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DANTE’S INFERNO

At home here in Tuscany, not far from Florence, while worrying about the wildfires in California and the dumpster fires in Washington, D.C., it occurred to me:  If Dante Alighieri were Trump’s speech writer, what words might he put in the Covid death cult leader’s mouth? 

Among the many apposite passages, I find this soliloquy from The Inferno frighteningly Trumpish, and disturbingly like something Jim Jones might have said to his Jonestown followers as he poured the Kool-Aid.

Hope not ever to see Heaven.  

I have come to lead you to the other shore;

Into eternal darkness; into fire and into ice.

I am the way into the city of woe,
I am the way into eternal pain,
I am the way to go among the lost.

Justice caused my high architect to move,
Divine omnipotence created me,
The highest wisdom, and the primal love.

Before me there were no created things
But those that last forever—as do I.
Abandon all hope you who enter here.

― Dante Alighieri, Inferno

To which I would reply:

You are a false prophet.

Your words cannot condemn me.

I will not abandon all hope. 

I will continue to seek and to tell the truth.

I will love my fellow man as I love myself.

And I will vote.


Keep it real!  Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!  And wear your damn mask!

Marilyn


 

 

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