Hell isn’t at risk of overcrowding as much as of becoming cliche. White House trade adviser Peter Navarro has just said there is “a special place in hell” for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Steve Bannon believed there was a similar location for Republicans who didn’t support Judge Roy Moore. Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign consultant, even damned the entire Senate Intelligence Committee.
This amount of damnation has not gone unnoticed. Kathleen Parker noted last December in the Washington Post that it seemed like everyone from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski was wishing perdition on political enemies.
So why has it become so popular to curse the eternal soul of someone else? Why is it okay to commit someone else to eternal torment carried out by red devils with pointy horns and pitchforks?
Maybe it is because damn-you-to-hell still has some kick-ass to it. The F-Word has become so ubiquitous that it is now almost meaningless. But say someone deserves to burn for eternity, and people take notice because it’s the profanity that resonates through time and space and celestial dimension.
Perhaps it is more practical. Damning someone to hell may put your own soul at risk, but at least it can get around even the most ardent censors. While former Vice President Joe Biden and current President Donald Trump have pushed the envelope and newspaper editors with their profanity, swearing in biblical terms can still make the front page.
Still, it is a more sinister approach to trash talk. Cursing someone to hell isn’t just a repudiation of the golden rule to do unto others as you’d have done to you. It is a rejection of their basic humanity. Hell is that place where father God turns his face away. It is that place where the worm dies not, the fire burns, and the darkness consumes the damned. It is, at least according to Dante’s geography, farthest from God.
Decent people wish hell on no one. They hope for the repentance of the sinner, or at worst that cheaters get what’s coming their way. They wish that the New England Patriots would be banished from the NFL and that Gillette Stadium would be swallowed up by the ground. They do not, however, wish endless weeping and gnashing of teeth on anyone.
So again, why do our politicians want that? Because with tribalism, winning doesn’t cut it anymore. It isn’t enough to defeat an opponent. The enemy must be sent where no one escapes. It is a little bit tongue in cheek, sure. It is also a cliche that reflects an ugly truth. We hate each other so much that we wish actual suffering and pain on our opponents. Heaven help us.
