If Clarity, Civil Liberties & Community Are Heaven, the "Covid Response" Has Been Hell.
A Walk with Dante through its Nine Circles.
An adaptation of Thought Co.'s A Guide to Dante's 9 Circles of Hell The Structure of the Italian Poet's 'Inferno' to better understand who is responsible for the embarrassments and outrages related to “The Covid Response”.
1st Circle: The Almost Innocents
Where those who never knew a practice of skepticism reside. Dante encounters the Blindly Trusting, Skilled Television Watchers, Partisan Parrots, and every form of Useful Idiot who does not know to ask, “How would I know if I was wrong?”.
2nd Circle: Safety Lusters
Here, Dante encounters the Easily Terrified, those who never read that quote on security by Benjamin Franklin, and every brand of Germaphobe and Obsessive-Compulsive. They make Dante follow masking-taped arrows that lead nowhere & chase him around with bottles of hand sanitizer.
3rd Circle: Control Gluttons
Gluttony: Here reside overindulgers in the control of others. Karen, Kyle, Opportunistic Politicians, Moralists, Collectivists, School Board Members, Private-Public-Partnerships & That Sister-in-Law who conditions relationships on obedience. Dante is repeatedly screamed at for not wearing a mask in a smoldering Target aisle.
4th Circle: The Greedy
Guardian of circle, Pluto, bears an uncanny resemblance to GAVI's Seth Berkley. Reserved for pharma corporations that wangled liability-free EUAs, the public-private-partnerships that act as their their stalking horses, and the helpful partners-in-profit and power “public health” agencies who denied any treatments existed. Dante offered choice of no help or a vent.
5th Circle: Angry Narrative Defense Birds
This is the home of those who shriek the word “misinformation” whenever confronted with a theory, data, or an analysis not in agreement with their preferred narratives: (Masks Reduce Community Transmission, Lockdowns Save Lives, The Non-Vaccinated Are Infectious Viral Cesspools, The Vaccinated Don’t Die in Meaningful Numbers, Covid Vaccine Products are Safe and Effective and Appropriate for Everyone, Vaccine Mandates Don’t Violate Bodily Sovereignty, and the Bats Did It). They work to actively suppress information that challenges key claims made to justify Covid-excused authoritarianism & discrimination, and support many variants of censorship. They greet Dante with smears, threats, and Grandma Killer propaganda campaigns. Dante is accused of being a Koch brother for mentioning risk stratification and using the phrase “civil liberties”.
6th Circle: The Conformists
The 6th Circle is a vast park full of people playing chess and picnicking. Each conversation Dante becomes involved in ends abruptly when he expresses a view that differs from a key mainstream claim made to justify mask-use, school policy, vaccine discrimination, lockdowns, or passports. The other person disappears in a puff of smoke never to be heard from again.
7th Circle: The Violent
Outer Ring, Those who do violence against People and Property: Here swarm the public health/school bureaucrats & employers, egged on by the state, who destroyed livelihoods and communities of friends, family & colleagues by imposing lockdown measures, school closures, and segregation schemes. Dante must wade through piles of mental health disaster deaths, alienated former friends & colleagues, fired workers & small business carcasses.
Middle Ring, Those who do violence against Themselves: Meet the politicians & functionaries who chase down citizens, hog-tying them with “emergency” orders and stamping “Property of the State” on their foreheads. The ACLU Board of Directors shouts its new mantra: “mandates further civil liberties”. Here, “bioethicist" Art Caplan tells Dante how he attempted to tear out the tongues of those who called the mantra Orwellian nonsense, while Australia and Austria make faces behind him.
Inner Ring, Those who do violence against Nature: Shadowy forms flit around in dark alleys passing around bags of money, while others do secret dangerous whizz-bang stuff in brightly-lit labs. Whenever Dante peers more closely at the computer screens and vials, an oompah band shows up with a kick-line of dancing bats.
8th Circle: The Fraudsters
Let's just go with a direct quote from the Thought, Co. material for this one, with some relevant characters slotted in.
"This circle is...made up of those who consciously and willingly commit fraud...In these exist...panderers/seducers; flatterers [Maddow, Eric Feigl-Ding, CNN, WEF]; simoniacs (those who sell ecclesiastical preferment) [Wal-mart shall remain open! You’ll own nothing and be happy!]; sorcerers/astrologers/false prophets [Ferguson, IHME, Fauci, Pueyo, Garrett, Gates]; barrators (corrupt politicians; hypocrites [Newsom, Pelosi]; thieves [Pfizer, Moderna]; false counselors/advisers [Slavitt, Walensky, Wen]......schismatics (those who separate religions to form new ones) [We're not all humans. No! We are two groups: the unclean & the pure!]; and alchemists/counterfeiters [Surgisphere, EcoAlliance], perjurers [Fauci], impersonators [public health establishment], etc."
9th Circle: The Treacherous
The deepest circle of Hell, where Betrayal resides. Reserved for the well-dressed & well-connected persons who announce rain, and sell the hoi polloi a continuous supply of umbrellas while pissing down their backs. They come in many forms:
Public Health mandarins who betray health
Representatives who betray citizens.
Presidents who betray the constitution.
Academia when it betrays science.
Parents and teachers who betray kids.
The ACLU which betrays principles of bodily sovereignty, freedom of speech, and freedom of association
Arts organizations which betray their responsibility to courage.
Journalists who betray clarity.
Bigoted erstwhile friends, family members and colleagues who betray friendship, family ties, and the long-forged bonds of creative venture and mutual effort by participating in, supporting, enforcing and excusing star-bellied-sneetch segregation & discrimination.
Dante does his best to navigate his journey through this particular hell with the help of principled friends, all the blood that is thicker than water, citizen analysts, a handful of actual investigative journalists, a bad cat & some ethical skeptics.
Love it! Well done. Oh, and what took you so long. I mean, you are a writer, no?
This is really good!
So many loathsome covid villains, but the one I most want to see getting chomped on by ol' scratch himself would be Leana Wen. She so calmly spews out the most hateful of messages.