A Teaser from "President Faust" (Which I am working on)

Faust:

My Lord, have mercy on my soul! Dear God!

Mephistopheles:

You have the mercy that you meted out.
Too bad, for mercy is the grease of justice.
Her gears have ground down to a halt with you.

Faust:

I do not understand what’s happening.
How is it justice can give rise to pure
Injustice as I managed to unleash?

Mephistopheles:

You foolish man, why do you think we chose
To lift you up? Look at the justice you
Embrace: pure, simplifying order. Don’t
You know the universe’s tendency
Is toward much more complexity? The chaos
Becomes the atoms, then the molecules
Emerge, then life and mind and consciousness
In social man. And then in man we move
From tribe to heroes like Achilles, then
To Christ-like pieties and on to men
Who make the world in commerce, then to those
Like you who wish to flatten everything.
You should have grown beyond all that to see
The world as more complex and unified –
But, no. instead, you chose to take the path
Of simplifying Satan. Yes! My master,
The Prince of Darkness, known as Lucifer,
He loves to simplify, to bring men down,
To make men animals if possible.
In you I saw potential and I brought
Your case before my master, who then asked
Of God if we could make our offer. I
Am proud I found you, Faust. I found the man
Who’d simplify the greatest country in
The world to nothingness. You did our deed.

Faust:

Can such injustices emerge from justice?

Mephistopheles:

You do not think that out of good we can
Still find a means of evil? Yes, we can
Discover in the best intentions ways
To bring a man – yes, every man – to grief.
The best thing that we ever did was make
Mere man believe himself the source of justice,
Denying God, and in his justice kill
True justice, citing freedom destroy freedom,
And think to be a libertine to have
True liberty. No judge, no advocate,
Just me, the prosecutor, as the law.
I do believe in justice – merciless
And terrible. You’ll pay for all your sins –
And I shall punish you. Yes, you will pay.