The Screwtape Election

How to make sense of the upcoming presidential election?

Those of us reared on reason, logic, and basic human decency find ourselves a bit befuddled these days, trying to make sense of what is rapidly devolving into a Grand Guignol of political, moral, and cultural horrors. As if the elevation of an underqualified and unelected candidate, Kamala Harris, to the role of national savior wasn’t enough, we gawk at our media in amazement and witness debates that, not very long ago, would’ve seemed patently absurd. Should a nation have borders? Should it keep convicted felons from ambling in whenever they please? Should males announce themselves to be female, saunter into the women’s locker room at will, and compete freely in women’s sports? Should we have a police force, and, if so, should our cops be permitted to uphold law and order?

That these matters, once uncontested givens in public life, are hotly debated—rather than, say, bothersome hypotheticals in some agitated adjunct professor’s introduction to political philosophy class—is all the proof we need that this is a grave moment for our republic. To understand our surreal circumstances, to contest as we should, and to prevail as we must, we would do well to turn to an unlikely source: an epistolary novel from 1942, in which a senior demon instructs his young and inept cousin in the art of tempting mankind to abandon faith, truth, and all that is holy. For what we have before us, you see, is the Screwtape Election.

The Readers of First Things no doubt need little introduction to C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece of Christian apologetics, The Screwtape Letters. But just in case it’s been a moment since you’ve had the pleasure of the devil’s company, the premise is simple: In thirty-one hilariously wicked letters, the demon Screwtape instructs his bumbling relation, Wormwood, in the dark art of leading mankind astray. With this literary device, Lewis delivers insight into human nature.

On the craft of persuasion, a subject of great interest to anyone wishing to inspire masses of humans to vote this way or the other, Screwtape opines: “The trouble with argument is that it moves the whole struggle on to the Enemy’s own ground” (the Enemy, in this case, being the Almighty). “By the very act of arguing,” Screwtape warns Wormwood, “you awake the patient’s reason; and once it is awake, who can foresee the result?”

Someone in the Harris campaign must have been taking notes. Has there been a ticket in recent history that abandoned argument so thoroughly and so rapidly? As of this writing, since her anointing, the Democratic candidate for president has not given a single press interview or appeared in an unscripted encounter with voters, a pattern of seclusion in sharp contrast to her opponent’s habit of granting the press daily access. What are her positions? Even Harris devotees attending her coronation at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago were having trouble understanding what, precisely, the Chosen One advocates or believes.

At a DNC panel on messaging, for example, campaign volunteers in the audience asked about the Harris campaign’s immigration policy, an issue of considerable concern to voters. If elected, the young Democrat faithful inquired, what, precisely, would Harris do about the border? As president, explained spokesperson Maca Casado, Harris will “secure the border, but treat people at the border with respect.”

Groovy, insisted those present, but, like, you know, how? Harris’s deputy communications director Brooke Goren chimed in. Don’t worry: As vice president, Harris had “traveled to over one hundred countries.” She attended the Munich Security Conference every year and delivered “powerful remarks” there. She knows about these important matters—which means that she will keep the border safe, but not in a way that would impede those coming into the country. This isn’t reason; it’s “messaging,” the political consultant’s euphemism for propaganda.

When the Democratic Party’s candidate finally took the main stage herself, she delivered a thirty-five-minute address that mentioned the border seven times—four times while arguing that whatever crisis may be occurring there was all Donald Trump’s fault, three times while promising that safety and goodwill will reign supreme down south once America swears her in as commander in chief. In other words, by simply having Kamala Harris as president, uncontrolled immigration won’t be a problem. With magic that strong, there will be no need for policies.

Somewhere in the lowerarchy of hell, Screwtape must’ve proposed a toast. He’s seen great progress in his devilish designs. Assault the sanctity of marriage and replace it with an endless parade of licentiousness? Check. An educational system dedicated to making sure that, as Screwtape so aptly put it, “nonsense in the intellect may reinforce corruption in the will”? Check. A constant changing of the terms of reality itself, so that the road to hell appears not steep and scary but “soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts”? Check, check, and check.

How might we vanquish such infernal designs? Luckily, Prof. Lewis, knowing we’re reluctant students easily distracted, affixed the answer as the epigraph to his book. It’s a corker of a quote from Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil,” it reads, “if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”

I dare say that in these words we have a political blueprint for our time, marching orders for those who wish to resist.

Talk to your conservative friends these days, and you’re likely to hear a speech that goes something like this: “If only the Republicans stopped with the nonsense and the name-calling and the internet memes and focused on the issues, they’d win the election.”

It’s a noble and high-minded sentiment, but it’s also, alas, dead wrong. In the Screwtape Election, debate is futile, because the other side offers no arguments. It traffics in temptations designed to elude the reasoning mind and indulge instead the other, hungrier faculties: the heart and its susceptibility to comforting fantasies, and the spleen’s delight in anger and hatred.

Against this assault, scorn works wonders, because lighthearted dismissal is the one thing that devils can’t bear. Consider the reactions of latter-day Screwtapes to Donald Trump’s remarkable appeal to his followers. “Why do none of Trump’s ‘jokes’ feel like jokes?” a Washington Post 2020 op-ed inquired. The answer, incredibly, was not that Trump is unfunny—a hard point to press on anyone with ears—but that he’s too funny. We were advised not to laugh with him, or even at him. The implicit message: Beware unauthorized mirth! Beware Trumpian scorn, which is “avant-garde and subtle,” and thus might stimulate independent thinking. No, no, no, stay with the program of those who know best.

Addressing the Democratic National Convention, Barack Obama himself did his best to channel his inner Donald Trump, roasting the forty-fifth president’s obsession with attendance at his inauguration and motioning with his hands to suggest, lewdly, that the size of the crowd that day wasn’t the only, or even primary, matter of concern to the beleaguered billionaire.

Ideologues and propagandists are rarely funny. Who remembers Stalin or Mao for their punch lines? Comedy, when done best, speaks dangerous truths by other means—even, or especially, when it comes off as crass, outrageous, offensive, revolting, or otherwise in poor taste. Crazy Kamala? Tampon Tim? Call these taunts sophomoric all you want. But they do a pretty good job reminding us of the truth that the progressives who dominate so many of our institutions cleave to the most insane propositions (men can become women) and adopt crazy policies. The man who now wants to be our vice president instructed his state to install tampon-dispensing machines in boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota.

Remember the fracas over JD Vance’s reference to childless cat ladies? Are we to fault a vice-presidential hopeful for insensitive caricature? I don’t think so. His formulation does a pretty good job highlighting a grim reality. The number of never married women is growing to more than 30 percent, and the number of married households with children has declined from 37 percent in 1976 to 21 percent today. The dystopian Democrats call this progress. There are times when collective myopia can only be corrected by strong words and sharply drawn figures.

Trump’s vaudeville patter and his penchant for coining memorable monikers for his adversaries reveal the realities of misgovernance by progressive elites better than a thousand debates. His scorn does what is needed. It slights the Screwtapes in our midst and pushes them into a state of self-consuming outrage and wounded pride. Let’s carry on and keep the cheerful scorn coming. It’s the Screwtape Election.

Liel Leibovitz is editor at large for Tablet Magazine and the cohost of its popular podcast, Unorthodox.

Image by Henry Fuseli, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.