What could be more exciting than a run-for-your-life romp through the tourist-packed byways and buildings of one of Italy’s most artistically beautiful cities?  And what could be more deflating than to discover that the supposed good guys in this modern-day Medieval/Renaissance thriller are all a bunch of illiberal paternalistic White Progressives hell-bent on saving the planet from its people?

If you fantasize about financially well-off White men with Ivy League credentials who gad about the globe on gossamer wings of ethereal righteousness saving civilization from the selfish preoccupations of the moronic masses, then you’ll probably feel a few choice tingles run up your hairy legs on reading Dan Brown’s progressive version of the coming Apocalypse.

Yes, once again, Dan Brown’s Harvard hero, Robert Langdon, is gallivanting around Western Europe and this time out he’s running for his life through the historic alleyways of Florence, the ancestral home of the medieval poet, Dante Alighieri.  Struggling with amnesia, our cerebral Harvard celebrity attempts to unravel the meaning of a cryptic message encased in a biohazard cylinder. With the help of Botticelli’s modified masterpiece, Mappa dell’Inferno (Map of Hell), and with Langdon’s flawless ability to recall every nook and cranny of every twist and turn ever to be found in Florence’s Old City, Inferno’s plot whips the reader along on a ham-fisted mystery tour of the art and architecture of this Medici metropolis.

As Langdon and his ultra intelligent female companion, Sienna Brooks, attempt to save humanity while simultaneously saving themselves from getting blown to oblivion by the US government, the Italian constabulary, and a blonde bimbo assassin working for an evil for-profit consulting firm, the reader is endlessly pummeled with not-to-be-believed plot contrivances, corny literary devices, clichéd central characters, and an undisguised Progressive propaganda agenda grandstanding for the Gates Foundation and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Inferno’s main theme goes like this: The planet is faced with its greatest foe, the horrid human species.  And if something drastically isn’t done to curb the breeding habits of these loathsome beasts, the earth will collapse under the weight of their collective chaos and the total economic disaster that surely will follow. Enter the World Health Organization ably represented by  Elizabeth Sinskey, the older, wiser, white-haired, White woman doing her damnedest to sterilize those dark-skinned people on the African continent. Think Kathleen Sebelius.  And no, Madam Sinskey is not one of Inferno’s bad boys—she’s one of its heroines. The not-so-bad bad guy turns out to be Bertrand Zobrist, yet another super intelligent White Progressive who has developed an airborne virus that can sterilize at least one-third of the world’s population. Can this not-so-evil genius be stopped before his planet-saving virus is released upon the stupidly unsuspecting masses?

Spoiler Alert! Nope, our handsome Harvard hero, along with his trusty Progressive allies, fails to stop the release of the virus and one-third of the world’s people end up sterilized.  But of course, there’s a sunny-side to this not-so-terrible outcome.  In the words of Kathleen Sebelius aka Elizabeth Sinskey: “I may disagree with Bertrand’s (Zobrist) methods, but his assessment of the state of the world is accurate. This planet is facing a serious overpopulation issue.  If we manage to neutralize Bertrand’s virus without a viable alternate plan we are simply back at square one.” In other words, folks, Hooray for Bertrand!

Brown’s book, which runs to 104 chapters, not including the prologue and epilogue, is nothing more than a wasted read.  The ‘heroes’ are attempting to stop another ‘hero’ from committing an act that they actually, when all is said and done, support—yes, creating a virus is a bit over the top, and rest assured that the Gates Foundation, the WHO, and all the other wonderful Progressive agencies would never ever contemplate such a drastic move.  However, now that the deed is done, let’s secretly offer our thanks to good old Bertrand for having the balls to do what us guardians of all that is grand and good really really wanted to do.

The last section of this Progressive handbook on Armageddon doesn’t hold back on the propaganda. The Sebelius character trashes the Catholic Church for meddling in the WHO’s population control efforts in Africa.  Meddling, hmmm….so the Gates Foundation can march all over Africa as it tries to stop Black people from breeding, but the Vatican is meddling when they push their own agenda there? Of course, we all know that a rich White computer geek from the USA is absolutely qualified to manipulate the breeding habits of Black people in Africa and indeed wholly justified in violating the cultural sovereignty of African nations. After all, Mister WhiteAss is saving the Planet!  Nuff Said!

Onward, Rich Progressives, marching as to war;
With the cash of cronies going on before.
Gates, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see his condoms go!

Mr. Brown quotes the illustrious and devoutly religious Dante at the end of this long, long progressive saga: “The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.”

Apparently Danny Boy thinks that Dante’s aphorism serves as a green light for Progressive politicos to act upon the masses as if they were mere cattle, all in the name of yet another ideological world-saving secular orgasm. By some egotistically warped brain spasm, Herr Brown and all the other We-Know-Best Jackbooters have failed to factor the obvious—that the moral aspects of any crisis arise out of the methods and means we use to solve those challenges, not out of the challenges themselves.

Sorry, Dan-O, but Dante Alighieri would be the first to point the finger of moral condemnation at the likes of you and your book.