REALITY UPSIDE DOWN
Second Iteration (First p March 23, 2011)
"You're stepping on my foot, cretin!"
A press release has just come to my attention that Dante’s Inferno is being dramatically remodeled. The need has apparently arisen to accommodate a new class of condemned individuals, sinners who are so loathsome and evil that the traditional punishments of Hell are just too tame. The existing tortures, horrible as they are, just don’t fit the magnitude of the sins against humanity of this new breed of miscreants, particularly their war against the truth.
Names of some of those prompting the upgrade are mentioned—Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, George Bush, Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Charlie Rose, George Stephanopolous, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, James Clapper, John Brennan, Rupert Murdoch, the whole Sulzberger clan, Jeff Bezos, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Michele Bachman, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, Scott Walker, Sarah Palin, David and Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Jake Tapper, Adam Schiff— the list is certainly not exhaustive by any means, just indicative of the kind of terminal sociopathy afflicting America's leadership, and every day new individuals are being added (adding themselves is probably more accurate).
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow and Obama—two public figures for whom Hell is being expanded and modernised. Their main sin is the promotion of war and mass suffering on the basis of grotesque lies.
The Devil is quoted as saying, “I thought my good friend Adolph was about as scummy as they come but this new crop makes him look like Mother Theresa.” (And Mother Theresa herself, endorser of tyrants and witting tool of the global elites, was no saint.)
As described in the first part of Dante’s epic poem the Divine Comedy, Hell currently consists of nine levels, or as Dante calls them ‘circles’. Descending in order they are: Limbo, Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Wrath, Heresy, Violence, Fraud, and Treachery. Limbo is relatively benign, more of a park than a place of suffering, and is entirely reserved for the unbaptized and virtuous pagans. The next eight circles offer eternal punishment for the host of sins which individually fall into the named categories. There is no way to itemize them all here but as you would expect, the list includes everything from selfishness and hoarding to hedonism and beastiality, deception to murder and betrayal, theft to bigotry and idolatry.
“We hope you guys are enjoying yourselves. Because we’re not.!"
Punishments typically fit the sin. Unfortunates are eternally hacked to pieces by sword, perpetually chased by ferocious dogs through flesh-ripping thorny undergrowth, blinded to be left sightless and alone for all eternity, mercilessly crushed by huge stones, drowned and forever left gurgling at the bottom of a sea, immersed in a river of boiling blood and fire, cruelly condemned to permanently sit in a desert of flaming sand with lava pouring down on them, savagely whipped and driven by demons, mockingly having their heads wrenched around to face backwards, sadistically submerged in a lake of boiling pitch, and even spending eternity upside down with their heads entirely submerged in human excrement.
Details are not available at this time, but apparently these time-honored tortures will be like getting a foot massage compared to what will be in store for those who end up in the 10th Circle. Good luck, mega-sinners!
One other interesting aside: Since Hell hasn’t been remodeled for quite some time, the renovation work is providing a terrific opportunity for some equipment modernization. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Devil has ordered several hundred nuclear reactors from GE, which should give a real shot in the arm to the struggling nuclear power industry. GE was chosen because not only will the reactors provide unprecedented amounts of heat down there, they will also most probably melt down and subject the trustees to radiation poisoning, cancer, and having their flesh fall off their bones in slabs of greasy fillets.
“What I would do for a beer right now.”
The new 10th circle has not been officially named but rumor has it the top contenders are Shit Storm of Evil and Malevolent Assholes With No Redeeming Qualities.
You can vote on these. Just text *666 and hit ‘1’ for Shit Storm and ‘2’ for Malevolent Assholes.
Results will be announced by Ed Schultz on MSNBC on an upcoming show.
JOHN RACHEL, Distinguished Collaborator • John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter, music producer, novelist, and a bi-polar humanist. Since 2008, when he first embarked on his career as a novelist, he has had eight fiction and two non-fiction books published. These range from three satires and a coming-of-age trilogy, to a political drama and now a crime thriller. The two non-fiction works were also political, his attempt to address the crisis of democracy and pandemic corruption in the governing institutions of America. In the works is a creative non-fiction work, The Naked American. It is allegedly an account of author Rachel’s travels since leaving America August 2006, but more likely the product of the voices in his head which have plagued him since puberty. A number of prominent publishers have declared that they will do everything in their power to make sure these new books never see the light of day. The author’s last permanent residence in America was Portland, Oregon. John Rachel now lives in a quiet, traditional, rural Japanese community, where he sets his non-existent watch by the thrice-daily ringing of sonorous temple bells, at a local Shinto shrine. 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Parting shot—a word from the editors
The Best Definition of Donald Trump We Have Found
In his zeal to prove to his antagonists in the War Party that he is as bloodthirsty as their champion, Hillary Clinton, and more manly than Barack Obama, Trump seems to have gone “play-crazy” -- acting like an unpredictable maniac in order to terrorize the Russians into forcing some kind of dramatic concessions from their Syrian allies, or risk Armageddon.However, the “play-crazy” gambit can only work when the leader is, in real life, a disciplined and intelligent actor, who knows precisely what actual boundaries must not be crossed. That ain’t Donald Trump -- a pitifully shallow and ill-disciplined man, emotionally handicapped by obscene privilege and cognitively crippled by white American chauvinism. By pushing Trump into a corner and demanding that he display his most bellicose self, or be ceaselessly mocked as a “puppet” and minion of Russia, a lesser power, the War Party and its media and clandestine services have created a perfect storm of mayhem that may consume us all.— Glen Ford, Editor in Chief, Black Agenda Report
Nice writing! Besides the obvious religious significance, Dante’s writing is intriguing. The 9th circle is most entertaining with its folks upside down in excrement. Only problem now is that symbolically, the economic, political, and social systems of much of the globe (the system of the 1%ers) have the rest of us upside down and up to our ears in it.