Forum Post: The Leftside Neocons

The Devil, reviewing old and new recruits, had men and women in black utilitarian shoes and dark suits grouped off to His right side. They worked for the neocons and believed in their message.

An obese man with bad teeth, ready smile and workers’ clothing adorned with social justice buttons came before the Devil from the queue. “Over there,” the Devil said, pointing to the right. “You’re one of them. Good undercover work.”

Joan d’Arc, contemporary newscaster extraordinaire, stepped up.

“I see you’ve worked against me, bringing voice to the voiceless and such. You’ve brought truth to political turmoil and stood up against my minions,” said the Devil.

“Thank you, dark Lord, I do my best.”

“But wait,” the Devil said. “You know the best propagandists are those who first gain the confidence of the people before they add their own incendiary spins and narrow the gate of good journalism. Is it true that you align with a divisive bunch who get their followers arrested to aggrandize their own agendas?”

“Oh no,” Joan said. “I simply stand with those who challenge authority.”

“Ha!” the Devil laughed. “And then police handcuff children of crowds who follow your friends, without grasping the consequences, into lanes reserved for traffic. Like on bridges. When they could have taken a legal path along pedestrian lanes. And didn’t your friends orchestrate this fiasco and toot their horns that it resulted in one of the largest mass arrests in U.S. history?”

“No, no. The crowd had a choice.”

“And weren’t your cronies poised with their usual yellow-and-black signs with their tired demand-slogans at the edge of the gathering to make sure they could lead hundreds into the illegal lane?” The Devil smiled. “My state moles are there, you know, among true-believer rabble rousers and their foolhardy followers.”

The Devil chuckled and clapped His hands. “Ah, the largest mass arrest in modern memory, indeed! Now that will dampen nicely—given media attention—the spirit of gentle-hearted serfs from coming out against my guys.”

Joan sniffed indignantly. “I bring truth to power and tell it like it is.”

The Devil narrowed his gaze at the self-righteous stalwart before him. “You knew exactly what would come down, but instead of being there to report it firsthand, you were elsewhere.”

“I followed a splinter march to a nearby union demo to cover that,” she said, lowering her eyes.

“And in your report on the big arrest, you didn’t mention that the 700 arrestees took an illegal path when a legal lane was available. And that many of them didn’t even know it was illegal because they were simply following our old instigators. What is that?”

“Sir, we’re trying to build a movement and we old hands know best,” Joan huffed.

“Fie!” said the Devil. “It’s the POWER OF PEACE I fear! Stand to the left for ignorant conceit! I group my neocon workers on the right and my Lefty agents of divisive discord on the left. Old man Trotsky gets to lash the left side. And also the right one, come to think of it, since he’s their intellectual father as well.”

Joan, more demur now her fate had been cast, asked the Devil, her reporter’s instinct still intact, “And where, Sir, are the neocons?”

The Devil glanced over at the woman, his rheumy eyes revealing slight disbelief. “Sitting on my golden thrones, of course. You know that.”