SETTING: A MEETING ROOM IN HELL

Two devils gather at a conference table. 

“Where is everyone else?”

“They’re still afraid to gather. They’ll be joining us on Zoom.” 

“I’m getting sick of this—when can we get back to normal?”

“Shut up and put on your mask.”

There is a big screen monitor on the wall, surrounded by flames. Devil faces start popping up in their squares—soon there are a dozen faces, looking like a demonic version of Hollywood Squares. 

“Can you hear me? I can’t hear you.” 

“You’re muted! Press the unmute button, fool!” 

“Where’s the boss?” 

A huge, smiling devil faces pops onscreen and dominates the screen real estate. All the devils suddenly snap into their best behavior. The Head Devil speaks: 

“Well, we really couldn’t be more pleased with the progress of Mayhem 2020!  Even so, now is no time for complacency. Let me get to our present business, which is about the importance of good manners.” 

The devils seem suddenly surprised and restless.

“Sorry, Sir, but did you say ‘manners’?”

“Well, I’m not surprised that you’re surprised, but if you can compose yourself for five minutes I’ll try to help you understand. Earth is a horrid place. Nothing there is permanent or enduring, especially truth and virtue, which is why we expect to win this battle. 

“Religious beliefs are not believed, let alone practiced, and due to our good work, love is much discussed and little practiced. Moral confusion is the happy norm (happy for us, not them), and what passes for intelligence among them we know to be nonsense. 

“With all the mayhem in effect, manners are all they have left. Manners have taken the place of religion and morals. Without any real right-and-wrong, there is no morality and no agreement. The only thing standing between us and their final fall into total chaos is this thin veneer of manners.”

“Manners? Are you kidding?” says a devil. 

There is a great zapping sound. One of the Zoom squares goes black.

“Manners may seem trivial and unimportant to fools, but they they are now the center of our campaign. When manners are all they have left, it is the final straw. We want to pull that straw as soon as we can.

“Sir, excuse me, but I’m not sure we all know exactly what good manners are?” 

“Yes, of course,” says the Head Devil, “Even we require good manners. In Hell, rudeness is intolerable and punishable by immediate annihilation. The lowerarchy of Hell is one of pride and dignity, and any offense to that dignity demands swift and total retribution. 

“At the center of manners are fear and respect. That blackened screen over there is the result of bad manners—of failing to show proper fear and respect to one’s superior. The reason you don’t speak to me as you might like (don’t think I don’t know what you feel like saying) is that you know you can be zapped into nothingness just as easily. Manners show respect, because you fear being destroyed.

“Pardon me, Sir, but are there manners up there. . .you know. . .with the other guys?” 

“Oddly enough, the answer is no.  Somehow, they are beyond manners up there and manners are not required.  Hell requires them, Earth requires them (at least we find them useful), but up there things are very different—we don’t talk about it—we dare not try to imagine it at all.  Up there is filled with stuff we can neither see nor understand. Of course, Hell is clear to the eyes; it is bitterness and self-pity from end to end.  The final end of humanity—once we get them to give up on the last straw of good manners—is also bitterness and self-pity. You see, our mission is to ready them for Hell. 

“We’ve made great progress already. Look at their politics: both sides get so worked up over what they demand that they are guaranteed to feel disappointment no matter who wins their little elections. With an end to manners, we can count on tremendous bitterness and self-pity to rule them afterwards.  We want them to be the poorest of poor sports, whiners, gripers, crybaby pouters, and fussypants blusterers. They should be extremely irritable and easily offended, joining violent riots in the streets with the least of provocations. But they must grow bitter. Without pridefulness and an insatiable sense of entitlement, they will never develop enough bitterness to satisfy us.  

“Aside from eroding manners, be sure that they develop no sense of humor—no self-awareness of their selfishness. Should they, in a moment of clarity, see themselves in the light of day, they could see their own ridiculousness and end up laughing at themselves. We can’t have them sacrificing their pride and/or dignity—this would be disastrous to us, for without swollen chests and thin skin, they will never develop the gut-wrenching self-pity we find so nourishing. We must have their souls become more bitter and self-pitying, which is why their political squabbles are so useful to us.”

“Sir, how can we help erode their manners?” 

“Good question! Speak into their minds that they are being ‘honest and truthful,’ or ‘just being genuine, authentic, or real.’  Get them to associate manners with falsehood and hypocrisy. Tell them, when they are kind to an opponent or enemy, that they are being false to themselves. Encourage them to feel kindness as a form of selling oneself out on the cheap. Resentment can easily become bitterness. Feed the greatest among them to feel themselves victims, and may the poorest of them similarly hide behind victimization. That way, they can always blame others—for everything and anything—and imagine themselves, amid the heady fog of their victimization, morally superior as they do so. 

“We’ve nearly succeeded in completely conflating victimhood with heroism. Once we do, we will have created victims among victims among victims—all angry and indignant over the offenses to their dignity—and this is the recipe for the chaos we so desire. 

“Pardon, Sir, but what about the. . .um. . .Christians?” 

“Oh, them!”  The Head Devil sighs and rolls his eyes. 

“Luckily for us,” he says, “they’re not taken seriously anymore. We’ve successfully pigeonholed them as either ‘foolish,’ ‘unenlightened,’ ‘prejudiced,’ or ‘politically self-serving’.  Oddly, they never seem to care what the world thinks. And none of them seem to develop either bitterness or self-pity—they’re always confessing their ‘sins’ and busy embracing things called ‘humility’ and ‘love’—which make them useless to us and unfit food for Hell. If one of them were sent to us here in Hell we would immediately expel them! We have no taste and no place for them or whatever they bring with them. 

“By the way, they will be our fiercest enemies on the manners front, for they not only believe in manners, but in real morals behind the manners—the value of every human being (I know, I don’t understand it either—it’s a foreign concept to us), and their view on victimization remains totally dismissive.”

“Sir,” asks a devil, “Why do they dismiss victimization? Don’t they feel victimized?” 

“Another good question. We don’t know entirely, but it has something to do with…um,…the Son (sorry, pardon my use of the name), and the way He suffered for them. Somehow, they think He absorbs into Himself all victimization, and therefore they follow Him taking full responsibility for themselves, their sins, and they see their destinies as part of a grander, just plan. Really, don’t ask me to explain further because it is just as foggy to me at this point. Just know, they are our biggest problem. 

“These Christians could change the whole course of America against us (they may not even  believe this, but we know it to be true). If they were to humble themselves before Him, there is no way we can get to them. If they pray, we find ourselves blocked almost entirely. Our best bet is to make them as much like the other Americans as possible: political, irritable, rude-mannered, and self-serving. They are still just human beings, and we have their lower nature to appeal to. So let us all get at it and apply ourselves in any and every way we can imagine. If we succeed, Hell becomes larger, broader, with greater bitterness and deeper self-pity—all stuff we need—but if we fail, Hell itself will begin to shrink and devils from one end to the other will starve into nothingness. Are we clear? Good!”

“Thank you, Sir, for an inspiring and informative session!” says a devil. 

There is a thunderous zapping noise and the devil who just spoke is annihilated.

“Sorry about that,” says the Head Devil, “but fatuous flattery and sucking up is equally bad manners on every level of Heaven, Hell, and Earth.” †