America in the Eighth Circle

 From Crisis:

As with all of the circles of Dante’s hell, the punishment here is carefully chosen to suit the crime. The liars and the counterfeiters rot away, consumed by diseased corruption. Why? Pervasive lying—whether in words or coin—is the decay of a republic, because it makes relationships between persons impossible. As many commentators have noted, no one will accept coin for his goods unless he knows that the currency is good; no one can learn from another if everyone lies. Thus, as Sayers says, the tenth ditch gives us “a society in the last stages of its mortal sickness and already necrosing. Every value it has is false… All intercourse is corrupted, every affirmation has become perjury, and every identity a lie. No medium of exchange remains to it, and ‘the general bond of love and nature’ is utterly dissolved.”

If interpersonal exchange is impossible, then so, too, is any hope of mutual benefit, or common striving for a common good. Only competition and enmity can remain. And so the punishment here goes beyond bodily disease. In many ways, the company of other sinners is their worst punishment. In other circles of the Inferno, the damned at least have some sense of companionship: Paolo and Francesca cling to each other, the Florentine patriots run together on the abominable sands, and even the panderers and seducers march together in orderly lockstep. But the liars live in perpetual hate. Gianni Schicchi and Myrrha run about “tearing and snapping… like tusked swine,” ripping any soul they find to pieces; Master Adam and Sinon—though both consumed with grotesque and excruciating illness—fight with fists and words; and indeed Master Adam desires to see the damnation of his enemies more than relief from his own suffering. All this shows the corrosive effects of the lie, and looks forward to the worse violence of the traitors in the ninth circle: the Alberti brothers, Ugolino and Ruggieri, and Satan himself.

Turning once again from the fourteenth century to the twenty-first, we see Dante’s horrible vision coming to life. The media lie, and the politicians lie. What is the public to do? We are confronted, on the one hand, with riots and arson and armed bands clashing in the streets and a public paralyzed by inconsistent and nakedly politicized health advice in the face of pandemic on the other. And there is the specter of further social breakdown as the election draws nearer. And still the guardians of public information lie. Indeed, it is hard to see how they could behave any differently. The media are, after all, wedded to lies on the things that matter most in life: the relation of God to man, man to woman, and parents to children. How could we expect honesty on such comparative trivialities as pandemics or public health? (Read more.)

Share