The 8th Circle of Hell -- Where Trump's Cabinet Members Will Spend Eternity [View all]
My local paper, The Morning Call, published my LTE today. I always like it when I can include a literary reference.
Donald Trump held a Cabinet meeting recently which lasted 3 hours and 17 minutes and featured him basking in the fawning praise from his Cabinet members.
Secretary of Labor, Lori Chavez-DeRemer, invited Trump to see the banner with his “big beautiful face” hanging in front of her department headquarters. Steve Whitkoff told him, “There is only one thing I wish for, that the Nobel Committee finally gets its act together and realizes that you are the single finest candidate ever for a Nobel Peace Prize.”
This cringey display reminded me of Dante’s Inferno, an imagined journey through Hell where sinners are punished in a fashion befitting their crimes. In the 8th circle, Dante encounters the “flatterers,” those who gained power not with intelligence or skill but through misleading others by feeding them lies. The flatterers spend all of eternity trapped in a pit, submerged in the excrement that spews out of their mouths every time they speak.
A fitting fate, some would argue. History shows that flatterers push aside men and women of true wisdom. Flattery is safer than telling unpleasant truths but, in the long run, it can cause a government to collapse.
https://www.mcall.com/2025/09/06/letters-to-the-editor-flattery-will-get-the-us-nowhere/
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