SCREWTAPE

 

BREAKING NEWS!

Screwtape Post-Xmas

dispatch intercepted

In Case You Missed It:

Long before anyone had even heard of any Grinch the famed English scholar C. S. Lewis leaked thirty-one dispatches sent from Hades by senior demon Screwtape. They were designated as for his nephew Wormwood, an apprentice demon. This dossier came to be known as The Screwtape Letters. C. S. Lewis (being an Oxford professor) had translated this correspondence from the original demonic languages, or so the story goes.

Painstaking reading of those texts revealed Screwtape was a senior demon with uncontrollable control over Wormwood. Wormwood receives in the letters detailed instructions on how to deviate mortals away from Heaven and lead them into Hell. Specifically, Wormwood was to do this by emphasizing the distraction, discouragement, and dread common to humankind which so often take their minds away from depending on God.

Exclusive Update:

Recently this writer came into possession of a current Screwtape letter written to an apprentice demon known only as ‘Dimwood’. Source of this acquisition cannot be revealed, a decision for which there is ample precedent: to quote C. S. Lewis, “I have no intention of explaining how the correspondence which I now offer to the public fell into my hands”.

With the coming of Google Translate this new letter can be revealed herewith in the human vernacular. For whatever it is worth, this translation revealed the letter centers on 2021 skirmishes of this writer.

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The Disgraceful Lowest Domain

office of Screwtape, senior demon

2021 year-end review

To apprentice demon Dimwood,

It is time for your year-end, with-malicious-intent review. Thus I find myself with the gleeful task of pointing out your recent incompetency and unmitigated failures in regard to the assigned task of depressing one David Lewis, a would-be (forgive the expression) Christian.

#1) We are disappointed his heart odyssey did nothing to make his life unbearable. It was bad enough he had better than we wanted medical care. But, added to this our-Enemy-Above sent His angels, disguised as humans, whenever they were needed to comfort and encourage, to wit:

• To your demonic discredit you allowed you-know-Who to inspire that unbearably goodhearted first born son, Kenneth, to drop everything come 200 miles at exactly right time just because he was needed.

• Also as an apprentice demon we hold you personally responsible for that do-gooder third son, Matthew. You should have been warned what this kid was like when he drove all night to be there when his daddy went into heart surgery. Then he goes out a buys his parents a 50-inch TV for your would-be (forgive the expression) Christian to enjoy. Just an awful kid!

• Then, while your back must have been turned, people he didn’t even know sent him a handmade comforter to keep him warm. Disgusting!

• Finally, there was that woman whom our-Enemy-Above gave him. You totally failed to make him such a burden on her that she would not continue to love him too much. A Total Failure on your part!

As a result your designated would-be Christian got whole in spirit in spite of all our attempts to scare him into denial of you-know-Who.

#2) Now we come to the matter of that family Christmas gathering, a most horrid occasion indeed.

• Yes, must admit you did an adequate job last year in getting this event canceled due to our virus panic. But, this year you totally failed to scare these people out of expressing their love for each other. Even before the event you couldn’t even scare your assignee and his bride into not getting that darn vaccine thing!

• Were you aware this family has so much of that hideouts thing called ‘love’ that thirty-nine of them would go to so much trouble to get together? They even came from one side of the country to the other! Who would have thought? Nobody fought, nobody got irritated with another. The shame of it!!!

• And, they had such a good time everybody left glad they’d come. Food, games, freedom to tell stories of things done the parents hadn’t ever heard. Doing of bad deeds is okay, but the freedom to talk about it? Awful, just awful.

#3) Now we come to that day which our-Enemy-Above most wants celebrated, the birth of the One who can save so many souls from our domain of evil. With the coming of yet another yukky Xmas, as an apprentice demon you have failed to leave your assigned would-be Christian totally depressed.

• You thought he and that woman our-Enemy-Above gave him being home alone would be a bad thing. Don’t you know it’s only because his children heeded their council? They were content being alone because their children fulfilled their parent’s hopes! Hope for each child to make their own Christmas memories of being at home with their children.

  • This resulted in the worse, for us, possible outcome. Now there are five families enjoying the most hated by hell day, Christmas.

  • Five families who will, forgive the expression, make good memories which will stay with those little urchins forever.

• As an apprentice demon you allowed terrible behavior by those same children in how they (forgive me Satan for using the word) honored their father and mother. Just look at what those diabolically selfless kids did to us!

  • First, David woke up on an adjustable bed purchased for him by their youngest son, Benjamin. Were you not warned that after all our attempts to pull that boy astray when he was young, he had turned out – from our perspective – so bad.

  • Then your assignee sat down in that new easy chair his daughter ordered without telling in advance. Terrible thing this love of a daughter for her father, terrible. And, it’s obvious with all our small victories over the years he doesn’t deserve it; but still she loves him.

After all our efforts this David person still has all those dreadful blessing to be counted as the New Year comes. All of this we here in the lowest realm are blaming on you. Your assigned (forgive the expression) Christian is not discouraged and still loves his wife and children despite all attempts to leave him depressed.

With all appropriate disgust, I remain your taskmaster until you arrive to suffer forever in our lord Satan’s domain! Yeah, well, right, okay, you know, Merry Christmas and all that.

with all due malice intent I remain your dictatorial uncle,

Screwtape

Screwtape

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ON BEING PRESIDENTIAL

 

PRESIDENTIAL

In this observation of too many years most men coming to the office has to learn how to be President of the United States of America. It is not intuitive knowledge. In my lifetime I have seen only three who came to the game equipped for the contest: Lyndon Johnson, George H W Bush and Joe Biden. And, I have only known of one never learning how to be Presidential.

Now, I do feel compelled to reiterate that since he was introduced by then Senator Obama as his Vice-President candidate in 2008 I have never thought Joe Biden a particularly good choice for President. Nothing personal against the man, and at the time had not had occasion to give it much study. This was just my general impression after seeing Biden only in scattered news reports over the years. And, in interest of full disclosure, President Biden displays a worldview of what is commonly called a ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’. After voting Republican since Goldwater, this is not a worldview with which I am in complete agreement or comfortable.

Now that he has been President for a while, and after actually boning-up on the subject, my opinion is not much changed.

It is unlikely any would call him ‘charismatic’. Personally, tend to think of him as ‘uncle Joe’ type. If I may be allowed an opinion, and this is my blog, everything seen and reported about his life of service and personal decorum indicate the world would have been well served if the man had been a priest.

What Joseph R Biden Jr. is is experienced in what government can do when government is needed, and how to get that done. This is what we need from our government and in our President when the hour of need comes.

Now comes such an hour, a natural disaster of the highest magnitude. The type event which can make or break a President’s heritage. No one blames the President for a natural disaster. It is what he does thereafter which is remembered about the man: Did he listen? Did he take command? Did he accept responsibility?

There has been and will continue to be moments of compelling crisis. Which means there will always be instances when calm, knowledgeable, tell-it-like-it-is leadership is needed... 

     When we do not get such leadership America suffers. 
     When we do get such leadership the nation unites and works together through to a better day. Its call being Presidential.

 

FACEBOOK

ZUCHS!

or

The Hydra in the Metadata

It has recently become popular to blame Facebook and/or YouTube for “Censoring” content. In this observation these complaints boil down to: “Right Wing” pundits saying Social Media is “Left Wing” and “Left Wing” pundits intoning the opposite. And, yes, I have literally seen both arguments on Facebook, YouTube, and the TV machine. Each side had some “study” which they’d quoted as authoritative which resulted in censorship. Studies which just incidentally were usually based on undisclosed numbers of people.

Perhaps, though, the root problem is the unimaginable volume of ‘numbers’ that have to be sorted through. According to available sources, as of June 2021 Facebook has 2.85 Billion active users worldwide and is translated into multiple languages. There are an estimated 55,000 Posts per second to Facebook and 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s a lot of the ones & zeros which create those posts.

Also, it might be suggested none of current problems are particularly new. Following is from my Brazil Times article published October 28 2013. For any reader in the know, yes, it was Nathan edited and approved.

The Facebook Slowdown

The single most common complaint we’ve heard in 10+ years at Computer Central in Brazil is that a computer is running “slow”. There are probably as many reasons why this could be as there are complainers. In the past year or so, however, when people come in or call complaining their computer is “slow” what they actually mean is “my Facebook is slow”.

“Social Media” is the politically correct buzzword, but Facebook is the Godzilla in the room. It was once reported that the average “facebooker” returns to their account seven times a day.

Nathan, who is the real geek here, gives a really good explanation why Facebook is always going to run “slow”. Has something to do with the mathematical equations programmers have to do, or some such.

Here’s why Facebook is slow: There’s a whole bunch of stuff for it to do.

When you open to your account your computer is going out somewhere in never-never land looking for Facebook’s servers. Those servers have to figure out who you are and which page you want.

As soon as they do this they need to pull up the advertising which fits your profile and/or scan your computer to find out what things you may have ordered online. If I were to load Facebook on my office computer, for example, I’d get advertising for office supplies. Opening the same account on our home computer gets all kinds of old folks advertising.

Only after finding out who you are and what advertising to load, do they dump all this stuff on your screen. Then, when you scroll down the page the whole process starts over.

All this happens as millions of ones & zeros transfer back and forth every millisecond.

No wonder it is “slow” -- between your computer and Facebook there is a whole bunch of stuff for it to do. It can help if your PC has enough RAM, but that’s another subject...

Whatever you think of “social media” it has changed your life because it has changed the world. And, it is going cause problems and it is going to run “slow”.

2021 Postscript

In ancient Greek mythology the Hydra was a serpent-like monster with many heads. The fable being when one head was cut off, two more would inevitably grow back in its place. May it be herewith respectfully submitted that maybe, just maybe, the more they try to solve the problems of Social Media the more problems social media will ‘grow’. And maybe, just maybe, Mark is doing the best he can to slay the Hydra he somewhat unintentionally incarnated.