Conservatives are wailing and gnashing their teeth over rapper Lil Nas X’s new satanic song and sneakers. The shoes feature pentagrams and a single drop of human blood. The music video depicts the performer giving Satan a lap dance. The publicity stunt, timed to coincide with the start of Holy Week, has succeeded at getting people to talk about Lil Nas and his products, and all it cost the rapper was his soul.
The Right is right to take the rapper’s antics seriously. Satan is a real person, Hell is a real place, and—to borrow a phrase from Baudelaire—”the greatest trick of the Devil is to persuade people he doesn’t exist.” As the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia once reminded a smirking interviewer from the New Yorker, “Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.” It’s all fun and games until the Devil devours your soul.
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