Trump's Inferno

Where In Hell Would Trump Or His Defenders End Up? We Turn to Dante for Answers.

As you no doubt know by now, the New York Times, which used to be a newspaper of some renown, ran an oped on Monday entitled, “Trump Can Win on Character.” No doubt some highly paid editor at the Times thought that this was just the sort of column that would demonstrate the paper’s even-handedness and virtue. Alternatively perhaps they are running a pool at the Times to see who can offend the greatest number of readers with the most surpassingly offensive departure from the values that once led people to respect the paper and this article was just the latest in a flood of entries that achieved that goal.

In any event, I have it on good authority that at fish markets across America self-respecting salmon, tuna and even mackerel are refusing to be wrapped in recent editions of the Times. (Clownfish and bottom-feeders are still comfortable with the paper’s output.)

The article was from its premise to its last argument such a study in speciousness that it led me to seek a superlative form of the word—but speciousissimus neither rolls off the tongue nor does it actually exist in our language and speciousiest is hardly an improvement. Nonetheless the piece, by Rich Lowry, a right-wing hack affiliated with the MAGA cheerleading squad at The National Review, was undoubtedly the speciousiest thing I have read in a long time. And that is saying something. Because I also read the Times surpassingly idiotic “Joy is Not a Strategy” piece from just a couple days earlier.

I will not subject you to breaking it down line by line. The gist was that Kamala Harris’ character was so ill-suited to being president that Trump should run on it. It managed to make this case without actually addressing what we know of Trump’s character, so let me help you, the editors at the Times and the author out a bit if I may.

One approach, of course, would be to draw upon our collective knowledge of Trump’s character and try to compare him to other living creatures. I’ve tried this before however, and these comparisons inevitable end up being unfair to sprirogyra and the other forms of algae that comprise pond scum.

So instead, let me use a cultural measuring stick that has stood up to the test of the past 700 years or so. By that I mean the description of man’s character failings that forms the basis for Dante’s descriptions of the nine rings of Hell found in “The Divine Comedy.” Where would Trump fall in Dante’s eyes…or rather how far would he fall based on his record here on this earth so far?

As you’ll recall, there was a hierarchy of sin in Dante’s inferno, nine levels occupied by different kinds of sinners with those with the gravest of sins occupying the deeper realms close to a three-headed Satan who ruled while in bondage below. While the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance were a particularly unforgiving time when it came to those violating the laws of the Church and Heaven, I thought it would be interesting to take a look and see where a guy like Trump would end up…since some among us are so enthusiastic about his “character” and all.

So, here are the 9 rings of Hell and whether or not Trump would qualify to suffer within each:

• The first circle of Hell was limbo, a place for those who were unbaptized or who were virtuous pagans. Ironically, this would be the hardest one for Trump to enter. Because he is certainly not virtuous in any respect. Whether or not he was actually a pagan is something only he, Jeffrey Epstein and a few friends will know. But Trump might have eked out entry here because as far as most anyone could tell, prior to running for president Trump was unfamiliar with and disinterested in religion. So, with a good lawyer, he might have a case that he belonged.

• The second circle is for those guilty of lust. Epstein is surely there ahead of him now. Trump would no doubt find plenty of buddies there. They would not be happy, as they were battered by an endless storm and withering winds.

• The third circle is for gluttons. While Dante does not mention McDonald’s or ketchup anywhere in his cantos, no one who has ever seen Trump in a golf shirt has any doubt about whether he qualifies for this particularly level of torment and its “great storm of putrefaction.”

• Circle four is for those guilty of greed. This is also a kind of open and shut case. Here Trump would surely end up jousting with the others who succumbed to avarice and join “a nation of lost souls, far more than were above: they strained their chests against enormous weights, and with mad howls rolled them at one another.”

• So far he is four for four. Circle five? It is for those guilty of anger or wrath. Here they fight with one another for eternity or for those who keep their anger within, they must struggle with “a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe.” Trump, bitter, vindictive, whose brand is hate and who spread divisiveness wherever he goes would, of course, fit right in here.

• Six? Six is for heretics. You know the kind who set themselves up as false idols or who suggest that they were sent to earth by God when clearly they were not. This was a bad place to be in the Fourteenth Century but as we know, the Orange Jesus would fit right in.

• The seventh circle is divided into three rings, each devoted to a group of sinners who committed violence. The first is for those who committed violence against their neighbors. The second is for those did so against themselves. The third is for those who committed violence against God, art and nature. Well, as they say, Donald, two out of three ain’t good. From the insurrection to the suffering of those who died because of Trump’s mishandling of COVID to his efforts to rape the environment, there is no doubt Trump also belongs here.

• We’re nearing the end of our journey to the depths of the netherworld. Circle eight is for those guilty of fraud. Say what you will about New York juries, Donald but it wasn’t the jury that found you guilt of thirty four counts of fraud that is going to put you in this dark dark place. It is the fact that you committed the fraud (and you know there are plenty of other acts of fraud you have committed for which you will have to answer when the Day of Reckoning comes.)

• Last and least and by least I mean the place of the greatest suffering we have the ninth circle, a great frozen lake in which are trapped those who committed treachery against people with whom they had a special relationship or trust. Here are the treacherous. Do you think betraying your spouses, your family, your customers, voters, the Constitution, all the people of the United States would land you in that frigid lake? Oh yes. Here too, we would find Donald qualifying.

What’s my point? (As if I have not been clear enough.) To Rich Lowry and the editors at the Times who thought he may have had a case to make, when it comes to character the only sort Trump has is flawed, corrupt, miserable, condemnable, devious, malevolent, and dangerous. Not only would Trump have ended up in Hell as conceived by Dante in its greatest depiction in literature…HE WOULD END UP IN EVERY SINGLE CIRCLE OF HELL, HE HAS COMMITTED EVERY TYPE OF SIN OF WHICH DANTE COULD CONCEIVE.

He’s demonstrably a monster. And to entertain the idea that he is not reveals a profound deficit in the judgment of the author of the piece and perhaps an even greater or more cynical flaw in the editor who decided running such toxic nonsense was in anyway justified. These too are serious sins and I only wish that it was Dante and not I determining just where to consign these folks who whitewash a criminal to serve their self-interest and in so doing put us all at risk. But if you leave it to me and I will throw them into circle eight or nine and then quickly move on to the far more important business we have to attend to here, above ground.