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Dear uncle Screwtape,
Your recent letter captured well several lines of our plotting here in the States. It seemed so glaringly obvious to us at first that we feared the Church might recognize its poison at once and rise against it. Yet, while a few tiresome souls still possess the Enemy’s inconvenient gift of discernment, we have been astonished at how easily the rest may be steered astray -- churchgoers and citizens alike. The success of our present campaign has emboldened us to attempt bolder corruptions still that continue to parade under the banner of righteousness.
Over the years, we have tailored our misdirection to the temperament of each patient. For those enamored with details, we supply an abundance of data and then guide them to weave it into the most ingenious -- and implausible -- conclusions. Some even produce elaborate spreadsheets which, to their immense satisfaction, confirm that they have been right all along. Statistics. Odd facts. More than any other technique, we can use this method to take someone of great intellect and steer them directly toward the most ridiculous of conclusions. And those of milder mind are convinced simply at the sight of a number.
Those who think in sweeping parallels are just as easily misdirected. We feed them a vivid but isolated anecdote, and at once they are certain they have uncovered the hidden truth. In this blessed age of artificial intelligence, we can even fabricate truth itself with near-divine precision. We create images and voices so convincing that the gentler minds accept them without question. Better still, when the image is genuine, we can persuade many that it is false. This new world bewilders those past their youth, making them all the easier to deceive, for nothing so firmly convinces a soul as a story or image that confirms what it already longs to believe.
But all these machinations are business as usual. Yet we hear rumblings that our master below may soon attempt grander projects, emboldened by how well the present ones proceed. There is even word that he has appeared before the Enemy to make some audacious proposal. We, of course, do not know the day when the Enemy will return and our reign of chaos will be ended. Let us hope -- if that word may be permitted us -- with all the desperation of hell that this is not that day.
Still, the Enemy has often permitted our master to indulge himself in certain times and places, especially when the heart of a people strays far from Him. Such straying, you will note, is rarely what the humans imagine, for they persist in forgetting that love is the Enemy’s detestable measure of all goodness. Thus they wander willingly into our grasp while congratulating themselves on their virtue.
Is this, then, another age He will "let go" to us. Might this be time for yet another antichrist to rise? I suspect, my dear Uncle, that we shall soon find out.
Yours hopefully,
Wormwood
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- 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
- 10 -- Reliable Race
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