I have an inside source at Mar-o-Lago, who provides me with information about Donald the Dumb. Around Christmas time, he mentioned to Trump that he wouldn’t get much for Christmas this year due to not being nice.

Santa was making a list of the naughty and nice people.

Trump retorted that he doesn’t believe in Santa Claus. Then he added that if there were a Santa, he doesn’t care to be good. That was when my source at Mar-o-Lago had an idea. He emailed about a thought he had since I enjoy teaching. He wanted me to teach Trump about the history of Santa Claus.

I blew off that suggestion. Besides, I had too much to do. I went back to more pressing issues like cleaning the carpet. Ginger, my Irish Setter, gets treats between breakfast and dinner. She’ll take the treats to wherever I happen to be and eats them. Talk about morsels of dog food littered all over the house. Besides that, she brings a lot of dirt in without wiping her paws at the door.

There I was, around 6 am this morning, cleaning the carpets on the first floor. Tomorrow morning, I’ll do the lower level. By the weekend, I’ll have two flights of stairs done. Amid shampooing carpets, I had an idea.

Explaining Santa Claus was beyond the pale. Instead, I’d put together a mini history course. It will be called Virgil, the Tour Guide of Hell. I realize that Trump’s attention span is limited; hence, the class title would catch his eye.

We are going to go on a tour of hell.

This history lesson deals with Dante’s Divine Comedy. Granted, it would take a lot longer to explain that 14^th-century trilogy. So, I decided to address Virgil, who was Dante’s tour guide of hell. I would begin my lecture by telling Trump that hell is divided into nine levels.

The Circles of Hell

Virgil shows Dante the various levels of hell and who is imprisoned in each of the circles. Virgil begins by explaining how Charon, the ferryman, takes the dead across the River of Styx.

Then the tour of hell begins as they work their way down the nine levels of hell. Virgil explains to Dante that punishment in hell is based upon contrapasso. I’d have to pause a moment in my lecture to explain the meaning to Trump of that Latin term. I’m sure that would be forgotten in a couple of nanoseconds by Trump. Therefore, I would explain that it meant that one’s punishment in hell is likened to the sin that the dead person committed while alive. Hammurabi came up with a similar notion in the Code of Hammurabi, written in the 18^th BCE. We got the phrase “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” from Hammurabi. Essentially, it was a quid pro quo mindset.

A photo from hell

I was going to explain why Dante wrote the Divine Comedy. However, Trump won’t care about Florence’s theological and political infighting, and the disagreement between the Florentines and Rome would confuse our “very stable genesis.”

Nonetheless, it did choose to use an O. Henry writing style or technique. At the end of his short stories, he used paronomasia and irony to surprise the reader. It was designed to catch his reader off guard.

I explained to Trump that Satan was a fallen heavenly angel. When he fell from the good graces of God in heaven, he crashed to earth with such force that he created the nine circles of hell during his fall. Satan wound up at the bottom of hell. Dante viewed Satan as containing the sinful nature of all the inhabitants of hell. Therefore, he dwells at the very opposite of the place where God lives.

I don’t think Trump would fathom that he possesses all those sinful attributes of the nine circles of hell. Therefore, my closing PowerPoint slide will include the video of Trump going down his golden escalator. This is my O. Henry twist.

I’m afraid that Trump would miss my O. Henry metaphor. Trump’s golden escalator is taking him to the bottom of hell, where he will live in torment for eternity.