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I can almost believe in Satan sometimes, and that his highest pleasure is seeing us deliver our own souls to Hell. Like any seducer, there are strict rules he abides by, in order to heighten his own pleasure. I see him coming to Richard Nixon, during his days in the desert while Kennedy’s Camelot was aglitter, and offering him a proposition.

Satan, you see, had a problem: one of his principal franchises was in decline. After the indecorous excesses of the Nazis, bigotry had a rather high odor and was falling out of fashion, even in America. But Satan saw that a straight-up deal with Tricky Dick could easily fix everything. “Power,” he whispered. “The White House, vindication.” Of course Nixon, the living embodiment of banality, couldn’t resist, and he rather considered the evil cost an additional benefit. He needed only institute the Southern Strategy, which brought the lyncher’s bigotry indoors, and gave it a seat at the GOP country club, and his party would be guaranteed generations of victory and power – so long as they pandered cryptically to racists. Code words had to be used, and language had to be repurposed. Concepts like State’s Rights, Law and Order, Reverse Discrimination, Welfare Queen, were used, where what was meant was, “Let’s stick it to the niggers.”

Of course this begat Reagan’s run from Philadelphia, Mississippi – where the civil rights workers were murdered. And it begat George H. W. Bush’s Willie Horton Ads. And it begat George W’s obsessive hatred of affirmative action, though all his life he’s sidestepped an meritocracy with a sort of reverse-affirmative action – but of course, that fact has the true Satanic imprimatur.

Now, that we have a black man in the White House Satan’s handiwork is paying of in spades with the Birther Movement. These people are utterly convinced that Obama has no right to be President, no because he’s not qualified by training or intellect, not because he didn’t really get the most votes, but simply in virtue of who he is – which is, they believe, despite much evidence to the contrary, African by birth. They insist he prove a negative, that he was not born in Kenya, though at the same time they’re already positive that he was.

However these shitheads want to dress it up, their objection to Obama is pure, ignorant bigotry. They should be denounced, ostracized, ridiculed. But instead they are given respectful coverage on national television, because their freak show makes a better spectacle than thoughtful consideration of our many pressing problems. And so America fizzes closer to civil war, while Murdock, Limbaugh and O’Reilly get richer and richer and richer. Satan has really outdone himself, again.