Welcome to the Fifth Circle

The Fifth Circle of Hell as described in Dante's cheery Divine Comedy is populated by the wrathful, those condemned by their indulgence in the sin of Anger, broadly speaking.  Anger expressed, and Anger repressed.  Those souls condemned for the expression of Anger spend their unending time fighting each other near the surface of the river Styx, or the mud or marsh associated with that river.  Those that are condemned for the repression of Anger, the sullen, are lodged farther beneath the surface, complaining or perhaps better yet stewing at the bottom of the fiery mud and water.  Their complaints appear as bubbles on the surface.

It seems we're in the Fifth Circle of our own peculiar hell.  Medusa and the Furies may not be in evidence as they we're in Dante, but we have plenty of figures that resemble them among us.  

We're possessed by a curious anger, I would say.  At least some of us are.  For a president to refuse to accept the outcome of an election before it takes place, should it go against him, is obviously unprecedented in our Great Republic.  Therefore, it's also unprecedented that this fact seemingly leaves many of us unconcerned.  Our commitment to representative government as well as the rule of law is questionable.  We've heard of such doings in the past in connection with other nations, called "banana republics."  Have we become one?  Ben Franklin famously said we have a republic, if we can keep it.  Perhaps we no longer can, or no longer want one.

If so, how and why did this transformation take place?  One tires of comparisons with the Roman Empire, but are the satires of Juvenal, coming as they did after the Roman Republic was replaced by the Roman Empire, suggestive?

The People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions...everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

 Or perhaps Cicero is more apropos:

The evil was not bread and circuses, per se, but in the willingness of the people to sell their rights as free men for full bellies for the excitement of the games which would serve to distract them from the other human hungers which bread and circuses can never achieve.

The consuls and the Senate handed out just about everything in the Roman Republic, except when a dictator was appointed, and not the "people" as we would understand that word, so Juvenal may be said to exaggerate.  Also, the real people may have been more concerned with their bellies then than now.  But we love entertainment as much if not more than the people of Rome did, although they were less adverse to the sight of blood and death than we are, as a rule, except as portrayed in TV and movies and, of course, video games.  And, if the "bread" referred to by these ancient writers is thought of broadly as securing continued life, in a more or less comfortable condition, I think there is something analogous involved.

Personal security and self-satisfaction seem of particular concern to us now.  Provided we're not interfered with, called upon to do things we need not do (particularly for others), and are reassured with some frequency that our way of life is proper and indeed admirable, we're content.  We're perfectly happy if someone else makes the important decisions.  It bothers many of us not at all.  We resent having to make such decisions and, worse yet, having to think about what's involved in making them.

We particularly resent any implication that we can or should be better than we are or that there are others less fortunate than we are, who should be given assistance.  That makes us very angry.  We fear the less fortunate, and being selfish we are suspicious that that they're selfish too, and so envy us and wish us harm.  We want security, sameness and salvation from the perceived evils of others and the world at large.  We want a leader who thinks as we do, and will protect us from those who don't.