Franke: America and Dante’s Inferno
by Mark Franke
I am grateful these days for the time I can devote to reading. I have always loved to read, with eclectic tastes as to subject matter. Sometimes my reading choices land on disciplines I never took the opportunity to study while in school.
Theology is one such subject area. Having been granted audit student status at Concordia Theological Seminary Fort Wayne, I can address that deficiency. These kind folks allow me to take any course I choose regardless of meeting the prerequisites for it (read: Greek). The professors tolerate me, even to the extent of voluntarily grading my tests and papers.
This summer’s reading project is to work through Dante Alighieri’s entire “The Divine Comedy” for the first time, all 14,000 lines. I quickly realized that I needed to brush up on my understanding of the political environment in 13th century Italy to get Dante’s inclusion of historical figures, especially those he consigned to interminable suffering in Hell.
The Italy of 1300 was a convoluted, quarrelsome mess. They seemed to resort to violence at the slightest provocation. Citizens of Dante’s home city of Florence were Olympic quality athletes at this. No sooner than a mid-century civil war between two opponents was settled, the victorious party immediately split into two more factions and resumed the fight. Exiles, extra-legal executions and assassinations were coin of the realm. And this in a city on the cusp of giving birth to the Renaissance.
I couldn’t help but reflect on the similarity of the Florence of 1300 and the United States of 2025.
Understand that I try really, really hard to not get involved in your typical political discussions. Given the low level of civility in our civil discourse, it’s best that I not contribute to its further deterioration. Plus, on a selfish note, I no longer have the patience to listen to the oral food fights that are what a former high school teacher used to describe as “more heat than light.”
I rigorously avoid TV news channels. I agree with former FTC Chairman Newton Minow that television is a “vast wasteland,” with cable news channels as exhibit number one. Well, maybe exhibit number two after all those senseless YouTube videos by so-called “influencers.”
I will admit to subscribing to several news feed services that sometimes include headlines from Fox, CNN and MSNBC, and I do occasionally read some of the articles. This is to provide me with a balance of highly opinionated and journalistically deficient takes on the important news stories of the day.
Traditional print media, which should be the last bastion of serious journalism, have all but fallen off my daily reading list. I still look at headline feeds from the Wall Street Journal and my hometown paper, the Journal Gazette, to cherry-pick stories of interest. I dropped my subscription to the WSJ due to cost and now just read it digitally through the Allen County public library. The Journal Gazette is still delivered to my driveway every morning but it is sad how little content it contains.
Probably I am just making excuses for my lassitude in staying informed. But then, after listening to the political discussions at any public or private gathering, I feel better about my informational standard for contemporary issues.
Back to Dante. Is America reverting to Florentine medievalism in how we settle our political disputes? One of President Lyndon Johnson’s favorite quotes was from the prophet Isaiah: “Come now, let us reason together.” I fear Isaiah would be every bit as appalled by 21st century America as he was with Old Testament Judah. Reason is hard to find and togetherness non-existent.
Good can survive evil, if we let it. My hope is that there are enough intelligent people of goodwill to continue reasoning together to rise above the divisiveness that threatens to consume our polity.
It is with this objective in mind that I joined a Socratic discussion group where calm, informative conversation can proceed without any need among the participants for getting in the last word. In fact, we frown on a member’s expressing his own opinion . . . unless he does it indirectly through Socratic questioning, of course.
That said, even the Renaissance was not enough to stop the internecine civil wars across the Italian peninsula. But at least it gave us great literature and art, Dante’s epic poem being a precursor.
All I know is that I don’t want anything to do with Hell if Dante’s vision is even partially accurate.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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