The devil was in the bar, drunk and giddy as hell.

“Enjoying yourself?” I said, sitting on the barstool next to him.

“Like I haven’t in years, buddy. I’m on a roll.”

His breath was rank, his flesh crawling with bugs.

“A roll?”

“Look at the past week. I directed a madman to kill innocent children in a quiet Amish community – those people have worked so hard to avoid me. I found them anyhow.”

“You’re a real bastard, devil.”

“Better yet, I got an extremist Christian church from Topeka, Kan., to threaten to protest the funerals.”

“What?”

“Thanks to me, members of the church think Americans are dying in Iraq because of homosexuality. By protesting military funerals they think they are protesting sin. When Pennsylvania’s governor signed a law to restrict their protesting, they threatened to protest his sins at the Amish funerals.”

“For the love of God.”

“Love and God have nothing to do with it. And not only did I kill innocents, I was able to confuse more people – make them think Christians are just as nutty as other extremists who blow up innocent people because they think their God wants them to.”

“That’s your work, too, eh?”

“But of course. I’m using the oldest lure in the book with that one: pride. I got Osama and the boys thinking they’re pious and subservient when, in fact, they’re egotists and narcissists. They’re using their religion to drape themselves in power and the adulation of millions.”

“Very clever.”

“But my biggest successes of late have been in America – a place that’s been a thorn in my side from its beginning.”

“How so?”

“The damn country is founded on freedom, buddy. How does somebody in my line of work influence a country where citizens hold the unalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?”

“I’m not following.”

“Look, your founders had very clear values. They did not yield to the sin of pride, but instead yielded, as best they could, to the principles of my opponent. They built a constitution upon the basic values that unleash the human heart.”

“Really?”

“Of course. Your country’s values have produced order and civility. Your freedom has unleashed ingenuity, productivity and incredible wealth. These are the reasons America has been the most successful country in the history of mankind.”

“Has been?”

“I’m making terrific progress in America, buddy. Incivility, the breakdown of families and communities, crassness, vulgarity … I’m having success because Americans are becoming more self-centered and materialistic and less concerned for their fellow man.”

“How delightful.”

“Ignorance is one of my favorite tools. Ironically, the more ‘educated’ Americans become, the less they know how blessed they truly are. Americans are losing their ability to reason, to follow a logical thread. They’re easy to confuse now.”

“Confuse?”

“Look, the real threat America faces is the extremism I’ve nurtured, but many in America blame their president for their woes.  More than a third of them think their own government brought down the World Trade Center towers! Am I good or am I good!”

The devil laughed a deep, long, horrible laugh, while slapping has claw on his knee.

“So you’re the one fomenting this confusion?”

“That’s right, buddy. I got some Americans so confused, they’re using the people who want to kill them as a wedge to attack the people, flawed though they may be, who are trying to protect them.”

“I really hate you, devil.”

“And just as elections heat up – just as people should really be thinking through what America should do in Iraq and elsewhere – I give birth to another Washington scandal, one so salacious nobody is debating the issues that really matter.”

“Why don’t you go to hell, devil.”

He downed a double shot of bourbon and a quart of beer.

“I’m already there, buddy. And if I have my way, your country will soon be with me.”

Tom Purcell’s column is syndicated to papers across American. Contact him at TomPurcell@aol.com or visit him on the Web at www.TomPurcell.com.

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