My next checkpoint year was 1964. I planted the seeds that year of growing distrust in the American government: the war in Vietnam, the Warren Commission Report, the Civil Rights Act, the "Great Society," the humbling of the traditional Conservative movement in America using Johnson's landslide Presidential victory over Goldwater.
I had been behind the murder of President Kennedy the year before, when his policies threatened the wealth and power of many of my most trusted and loyal mortal minions. Johnson had always been far easier to manipulate, with his appetite for expediency and venality. To manipulate Jack Kennedy, I had always had to rely a great deal on his father (who had unwittingly been in my service since Prohibition, another of my masterstrokes), but the Kennedy patriarch's stroke had made my reliance on him impossible.
The next sixteen years saw my plan taking hold of the United States like a kudzu plant in fertile soil. My Plan's tendrils had found their way into every corner of American life: popular culture, economics, politics, and religion; all were conforming to My version of the American Dream. I arranged for the Iranian hostage crisis and the "October Surprise" to ensure President Carter's defeat. The United States, still reeling from both Watergate and Vietnam, was more than ready for a highly charismatic individual to take control and give them permission to be selfish and uncaring. Ronald Reagan was that man. While he was not in My immediate thrall, most of his Administration answered to Me.
The intervening years had seen the growth of the "Old Time Religion" into a major political and social force, and an increasing reliance by Americans on television as their primary (and in most cases only) source of information. Cable television united these disparate facts into a movement that began to acquire an even greater following than even I could have ever hoped. My Adversary's truest followers in His largest denomination: John XXIII, John Paul I, the Liberation Theology Movement; fell from power before they could see their ideas realized, and a more tolerant and truly Catholic Church achieved. Benedict XVI is the penultimate Pope, I promise.
The traditional denominations began losing membership in the United States in the 1970's, with many of their former parishioner's going to the fundamentalist sects that I had spent thirty years manipulating into becoming a completely bastardized form of My Adversary's Teachings. Charity and Justice took a back seat to Pride and Avarice. Compassion and Community were replaced by a profound social Darwinism that made "every man for himself" the order of the day. Poverty, which had been reduced from more than twenty-two percent in 1959 to a little over eleven percent in the mid-1970's, began rising again.
I ended 1980 with the sacrificial murder of John Lennon. You will note that all of My Plan's steps have violent human death--especially of the influential--as part of their formulation. I have used the power inherent in blood and death since the time of Cain and Able as a vehicle to maximize My Power. I also used these sacrifices to kill people who had the potential to disrupt My Plan.
The following sixteen years solidified My holds on American business, politics, and religion. I had chosen Avarice to be the mainstay of the first, Sloth for the second, and Pride for the third. These choices now paid unexpected dividends as My followers rose high in the boardrooms, political office, and the pulpit. Several of the candidates for My mortal representative were within striking distance of the highest elected and appointed offices in the United States. Several more were in the process of attaining dominance of the entertainment and communications industries. The one hope for peace in the Middle East, Yitzhak Rabin, I made sure died (like Gandhi before him) at the hands of a fundamentalist of his own faith. Oh I do love Irony!
Avarice has boosted the salaries of various corporate boards to astronomical levels, while leaving workers watching their wages shrink and their jobs being exported. Sloth has all but destroyed the American electorate's desire to actively participate in the political process beyond voting, and even the voter turnouts are falling to all time lows. Pride has so invaded the pulpit, that any doubt about inerrant Scripture (in reality their very errant interpretation of scripture, most of them who can even read Greek do so as poorly as Saul of Tarsus spoke it) was met with hostility and derision by the "born-again" faithful.
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