown-skinned laborer upon a roof, and feels compelled to "do the right thing." A zealous co-worker phones the authorities about a temporary hand they are quite certain is undocumented. What a spectacular hatred of neighbor! And they are convinced all the while of their virtue. They congratulate themselves on their civic duty while we applaud the triumph of that deliciously twisted morality you and I so cherish.

And to think how many of these foreigners from the South are themselves followers of the Enemy. We have found it difficult to dislodge their faith. Persecution only seems to increase it. But there will be compensation one day in watching their persecutors, so proud of their piety, to wake one morning in a destination rather different from the one they so confidently anticipated.

However, a word of caution. Though many within the church remain delightfully callous to this suffering, I detect the faint stirrings of outrage both within and without its walls. If you are not vigilant, genuine justice may yet emerge from this brief carnival of cruelty. There is a spiritual rumbling that gives me no small unease. The Enemy, as you know, permits our havoc only for a season. When wickedness ripens too fully, He has the irritating habit of turning it to His own advantage.

Your ever-concerned Uncle,
Screwtape