'What good would it do to forfeit your convictions & not gain your political world?' [Vanity]

What if a mini-Obama ran your homeowners' association... and Satan offered you an 'alternative' candidate???...

The most despotic Marxist-leaning socialist had been running the local homeowners' association for the past three years, and Joe was beside himself with the association presidential election coming up. Who would run against him?

"I have a candidate in mind who could defeat your socialist nemesis," soothed Satan.

"Well," said Satan "he's an experienced businessman who's done quite well and also happens to be running for City Dictator -- I mean City Director."

"Well, I don't take a candidate's religion into consideration on political candidates. If he's a constitutional, conservative satanist, I'd vote for him. Didn't Luther take he'd rather vote for a competent Islamic turk than an incompetent Christian?"

"Hmm...tempting...boy, you don't know how tempting," Joe said, scratching the back of his head.

"Wait a minute...Wait one cotton-pickin' minute. You are the devil, after all! You think you can just waltz into my home, suggest a candidate, and I -- knowing that you are Satan -- will just pick up and run with that idea! Who do you think I am? I am a conservative. I have principles. I have convictions. I won't just vote for 'anybody' out there. So. Tell me more about this candidate of yours. I want to know his positions; his track record; his values; his character."

"What? You think, I, Satan, am going to give you the straight scoop to those questions?"

"Listen," says Satan. "I am so confident that you already see the true magnitude of the errors of your current association president, all you have to do is invoke the Name of the One True Lord for me to tell you the truth in the rest of our convo, and you'll get the info you're looking for."

"Good idea. In the Name of the Lord, speak the truth about your candidate, oh, satanic one," said Joe in a demanding tone.

"OK. You've placed a divine hand on my vocal chords," began Satan. "Allow me to mention five:"

(3) "He says he's 'pro-life' -- but that healthcare provides $50 abortions & has a Planned Parenthood employee as a permanent healthcare member...plus while running his last 'pro-life' campaign he told a member of the local media that it's 'OK' for parents to give up their offspring to 'research'"...***

(4) "He was a member of an openly racist org thru age 31 -- an org that still keeps racist teachings in its constitution but says policy-wise, they've changed";****

(5) "And, oh, btw, he'll be a grown-up god some day...but, hey, 99.9% of voters aren't going to consider it as some sort of 'idolatry' were you to vote for or endorse him."*****

"So," said Satan. "All you have to do is to endorse my candidate as City Director, and I'll ensure that he also becomes your homeowners' association president -- and everybody's homeowner association president as well. And your socialist nemesis will be out of a job."

"Well, I've got to be frank with you Satan. Your candidate is a bit disappointing...In fact, not much of a 'candidate' at all, let alone a candidate with an (R) attached. But, hey, I'm in. I'll endorse him."

"I knew I could count on your solid Republican convictions...I knew your Republican conservative sentiments and I could see eye-to-eye," concluded Satan. "Oh, and since you pushed my 'truth-in-advertising' button, one more thing: You will receive a bit of pushback on your endorsement from some of your Republican pals. I just want to give you a 'fair' warning. So, be prepared to defend your convictions."

"Well, given that my candidate has a bit of an 'occultic' reputation, for him to win the votes of Christians & other conservatives, I think you need to round up some of these influence-mongers...you know...any conservative writers, radio hosts, columnists, social conservative leaders, talking heads, thinkers, and as many rank & file conservatives -- and draw them into how to become the most creative diverse collection of occultic apologists in local history. Just speak rationally in order to smooth over Christian or social issues' concerns. If done well enough, your informal think-tank will fall into a daily routine of countering and defeating objections vs. my candidate on the local air waves & digital & print media; and, you know, as soon as the campaign is over, you can all stop being apologists..It's not like I expect you to be sucked into becoming permanent foot soldiers of mainstreaming and rationalizing Satanism, ya know...Above all, this won't be a matter of merely defending your own vote or endorsement; you WILL NEED to prove to others that they need to sacrifice for the 'good of the party and county' & all of that."

"Well," said Satan, "What good would it do to forfeit your convictions and not gain your local political world? It won't be enough for you personally to vote for & endorse my candidate. He needs to win. If he doesn't win, your relativistic political utilitarianism flies out the window. You will have wasted it all! You MUST convert your local world! Your fellow conservatives & Christians MUST 'see the light' and sacrifice their convictions, their beliefs, their consciences, and buy into this lesser-of-two-'evils' political reality. They CANNOT be allowed to be obstacles to political liberation!"

Rather, at first reluctantly, Joe the 'Conservative' became Joe the Advocate-Apologist for THE most liberal, chameleon, occultic candidate his region had ever known.

Inwardly, even though he knew his "proselyte" prizes he "converted" would likely forever go on voting for liberal, pro-abortion, socialist "gods," he had become "illuminated" to the "inner consciousness" that sometimes it "takes a socialist to defeat a socialist."

Proof that (5) descriptions of parable candidate matches Mitt Romney:
* (1) Even the Lds church-owned Deseret News saw a Romney problem here: The nasty taint of porn [Imagine you're a "devout Mormon." You've been offered cozy occasional directorship position for a local theater for $25,000 per year. You find out that the theater shows family-rated fair. But there's a "back entrance" for their XXX showings. You also find out they give $ to Planned Parenthood. Would you, as an alleged "devout Mormon," continue to take the position knowing that a portion of your salary comes from their porn industry intake? What would you feel knowing that this theater's $ goes to the largest child-killing organization in the world (Planned Parenthood)? Well, that's Mitt Romney for you. He's done the exact equivalent of the above!!! Besides the porn angle, Marriott has made Life Decision Intl's boycott list for supporting Planned Parenthood!]

** (2) A "community" in a given state is equivalent to a state (Massachusetts) in a country.

*** (3) RomneyCare includes $50 abortions Romney Health Plan Linked to Abortion, Critics Claim & a Planned Parenthood employee as a permanent oversight member of RomneyCare. RomneyCare could have item-vetoed the Planned Parenthood tie -- but didn't -- having ties with Planned Parenthood extending back to 1994. As for the "research" comment, Romney told Katie Couric on Dec. 4, 2007: Couric: So what kind of embryos - embryos that are created for procreation and then would be discarded? Are those the ones that you feel are perfectly fine from which to cull cells for stem cell research?

Romney: Yes, those embryos that are referred to commonly as surplus embryos from in-vitro fertilization. Those embryos, I hope, could be available for adoption for people who would like to adopt embryos. But if a PARENT decides they would want to donate one of those embryos for purposes of RESEARCH, in my view, that's acceptable. It should not be made against the law.

Any of you "parents" want to "donate" one of your offspring that the Creator has provided to you for "research" purposes? And then you still -- like Mitt -- have the gall to call yourself "pro-life?" Source: Candidates Reveal Their Biggest Mistakes

***** (5) See Russert note on #4 about Romney defending the "faith of his fathers" -- a faith which includes embracing "godhood":
“The doctrine of a plurality of Gods is prominent in the Bible. The heads of the Gods appointed our God for us…you have got to learn how to be Gods yourselves…the same as all Gods have done before you…” Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, pp. 370-372, 346

From the parable What if a mini-Obama ran your homeowners' association... and Satan offered you an 'alternative' candidate???...A PARABLE ABOUT GOP & ITS VOTERS...

[Which candidate are we being 'sold on' as a "conservative"]

(1) "He's earned a fair amount of $ from the porn industry;"*

(2) "He's forced everybody in your community into govt-run healthcare;"**

(4) "He was a member of an openly racist org thru age 31 -- an org that still keeps racist teachings in its constitution but says policy-wise, they've changed";****

(5) "And, oh, btw, he'll be a grown-up god some day...but, hey, 99.9% of voters aren't going to consider it as some sort of 'idolatry' were you to vote for or endorse him.*****

Move over Screwtape and Wormwood!!

HR>

Letter # 10

“Recognizing the Traps of Becoming a Duplicitous Christian”

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

I was delighted to hear from Triptweeze that your patient has made some very desirable new acquaintances and that you seem to have used this event in a really promising manner. I gather that the middle-aged married couple who called at his office are just the sort of people we want him to know—rich, smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical about everything in the world. I gather they are even vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men and from a dash of purely fashionable and literary communism. This is excellent. And you seem to have made good use of all his social, sexual, and intellectual vanity. Tell me more. Did he commit himself deeply? I don't mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a Mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realize it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.

No doubt he must very soon realize that his own faith is in direct opposition to the assumptions on which all the conversation of his new friends is based. I don't think that matters much provided that you can persuade him to postpone any open acknowledgment of the fact, and this, with the aid of shame, pride, modesty and vanity, will be easy to do. As long as the postponement lasts he will be in a false position. He will be silent when he ought to speak and laugh when he ought to be silent. He will assume, at first only by his manner, but presently by his words, all sorts of cynical and skeptical attitudes which are not really his. But if you play him well, they may become his. All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be. This is elementary. The real question is how to prepare for the Enemy's counter attack.

The first thing is to delay as long as possible the moment at which he realizes this new pleasure as a temptation. Since the Enemy's servants have been preaching about "the World" as one of the great standard temptations for two thousand years, this might seem difficult to do. But fortunately they have said very little about it for the last few decades. In modern Christian writings, though I see much (indeed more than I like) about Mammon, I see few of the old warnings about Worldly Vanities, the Choice of Friends, and the Value of Time. All that, your patient would probably classify as "Puritanism"—and may I remark in passing that the value we have given to that word is one of the really solid triumphs of the last hundred years? By it we rescue annually thousands of humans from temperance, chastity, and sobriety of life.

Sooner or later, however, the real nature of his new friends must become clear to him, and then your tactics must depend on the patient's intelligence. If he is a big enough fool you can get him to realize the character of the friends only while they are absent; their presence can be made to sweep away all criticism. If this succeeds, he can be induced to live, as I have known many humans live, for quite long periods, two parallel lives; he will not only appear to be, but actually be, a different man in each of the circles he frequents.

Failing this, there is a subtler and more entertaining method. He can be made to take a positive pleasure in the perception that the two sides of his life are inconsistent. This is done by exploiting his vanity. He can be taught to enjoy kneeling beside the grocer on Sunday just because he remembers that the grocer could not possibly understand the urbane and mocking world which he inhabited on Saturday evening; and contrariwise, to enjoy the bawdy and blasphemy over the coffee with these admirable friends all the more because he is aware of a "deeper", "spiritual" world within him which they cannot understand. You see the idea—the worldly friends touch him on one side and the grocer on the other, and he is the complete, balanced, complex man who sees round them all. Thus, while being permanently treacherous to at least two sets of people, he will feel, instead of shame, a continual undercurrent of self-satisfaction. Finally, if all else fails, you can persuade him, in defiance of conscience, to continue the new acquaintance on the ground that he is, in some unspecified way, doing these people "good" by the mere fact of drinking their cocktails and laughing at their jokes, and that to cease to do so would be "priggish", "intolerant", and (of course) "Puritanical".

Meanwhile you will of course take the obvious precaution of seeing that this new development induces him to spend more than he can afford and to neglect his work and his mother. Her jealousy, and alarm, and his increasing evasiveness or rudeness, will be invaluable for the aggravation of the domestic tension.

Your affectionate uncle,

SCREWTAPE

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