“Why decaf?” asked the Devil.

“Because I’m getting old and twitchy,” said the misanthrope.  “Now I’ll merely be old and sleepy.”

“Like many of my Enemy’s creations,” the Devil said, “Coffee stirs things up.  It agitates, unsettles, and gets folk to move about—or it just wakes them up, which might be all that’s needed.”

“Sort of like you?”

“Kind of,” admitted the Devil.  “It’s why I usually give my Enemy’s wonders a twist.  He creates poppies; I invent opium.  He creates bold colors; I soothe with greys.  He creates coffee; I make decaf. I exist in part to keep you from getting complacent.  Curiosity may have killed the cat, but complacency kills many a kitten.”

“So what do you think of the protests around the world?”

“Which ones?” asked the Devil. “They’d like to think that they’re similar—the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street/Washington/What-have-you—but they’re different and problematic for me.”

“Interesting.  I’d've thought you loved the chaos,” said the misanthrope.

“Oh, I do,” said the Devil.  “But it’s tricky to turn it to my advantage some time.  The mere fact that people are rightfully protesting is dangerous.  After all, one doesn’t get to be Prince of Darkness and King of this world because things are going well.  Fortunately, I have a great ally named Good Intentions.  He’s very sweet and easy to lead around.  He can be stubborn, but so long as he isn’t paying too much attention, I can work with him.”

“What do you think of the occupiers in various American cities?”

“For the moment, they’re comic relief,” said the Devil.  “Banks really are landing on the taxpayers’ feet, but that’s not entirely the bankers’ fault.  Every industry in the country would like to do that, but the bankers have just been the most successful.  Sloth, the most underrated of the deadly sins, is the first part of the equation.  Being bailed out for your mistakes worked for the bankers.  The bankers were lazy and approved many things they never should have.  So they begged politicians and were saved.  (Perhaps taxpayers need better lobbyists.)  The second part of the equation is envy: now the occupiers seem upset that they themselves aren’t able to land on some taxpayers’ feet.

“There’s a great deal of confusion.  I’d love it if this chaos turned seriously ugly—arson, looting, rape, murder—but what crimes that have been committed seem damned to be small scale.  It takes a certain degree of strength to be truly good or evil, and these protestors don’t seem to have it.”

“And what of the Arab Spring?” asked the misanthrope.

“Now we’re talking serious chaos and serious problems,” said the Devil. “Arab dictators are always some of my favorite people.  If they’re not quite so vicious as Kim Jong Il or Castro, it’s not for lack of trying.  Nobody decent is sorry to see Gaddafi go.  I prefer systematic monsters myself, and Gaddafi was rather like Batman’s Joker, only even I failed to get the joke.  The real trick for me is to see if I can turn these revolutions to my advantage.  Mubarak and Gaddafi are replaceable, and their regimes can always (from my perspective) improve.  Whether the ordinary people protesting will like my improvements, of course, is another story.”

“Didn’t you mention some problems?” asked the misanthrope.

“Well, yes,” said the Devil.  “Decent people can always fight to take control.  But mostly they’re slothful, too.  Not awake enough to realize that goodness is an endless slog but evil is comfortable and always ready to take over.  The good people, alas, have a chance to make a move and improve things.  Which I don’t want—what kind of devil would I be if people improved on a wicked dictator? But I’m growing more confident by the day that things out there will go my way.  Never mind whether Gaddafi deserved his brutal death: the mere fact that people are getting tangled up in that side story is a good omen for me.  So long as people lack perspective, I can find a way to have my fun.  Have another cup of decaf.”

************

Follow on twitter if you’re so inclined: http://twitter.com/mikeahub

“Cold?” asked the misanthrope.

“I come from a hotter climate,” said the Devil.  “Still, since you were actually enjoying the day, I figured it was time to rain on the parade.”

“Didn’t Milton once say something about it being better to rain in hell?”

“No more ghastly puns,” said the Devil.  “But if you really want me to go, I will.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said the misanthrope.  “Right now, I’m trying to shake the sense of foreboding I’m feeling about this election.”

“You’re a right winger,” said the Devil.  “Are you afraid that Republicans will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?  I’d guess they’ll win everything that isn’t nailed down.”

“Winning elections is only part of the game,” countered the misanthrope.  “What you campaign on and how you govern interests me rather more.  And the recent past election cycles have a clear lesson and warning.”

“Are you thinking of the tea partiers, who were inconspicuous in 2006 and 2008?” asked the Devil.

“They were rather invisible, weren’t they?” agreed the misanthrope.  “Mostly, they were thoroughly disgusted with Republicans, but knew that Democrats would be worse, so they simply stayed quiet.  But I’m really thinking of the movement that was the left wing precursor to them, the Anti War Fanatics, AWF for short.”

“Ah yes,” said the Devil.  “They’ve mostly gone into hiding now, haven’t they?  That was rather inevitable, in my less than humble opinion.  America can’t avoid wars and death, and campaigning against it is rather like promising the electorate unicorns and rainbows.”

“Which is what President Obama did,” observed the misanthrope.  “His campaign caught the energy of the old Howard Dean folk.  The big difference between him and Hillary Clinton was that she’d backed the war and that he hadn’t.  Then he beat John McCain in the general—the Senator most associated with the Iraq surge and who forced the appointment of Defense Secretary Robert Gates.”

“So naturally, the AWF expected a dovish administration,” said the Devil.

“Instead, President Obama—to his credit—kept Gates on and made Clinton his secretary of state,” said the misanthrope.  “Though he campaigned on rainbows and unicorns, he has governed realistically.  But this has left the AWF utterly disheartened: they wanted their rainbows and unicorns! In short, the AWF is feeling like the tea party did in 2006: they don’t like what the current administration is doing, but even though the other guys will be worse, they feel betrayed and are sitting it out.”

“So why does left wing angst upset you?” asked the Devil.

“Because it’s a precursor to what the right is probably going to go through,” answered the misanthrope.  “Many people in the tea party movement seem to think that the federal budget is bloated thanks to earmarks, which are about 1% of all federal spending.  The real budget busters are Social Security, the Defense Department, and the Medicare and Medicaid tag team.  So the tea party movement will clean up in 2010 like the AWF did in 2006.  They may even win the presidency in 2012. 

“But cutting those programs is going to cause a lot of political pain.  Members of the tea party are generally older and more hawkish: they loathe Obamacare because it balances the books by cutting Medicare!  They want the best military money can buy!  AND they want to balance the budget.  This is the fiscal version of rainbows and unicorns.”

“Ah, and now you see what I have seen for a while now,” said the Devil.  “Unreality can play well in politics for a while, but from my perspective, it ends wonderfully.  Warms the cockles of my heart enough that I can face a brisk fall day.  Toodles!”

“Always,” said the misanthrope.  “I never thought that I’d see the Prince of the World with a black eye.  What does the other guy look like?”

“Accident on my part.  Ran into something I wasn’t expecting.  Fortunately,” the Devil purred, “I can usually turn these little accidents to my favor.”

“Which particular ‘accident’ are we talking about?” asked the misanthrope.

“Avoid the scare quotes,” growled the Devil.  “It’s one of the few things my Enemy and I both loathe.  I was caught off guard with the reaction to Susan Boyle.  A blowsy woman, face made for the radio, won over a TV audience.  I don’t see those kinds of surprises often, thankfully.  But when even someone schizoid feels touched and loves more, I need to swing into action and make sure that the proper lessons are learned.  Fortunately, I didn’t have to work hard; I usually don’t.”

“Are you talking about the New York Post’s skeptical assessment?”

“I did like that,” admitted the Devil, “but that’s par for the course.  Whether it’s American Idol or politics, all people have feet of clay.  Some deceits, as La Rochefoucauld once observed, counterfeit truth so perfectly that not to be taken in would be an error of judgment.  Disillusionment and cynicism are my friends and allies, but I have better weapons.”

“Such as Spengler’s screed?” asked the misanthrope.  “I can’t help feeling that he manages to be both right and irrelevant.”

There is an undercurrent of self-worship in the aptly-named American Idol and its British knockoff, which lifted Boyle to stardom. As I wrote some years ago (American Idolatry Asia Times Online, August 29, 2006), at some time during the 20th century, the people of the West elected to identify with what is like them, rather than emulate what is above them.

Churlish resentment of high culture comes from the slacker’s desire for reward with neither merit nor effort: the sort of artistic skill that requires years of discipline and sacrifice is a reproach to the indolence of the popular audience of the West. Better voices than Boyle’s can be found in a thousand choirs and amateur theatricals, but the crowd has embraced this late-hatching Scottish songbird as a symbol of its own aspirations.

“Spengler is probably right that high culture is dying in the West, but that cause, though hopeless, isn’t particularly serious,” said the Devil.  “What I like more about Spengler is that he’s encouraging people to feel superior to the yokels who like Miss Boyle.  Vanity is a crude trap, but it snares intellectuals quite nicely.  I need to be more subtle with ordinary people.”

“I would think that many ordinary people are getting the message,” said the misanthrope.

The way we see Susan Boyle is very nearly the way God sees us: worthwhile, special, talented, unique, beautiful.  The world generally looks askance at people like Susan Boyle, if it sees them at all.  Without classic good looks, without work, without a spouse, living in a small town, people like Susan Boyle may not seem particularly ”important.”  But God sees the real person, and understands the value of each individual’s gifts: rich or poor, young or old, single or married, matron or movie star, lucky or unlucky in life.  God knows us.  And loves us.  

“Everybody is somebody” said Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan at his installation Mass in New York City yesterday.  That’s another reason why the judges smile and the audience explodes in applause. (H/T)

“And you, my dear misanthrope, are missing the point,” said the Devil.  “Par for the course.  Colette Douglas Home understood partially what the audience was really hungry for—blood.”

They scoffed when she told Simon Cowell, one of the judges, how she’d reached her forties without managing to develop a singing career because she hadn’t had the opportunity. Another judge, Piers Morgan, later wrote on his blog that, just before she launched into I Dreamed a Dream, the 3000-strong audience in Glasgow was laughing and the three judges were suppressing chuckles.

It was rude and cruel and arrogant. Susan Boyle from Blackburn, West Lothian, was presumed to be a buffoon. . . .

I dread to think of how Susan would have left the stage if her voice had been less than exceptional. She would have been humiliated in front of 11 million viewers. It’s the equivalent of being put in the stocks in front of the nation instead of the village. It used to be a punishment handed out to criminals. Now it is the fate of anyone without obvious sexual allure who dares seek opportunity.

This small, brave soul took her courage in her hands to pitch at her one hope of having her singing talent recognised, and was greeted with a communal sneer. (H/T)

“I’m not sure I follow what you mean when you say that the audience wanted blood,” said the misanthrope.

“An audience is a mob,” explained the Devil.  “The audience that Susan Boyle amazed was little different than one that howled for blood about two millennia ago.”

Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” And he said, “Why, what evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Let him be crucified!”

So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, “I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.” And all the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!” Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the governor’s headquarters, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe and put his own clothes on him and led him away to crucify him.

“I think I see your point.  The audience, which was prepared to crucify a poor singer, instead felt redemption,” the misanthrope said.  “I can see why your Enemy would like this, but why you?”

“Because most of the people will think better of themselves for liking Miss Boyle while forgetting how ready they were to mock and sneer,” replied the Devil.  “Look at what sells on Amazon.com: The Worst of American Idol.  The thing I really enjoy about the show is that, after the unlucky and untalented perform, the judges serve the audience  the 200 proof shots of malice.  It’s addicting in a good way.  Centuries ago, some of my more annoying enemies, the Puritans, banned bear-baiting: not because it was cruel to bears, but because people were enjoying the cruelty.  They understood, as the modern world has forgotten, that appetites grow with feeding.”

The misanthrope pondered for a minute, then said, “Eric Hoffer, an atheist, once made this observation about human nature: ‘Original sin?  It is probably the malice that is ever flickering within us.  Seen thus, it is a grievous error for those who manage human affairs not to take original sin into account.‘”

“What I take into account,” said the Devil, “is that more people will watch more of the Idol shows, and tell themselves that they’re hoping to see more Susan Boyles be discovered.  But if they come for self-improvement and schmaltz, and instead get addicted to the malice, then my black eye will fade: I’ll win another round over my Enemy.”

“Interesting philosophy of coffee you have there,” observed the devil over his own cup. “What does it mean that you Americans tend to overwhelm their coffee with milk and sugar and other obscenities at their coffee places? I suspect it’s related to your obsession with everything ending happily ever after. You gave the world the dependably square Disney, and despite its attempts to be hip, Starbucks is the same kind of American invention. Take something tragic from the old world—fairy tales, bittersweet coffee—and gussy it up with treacle, to the point where those who know the original can barely recognize the American version.”

“Tragic?” asked the misanthrope.

“Tragedy implies necessity,” explained the devil. “Romeo and Juliet isn’t a proper tragedy because chance rather than necessity trips up the protagonists—had Juliet woken up a few minutes earlier, for example, she would have been able to prevent Romeo’s suicide and then would have had no reason to kill herself. Hamlet, however, is a proper tragedy: Hamlet is torn between honor, which demands he avenge his father’s murder, and Christianity, which demands he forgive. It’s the Western world’s greatest play because it captures the tension between the old honor cultures of Europe (still, not coincidentally, going strong in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia) and Christianity, now dying in much of the West. Had a modern American written Hamlet, it would have ended not with a bloodbath but with group therapy.”

“And fairy tales,” the misanthrope mused, “are similar. Though many good stepparents hate the portrayal of wicked stepmothers and stepfathers, the most likely abuser of children is a stepparent. Statistically speaking, children are much more likely to be killed or raped by a stepfather rather than a stranger. The fairy tales have a kernel of truth.”

“Kernels of truth,” remarked the devil, “are still too much for the American public to bear, which is why no politician seriously discusses the reality of geopolitics. The people want FDR’s freedom from fear—now conveniently and brilliantly called terrorism—but are unwilling to think through what it will take to eradicate the threat.”

“We’ve talked before about this,” said the misanthrope. “If we cannot change the minds of murderous jihadis, they’ll have to be killed.”

“Neither changing their minds nor killing them is going to happen,” replied the devil smugly. “At least, Americans aren’t going to do it. (Since it’s a job you won’t do, perhaps you can import someone to do it for you.) A people who file lawsuits over waterboarding—of all the evils I’ve encouraged and nurtured, that one barely registers—lack the backbone for fighting a war to the death. And given your cultural dependence on sugar, you won’t change the minds of a significant number fanatics. American blindness to necessity is potentially a tragic flaw. I can’t see the future (only my Enemy can do that) but I can see shadows of what may yet be, as Dickens would put it.”

“Still, an interesting idea popped up on this blog in the comments section,” said the misanthrope.

“Perhaps,” said the devil, “you should take a page from John Derbyshire“:

“The human race,” countered the devil, “is very good at ignoring if not outright tolerating the slaughter of distant peoples. A Middle East only bloodbath, tolerably pleasant as I find it, is still an unlikely shade of the future. What is more likely is that the West, infatuated with stability, will prevent a war now. The unreasoning fanatics will grow in numbers as people try to appease them; fanatics are the tinder that exploiting thugs will play with. An accumulation of petty and serious grievances will keep building up as realists and cowards postpone conflict; the eventual conflagration will cover far more of the globe than just the Middle East when the next Arafat throws a rhetorical firebomb at the wrong time. This, of course, is what I think is the best possible outcome. So I doubt that you need to worry about localized genocide in the Middle East, my dear misanthrope. What’s probably coming is a much bigger catastrophe: the sparks from the Arab world could easily light the Islamist tinder laid in places like Russia, India, Southeast Asia, Africa, and perhaps Europe itself. In the middle of that confusion, who knows what a power like China might try to get away with?

“It’s getting late, and I have places to go and people to see. Enjoy another cup of coffee.”

“How is that possible?” asked the misanthrope.  “I’d think that thirty-odd deaths would—for you—be the lowlight of the whole terrible mess.”

“Oh, messes are fun for me,” explained the devil.  “But what really puts a song in my heart and a spring in my step is the way you humans twist tragedies around.”

“Twist?”

“Ah, people don’t like looking at horrors.  ‘When you stare into the abyss,’ Nietzsche once observed, ‘the abyss stares back into you.’  People loathe dark thoughts.  So they grope for a light.  Anything to banish the darkness; there lies my opportunity.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” said the misanthrope.

“Consider another metaphor,” suggested the devil.  “A drunk (my kind of fellow) leans on a lamppost for support, rather than using it for enlightenment.  Events that don’t directly touch people are lampposts.  How people respond to them—do they learn from it or use it to reinforce existing beliefs?—is what both I and my Enemy use to gauge the souls we compete for.”

“I think I get it now,” said the misanthrope.  “You, devil, want us to continue our various politicking and theories, using the dead as examples.   Your Enemy, however, would prefer us to reflect, to pray, and to love one another.  You would be happiest if the victims were forgotten in the fights of the living.  Your Enemy, however, was the first to weep when the shots were fired, and He waits for us to mourn the lost souls.”

“Saccharine, but not bad,” said the devil.  “I’m looking forward to the inevitable arguments because, in a misguided effort to enlighten each other, people will throw off less light than heat; it makes me homesick.  John Podhoretz understands human nature:

The effort to shoehorn an event as devastating as this one into a predetermined set of ideas — like the need for gun control, or the need for the abolition of all gun controls — is an effort to make the unthinkable thinkable. Does this massacre seem to be utterly without cause? Well, then, we will find a cause in order to be able to wrap our minds around it, because when we have a cause we can determine a remedy. (I can sense a certain measure of disappointment emanating from some quarters that the shooter, may he reside forever in Hell, wasn’t an illegal alien.) We can pass a law, or teach new kinds of classes to people, or produce anodyne television specials and heartwarming television commercials that will serve to vaccinate America against the next monstrous act of senseless evil.

“And what happens next?” asked the misanthrope.

“Another enormity comes,” replied the devil, “and my fun starts again—because the world is full of drunks clinging to lampposts who never learn.”

The misanthrope paused a moment, glanced into the black eyes that lacked both irises and whites, and replied, “I was thinking of the differences between you and me.”

“Worrying about the audience of this snarky blog? I’d imagine that some of your readers go to plays and shout, ‘Claudius isn’t really praying, Hamlet! Let him have it!’ Of course we’re very different people, and I only make appearances to clarify some of your thoughts. The people who can’t tell the difference have a calling that my old adversary, Mark Twain, once identified: ‘First God made idiots; that was for practice. Then he created school boards.’ The school boards of today now think that Twain was a racist because they cannot distinguish between him and Huckleberry Finn. You probably have some future school board members in your audience.”

“Actually,” said the misanthrope, “I was thinking about why I’m a misanthrope and why you’re not. I don’t like humanity because people are inseparable from needless cruelty and slaughter. But those terrible things are what you live for.”

“Oh, that. Quite right. It’s why I’m an advocate of genocides and a fan of the mass murderer. I think men are at their best when being sadistic. I’m especially fond of half-baked ideas that wind up slaughtering far more people than mere negligence would have. I really prefer my evil exquisitely organized—documented in triplicate and moving like clockwork— since relying on good intentions is somewhat like eating at McDonald’s every night for all eternity. But I’ll take what I can get; I’m tolerant like that.”

“At the moment,” said the misanthrope, shifting gears, “I’m trying to work through an idea to avoid your favorite things. Make sure it’s thoroughly baked, to borrow your metaphor.”

“From your kitchen?” asked the devil with a raised eyebrow. “Have you even turned on the oven yet? You’re not much of a housekeeper—even your vacuum cleaner is dusty.”

“I’m very good with Pop-tarts,” the misanthrope countered wryly. “I was thinking about the concept of hudna, of holding your enemy close, allowing him to waste his energy and manpower elsewhere while you quietly regrouped.”

“It’s a lovely, underhanded strategy,” commented the devil. “But it takes subtlety of thought and long-term thinking to work. Spengler was thinking about it the other day in regard to Russia and Saudi Arabia:

“I was thinking,” said the misanthrope, “of another hudna of sorts. Specifically, that between Czar Alexander I and Napoleon at Tilsit, one that’s perhaps another model we should remember.”

“Ah, two of my favorite monsters,” the devil reminisced. “One was the father of modern totalitarianism: ruthless, godless, rigging elections, wasting lives. The other was the sort of messianic madman that only Russia could produce and only Russians would trust with power.”

“Messianic madman or no,” said the misanthrope, “Alexander did a better job of reading Napoleon than the other way round. Napoleon misread Alexander’s courtesy for weakness, which lead in part to his disastrous Russian campaign. Alexander, however, realized that Napoleon was determined to fight the world, so he used Tilsit as a hudna to gain time. Given a few years, the Russian army could regroup, and Napoleon would inevitably overextend himself. Then Alexander would revenge himself on the indignities of Tilsit, turning the Duchy of Warsaw under Frederick Augustus into the Congress Kingdom of Poland under Czar Alexander.”

“As Balthasar de Gracián once noted: ‘Time and I against any two,’” the devil said.

“Moving from Spengler’s focus on Russia and Saudi Arabia, I was also thinking of how Margruder’s law—”

“A lovely law,” interrupted the devil, “that states that combat sinks to the lowest common denominator of the combatants. So when the eye-gouging folk meet the mud-wrestlers, everybody winds up eye-gouging in the mud. How do you think it applies to America and rogue states?”

“Suicide bombers are the lowest denominator of rogue states; the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki mark the lowest denominator of America. The lowest common denominator would be suicide nuclear terrorism against civilians. And even though the news is dominated by talk of the surge in Iraq, I’m wondering if our other enemies are having a hudna of their own right now.”

“I think you’re being uncharacteristically optimistic, my dear misanthrope,” said the devil. “You’re hoping against experience that people are thinking long-term. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say that terrorists and America are having a hudna. What then?”

“The begged question,” noted the misanthrope, “is who’s playing Alexander and who’s playing Napoleon? Who’s benefitting and who’s wasting resources? We’ve got India and China developing blue water fleets as Britain’s sinks into disrepair. We’ve got Iran trying to develop nuclear weapons and North Korea trying to leverage its nuclear program into clout. What is Western Civilization doing to head off Magruder’s law? How are they using their time?”

“Well,” said the devil, “it seems to me that good men are dithering while evil men are preparing. To me, that’s a sign that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with my world.”

Ignoring that question, the misanthrope countered: “Why the visit?”

“Because I always kick people when they’re down,” replied the Devil. “You’re brooding about something tonight, and I thought I’d enjoy a talk. Mind if I have some coffee?”

“Help yourself,” said the misanthrope. “I’m trying to walk a cat backwards, as it were.”

“A nice metaphor,” said the Devil. “What are you trying to puzzle through?”

“Theodore Dalrymple,” began the misanthrope, “once made a tart observation about criminals:

Since the cause of crime is the decision of criminals to commit it, what goes on in their minds is not irrelevant. Ideas filter down selectively from the academy into the population at large, through discussions (and often bowdlerizations) in the papers and on TV, and become intellectual currency.

“And are you worrying about crime?” asked the Devil.

“No. I’m worrying about Islam. I found an article by Daniel Pipes, over a decade old, that’s got me puzzling through a problem:

So much knowledge of the West points to who fundamentalists are: not peasants living in the unchanging countryside but modern, thoroughly urbanized individuals, many of them university graduates. Notwithstanding all their talk about recreating the society of the Prophet Muhammad, fundamentalists are modern individuals at the forefront of coping with modern life. These are women struggling to keep their virtue on extremely packed buses, entrepreneurs attempting to live by the Qur’anic strictures on usury, and engineers working out the spiritual significance of the computer.

“So that’s how Dalrymple ties into Pipes,” observed the Devil. “You’re trying to get into the head of terrorists. Well, you can’t bribe them into peace, neither with land (like Israel) nor Paris Hilton (like America). I’m telling you nothing you haven’t figured out, my dear misanthrope.”

“Part of what motivates these young terrorists,” the misanthrope continued, “is that they want it all: the West’s toys and technologies, and the East’s submission of womenfolk. Dalrymple elsewhere observed:

Young Muslim men in Britain—as in France and elsewhere in the West—have a problem of personal, cultural, and national identity. They are deeply secularized, with little religious faith, even if most will admit to a belief in God. Their interest in Islam is slight. They do not pray or keep Ramadan (except if it brings them some practical advantage, such as the postponement of a court appearance). Their tastes are for the most part those of non-Muslim lower-class young men. . . .

However similar young Muslim men might be in their tastes to young white men, they would be horrified, and indeed turn extremely violent, if their sisters comported themselves as young white women do. They satisfy their sexual needs with prostitutes and those whom they quite openly call “white sluts.” (Many a young white female patient of mine has described being taunted in this fashion as she walked through a street inhabited by Muslims.) And, of course, they do not have to suffer much sexual frustration in an environment where people decide on sexual liaisons within seconds of acquaintance.

However secular the tastes of the young Muslim men, they strongly wish to maintain the male dominance they have inherited from their parents. A sister who has the temerity to choose a boyfriend for herself, or who even expresses a desire for an independent social life, is likely to suffer a beating, followed by surveillance of Stasi-like thoroughness. The young men instinctively understand that their inherited system of male domination—which provides them, by means of forced marriage, with sexual gratification at home while simultaneously freeing them from domestic chores and allowing them to live completely Westernized lives outside the home, including further sexual adventures into which their wives cannot inquire—is strong but brittle, rather as communism was: it is an all or nothing phenomenon, and every breach must meet swift punishment.

Even if for no other reason, then (and there are in fact other reasons), young Muslim males have a strong motive for maintaining an identity apart. And since people rarely like to admit low motives for their behavior, such as the wish to maintain a self-gratifying dominance, these young Muslims need a more elevated justification for their conduct toward women. They find it, of course, in a residual Islam: not the Islam of onerous duties, rituals, and prohibitions, which interferes so insistently in day-to-day life, but in an Islam of residual feeling, which allows them a sense of moral superiority to everything around them, including women, without in any way cramping their style.

“I see, my dear misanthrope, why you aren’t fond of people. So the terrorists want it all. They can’t have it, you know. Nobody can. Any economist will tell you that you must make trade-offs; perhaps that’s why economics is the dismal science. Your low opinion of the terrorists motivations reminds me of Spengler’s low opinion of Confederate soldiers:

If the South fought the war to preserve chattel slavery, what possessed the 80-90 percent of southerners who owned no slaves to die for a practice from which they drew no immediate benefit? Professor Gary W Gallagher (The Confederate War, Cambridge 1997) represents the scholarly side of this myth, while popular fiction and films such as Gods and Generals dish it out to the broad public. That does not wash; one does not register 40 percent casualty rates for sentimental reasons. Catastrophic casualties pile up when a conqueror rallies greedy men to his banner. Ask the half-million men who marched to Moscow in 1812 under Napoleon Bonaparte’s banner why they fought for an emperor, although they had no empire of their own. Napoleon said it best: Every soldier carried a field marshal’s baton in his rucksack. The same apples to Alexander of Macedonia, Mohammed and his successors, the Thirty Years’ War General Albrecht von Wallenstein (1583-1634), Francisco Villa during the Mexican civil war of 1910-18, the Germans during World War II, and so forth.

The unpleasant fact is that Southerners who had no slaves hoped eventually to get some, and fought for the Confederacy for the same reason that Napoleon’s freebooters fought for the emperor. In fact, Southerners had been fighting for the right to bring slaves to new territories for a generation prior to the outbreak of war, in Kansas and elsewhere. Cotton, their principal cash crop, exhausted the soil in a decade’s planting, and the planter took his slaves and moved on. Slavery and the Southern economic system would choke to death without expansion. Had the South formed an independent state, it would have embarked on a campaign of conquest and imposed slavery on the whole southern half of the Western Hemisphere.

Professor Robert E May demonstrated this in The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire (1973). Of hundreds of newspaper citations in May’s book, here is one: “The Memphis Daily Appeal, December 30, 1860, wrote that a slave ‘empire’ would arise ‘from San Diego, on the Pacific Ocean, thence southward, along the shore line of Mexico and Central America, at low tide, to the Isthmus of Panama; thence South – still South! – along the western shore line of New Granada and Ecuador, to where the southern boundary of the latter strikes the ocean; thence east over the Andes to the head springs of the Amazon; thence down the mightiest of inland seas, through the teeming bosom of the broadest and richest delta in the world, to the Atlantic Ocean’.”

No pipe dream was this plan. That is what Southerners read day in and day out during the 10 years that preceded the Civil War. The slaveholding interest had engaged in land grabs for a generation prior to the outbreak of Civil War, including a brief takeover of Nicaragua by American adventurers. A Southern empire meant a revived African slave trade and land for any man enterprising enough to take it. . . .

Today’s American Southerners rather would wallow in sentimental memories of Southern gallantry than to admit that their ancestors died for sordid imperialistic ambitions. Yet that is what they sang as off to war they marched: “We are a band of brothers/native to the soil/fighting for the property we gained by honest toil.” When brave men are convinced that conquering others is the best way to make their fortune, it may be necessary to keep on killing until not enough are left to fight. Even after the Southern armies had bled almost to death, their commander, Robert E Lee, persuaded his reluctant staff to surrender only with difficulty.

“Good analysis of how humans are motivated, but we’re getting away from Islam,” the misanthrope said. “I think our problem is that we have a violent group of people who, though they couldn’t build a skyscraper or an airplane, are more than capable of destroying both. If given the opportunity, they will repeat 9-11 on a grander scale. These people cannot create, only destroy. What’s more, I don’t think we can convert them easily if at all. Living in a society with order and the rule of law, one can live a good life with hard work and thrift. But these unlovable virtues can’t compete once young men get a taste of easy sex and i-pods. When their toys are taken away, these young men explode—take away their bling and you get a bang.”

“Lovely,” commented the Devil. “But what are you going to do about it? Multiculturalism makes no distinction between cultures. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter, goes the cliché. What exactly can the West do about it all? To quote James Burnham, if there’s no alternative, then there’s no problem.”

“Oh, I can think of an alternative,” said the misanthrope. “It’s that Jihadist ideology, like Nazism before it, must be wiped from the face of the earth; neither seed nor root can be allowed to survive.”

“I thought you said you were skeptical of conversion,” said the Devil.

“I am,” said the misanthrope.

“So are you proposing genocide?”

“That seems to be where my logic is leading,” said the misanthrope. “If there exist people hellbent on our destruction, and we cannot change their minds, we must either destroy them or be ourselves destroyed. It’s why I wish someone can prove me wrong, can prove that my analysis is flawed, can show me another potential future. Can these terrorists be changed? I’m reminded of Matthew 18:7, ‘Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!’”

“So you see an ocean of woe?”

“Perhaps,” said the misanthrope. “Probably. I wish I could see otherwise. But all I see is darkness.”

“You made that same point to Whittaker Chambers sixty-odd years ago,” said the misanthrope, not bothering to turn around. “I wasn’t looking for any of your monuments, Old Scratch; just admiring the view on a day that’s almost, but not quite, Spring.”

“Nevertheless,” said the devil, coming fully into view, “my monuments surround you. Even on this day, my handiwork is all around you.”

The misanthrope didn’t answer. He wasn’t really in the mood for dealing with the devil, and felt that he’d rather people watch on the way home. He noticed a pair of women, arguing as they walked by the Treasury, and he started to eavesdrop.

“I’m sorry,” said the first woman, trying (and failing) to look contrite. “But I don’t think it surprised anyone.”

“I STILL cannot BELIEVE you DID THAT,” boomed the second woman, flailing her arms about.

“If she keeps that up,” murmured the devil, “when they get home, she’ll be too tired to lift a finger.”

“I think they’re just warming up,” said the misanthrope.

The women walked away, still arguing, and the two men walked by the Old Ebbitt Grill. An elderly man holding rags and shoe polish was managing to look dignified, despite being on his knees and smiling too widely. “I’ve never seen an actual shoeshine boy before!” cried a woman taking a picture. The devil merely smiled.

As they walked along Pennsylvania Avenue by the National Theater, some boys on bikes charged them. The misanthrope merely waited, and ignored their mocking laughs. “Such courage,” the devil noted.

“Maybe they’ll outgrow it,” suggested the misanthrope.

“You don’t really believe that.”

“I can hope for improbabilities, can’t I? Some men grow up.”

“Most,” said the devil, “merely grow older without growing better.”

The two reached another couple, over by the International Trade Center.

“Why’d you do that?” asked the young man as he escorted an unsteady young woman through the twinkling lights.

“Because it’s fun. Live a little—’s too early for you to be so old,” slurred the woman.

“One of these days,” said the man, pulling away slightly.

“You’ll what?” asked the woman. Then she gave a boozy laugh, and lightly slapped the back of his head. The couple walked away, too far for the misanthrope to eavesdrop further.

“You know,” said the devil as they walked by the old offices of the Washington Evening Star, “everybody thinks things will last forever. Everybody thinks life’s on the verge of Spring.”

“And you know otherwise?”

“I always do. Perhaps one day they’ll see what they’re missing. You can hope for it, since you like hoping for improbabilities. Have a pleasant Monday evening.”

“Go ahead,” said the misanthrope. “I couldn’t stop you if I tried, could I?”

“Of course you could,” said the devil, dodging two tourists looking for a metro stop. “I have perfect manners—–given the right occasion, of course. You seem to be looking for conversation, so I thought I’d oblige. By the by, I’m surprised I didn’t have to tell you who I am.”

“Who else has eyes like that?” Asked the misanthrope. “And who else has the chutzpah to start conversations with guys like me?”

“Chutzpah?” The devil actually looked surprised. “Oh, I’ll grant that I’m shameless, but I’m hardly a chutzpanik. Over there,” he said, gesturing towards the dome of the Capitol, “are the professionals.”

“So what did you want to talk about? And why should I expect any honesty from you?”

“Oh, I’ll talk about whatever you feel like,” said the devil. “And I’ll be honest.”

“As honest as the Weird Sisters,” said the misanthrope.

“Details, details,” said the devil. “It’s still honesty.”

“So the devil is in the technicalities. Well, how do you feel about the world?” Asked the misanthrope.

“Oh, I love it. I’m still the king of this world. And things are going so splendidly for me! So much confusion, so many misguided hopes and foolish dreams. I really don’t have to push hard these days. All I have to do is nudge. Nobody has the courage to stand up for decency these days because everybody is waiting for somebody else to do the dirty work. Look at Hollywood discussing its homophobia over the Oscars when gay kids are being executed in Iran. Nobody takes seriously the massive potential wars that are arising. I haven’t felt so happy since 1913. Everybody was drunk on the feeling of progress. You know, of course, how that turned out; people aren’t sober now; the trends favor me.”

“Trends go till they stop,” said the misanthrope. “I can’t believe that the devil is counting on mere trends.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” said the devil. “But they’ll do quite a bit of work for me. Once they start, they keep on going until people work up the nerve to change them. And the longer they go on, the more momentum they’ll have. Nuclear and biological disasters creep up, and the world blissfully slumbers on. Eugenics slips in with slogans like ‘choice’ and ‘good life’ so people can start breeding themselves like cattle.”

“You’re dodging the question—–what else do you have planned?”

“Ah, I’ll be honest and say you’ll find out in due time. It is intimately your business, of course, but don’t lecture the devil about what he has to tell you.” His eyes darkened further. “The world is losing faith, which means I’ve been gaining openings.”

“They’re interesting, skeptics. They feel above miracles. At least with faith we’re free to believe in the miracles the skeptics deny.”

“What of you? Are you trying to convince me or yourself with that prattle, my misanthropic friend? You work away, you write silly things on a blog. What do you think will come of it?”

“I don’t know,” said the misanthrope. “I write, I work, I pray, I read. Not the most exciting existence, but perhaps it’s preparing me for something.”

“You don’t know much, do you? You simply muddle through. Can you even answer who you are?”

“God knows; that’s enough for me.”

The devil grinned. “And what proof do you have that God even cares?”

“None, but you knew that already. Some things must be believed in before they can be seen.”

“A delusional sentiment, but we’ll let it stand for now. You’re intellectually honest enough, my dear misanthrope, to know how little the human race is worth.”

“Rather, I know how little people are worth without grace. With grace, men are beyond price—–and beyond you.”

His eyes darkened still further. “Your faith is touching, charming, endearing.” The contempt oozes out. “But I can twist all good things to my purposes. Does marriage make men good? Then I’ll make men executioners to pay the mortgage. Does religion make men good? Then I’ll let the Enemy have them on Sunday and indulge them the rest of the week. Does faith make men good? Then I’ll give them fanaticism to keep the heretics burning. Does love make men good? Then I’ll give them jealousy to stifle what they loved.”

“Can’t bad things be twisted away from your goals? Perhaps the executioner will find a different way to care for his family. Perhaps the religious will live Sunday everyday. Perhaps the faithful will learn be Francis of Assisi rather than Torquemada. Perhaps love will end the insecurities of jealousy.”

“Very good. But I corrupt the good faster than my Enemy can redeem the bad. We’re just about to your miserable apartment, so I’ll take my leave. But just remember—–I’ve never been more confident about the state of the world.”