Sympathy for the Devil

"Sin comes from the soul, not from the flesh..." --St. Augustine

THERE WERE WALLS, invisible walls, everywhere. He was a man. A maaaaan, standing with other real men, like him, between an army of picketers who chided him, mocked him, and a movie which tickled his most secret dreams. Their chants were full of spirit and venom, like so many football fans who had once cheered him. But much different...these people hated him, and he hated them, his eyes wandering nervously about in their sockets, half hate, half humiliation, so he drank more beer, and laughed at them. The beer made it easy.

He waited for the show to start, gathering close by his buddies, throwing up impenetrable, bitter walls of beer, and through it they could see the others complain and nag.

'Heeey, I'll bet she's a piece," he said loudly to his buddy. His buddy smiled and nodded at the Black woman.

"Motherfucker..." the woman hissed back, her eyes welling up.

"You bet honey!" the man replied and the buddies laughed heartily. They were there for entertainment, a good show--a woman with a clitoris in her throat--and there's nothing like good entertainment. Nothing like a good showmaster to lock the doors of the theater and pull down the shades and give you all the toys you want...girls, pills, grass, a vibrating thumbsucker if you want...everybody wants to see it, too many people want this--it's democratic...the show must go on, the greatest show on earth: war, crucifixion, rape, submission...to You...you can be anything you want, here, in this theater locked and alone, you don't have to live with anybody, be responsible for anything...you can be whatever you want to be...except yourself.

The show must go on.

THE LAWYER stood up on the steps of the theater. The theater was dark, silent, the show was running. The picketeers listened to his rising voice--trembling with indignation at times--pointing, pounding, and they looked up at him and listened, eager for him to stop, eager to respond. He was talking about freedom.

"The power of the press is not the power to molest," an angry picketeer told him.

"The power of the press may be the power to molest...the best response to bad speech is good speech, not censorship, because when you invoke the power of the state to censor--to arrest two of your fellow students--you make it possible for that power to be used against you, and anyone else who wants to make a statement."

Bursts of disgust popped out from the crowd, interrupting each other; the lawyer continued over the swelling anger.

"And I will support the right of someone who wants to show a film depicting the lynching of a Black man..."

"Motherfucker!" a woman hurried off, crying.

"...just as I will support the right of a person to make a film against bigotry."

More people walked off, left the heat behind. Some were crying, unable to find the words--or any expression at all--for their twisted hearts. Like the two buddies, they walked away from it.

"How do you...How," a picketeer began, trembling as she constructed her question, "How can someone who has been raped, victimized because of porn, what can they do?"

The lawyer had an answer: "They can press charges, exercise their rights!" The guffaws rose up at him like hands to his throat, and he stepped back a bit.

HITLER was fumbling with a copy of Hustler magazine as I stepped into his office. He put his hands on his desk, and then held the magazine up to me. The cover depicted him spanking a nude woman.

"Even they, even these Jewish pornographers idolize me! They adore me, you see, Hollywood and the whole bunch of decadents, they have made their fortune with me! Exploited me, you might say...where would they be without me!" He chuckled and laid the magazine down on his desk, next to a K-Mart color glossy of his wife and kids. "Now. What can I do for you?"

"Perhaps you have already done too much for me, Hitler..."

"I will always be at your service."

"What I came here for, you see...I have seen some things happen recently which have led me to question democracy, you know, American democracy. What aim does it serve? I have questioned everything as a result of what I have seen, and I have no answers. They are all give and take. Every answer seems to sacrifice something I don't want to lose. I might sacrifice morality, Hitler, for example, in defense of democracy. The will of the majority is not always right, and is many times wrong. I know it. In my bones, I know it, Hitler. Yet to democratically legalize morality--even with regard to the most evil things in our society--I am told, could wind up making the good legally immoral..."

"What are you trifling with notions of morality, immorality?...Aim for greatness, and morality will fall into place. Democracy is a means, nothing more, my friend. A means. By using democracy, the strong man can overcome those weaker elements, can lead, can persuade people to make their nation strong and make it survive. From the depths of your soul, your dark soul, you must strive to be great, to survive, to stand over other men...and too, a nation must strive to do the same, it is the way of nature, the fittest survive, you see, like Nietzsche knew, and Wagner..."

"That's a fabrication, Hitler, you don't understand what I'm saying. And why can't they protect the good, scrutinize the questionable, and fight--or at least understand--the evil? Only you can tell me this, Hitler, you must tell me this."

"The masses don't want to hear about good and evil...they don't want to follow Jesus; Jesus was crucified! The people don't want to fall victim to the Jews. Consequently...immorality, morality, justice and injustice, freedom and slavery--these all become jumbled and twisted and switched about like pawns in the pursuit of greatness. People want to be great. And if you can make them great, then your morality will be their morality, without question, and all questions of right and wrong will be settled for all time."

"But how can one man fabricate morality? This is what I must know. Aren't there certain things which are just wrong, and with reason, regardless of whether people think they are right?"

"Only the Jews. They say I am wrong. Many people today say I am wrong. But tell me...where were they when I made them great? Where were they when I was elected Chancellor? Today, you talk about my brutality, my ugliness, but where were they all then...like you Americans, you Americans and your so-called democracy, you criticize me for genocide, for being a fascist, for misleading the sacred masses...I WAS THE MASSES! I AM THE MASSES! I AM DEMOCRACY! They elected me to decide their complicated questions of morality and economics for them once and for all! Questions they hadn't the courage to answer! And today I am held up as evil...yet where were they in Vietnam? In Czechoslovakia? In Chile? In your very own Watts? Indeed, what would they have done without me? The massacre of the Indians--and this was before my time--was necessary for the survival and greatness of your nation. But as I have said, when people try to approach these questions with drivel about aesthetics and humanitarianism and so on, really, only one answer is possible: when the destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all obligation toward beauty ceases..."

"I find this fascinating, Hitler, and somehow, I could sit here and listen to you all night, but I wish you would answer my questions...why can't you just stick to the questions, deal with it..."

The doors burst open, and Hitler's steel face blew apart in alarm. Two cops forced him against the wall, frisked him. The state attorney seized his copy of Hustler as evidence, impounded his books. They wouldn't let anyone else inside. The DA offered me immunity if I cooperated with them. After all, I was the press. They handcuffed Hitler, and the cop was reading him his rights: "You have the right to remain silent..."

They went into the next room and arrested the projectionists, the crew technicians. "They're just doing their job!" Hitler complained. The DA seized the reels of film. "Smut," he muttered under his breath. They led Hitler and his technicians down the steps and outside Quincy House, where the angry customers railed after them with beers and fists, shouting, "Censorship! Freedom of expression! We have the right!...Censorship! Freedom of expression! We have the right!...Censorship! Censorship! Censorship!"

Hitler's eyes lit up. It was like the party rallies, the football games, where there are no questions, no complications, only heroes and martyrs, and great, righteous causes. The crowd was following him devoutly now, all the way down Mass Ave to the police station, where Hitler was booked and fingerprinted with his technicians.

AT QUINCY House, the lawyer was reminding the picketeers, "I know very well what it is like to be oppressed...I am a Jew, and I know what oppression is like, and I want my children to see those movies of the genocide, I want them to remember, to see, what can happen..."

"But how do you prevent it from happening?"

"You speak! You exercise your rights to free speech and expression. I agree--this stuff is disgusting, it hurts women, it degrades woman--and the best way to attack it is through your free speech. But when you invoke the power of the state..."

"And what about when you are outnumbered," a voice shot up from the melee. The mob became silent.

"What when your voice is not heard, when people want to hurt one another, when they exploit their rights, when they want the evil, when they want to see it? What about when they sell the evil, when they vote for it, what about when evil is legalized and profitable, and people no longer see anything wrong with it and accept it as something else...say, 'erotic,' or 'titillating?' You press charges?"

It was the question nobody wanted to answer. It was the question that nobody dared answer. It threatened and sneered like a snake poised in the shadow, ready to fight with you for your life.

"They never invented the jail that could hold me." Hitler sneered at the prison guard, as the slammer door swung open. They were going to prosecute the technicians to the fullest extent of the law, they had posted high bail, the cop said. But he bowed his head humbly as Hitler brushed him away. They had released Hitler on $5 bail.

"You will never understand me," he said resentfully to the state cop, "and you can never kill me, without killing a part of yourself...and you are too weak...far too weak for that! I am immortal as long as your world exists."