These are the words inscribed on the gate of Hell in Dante’s famous 14th century narrative poem “Divine Comedy.” It well describes the situation Americans are encountering as we face the coming presidential election.

Joe, the incumbent, is running for reelection. He’s senile. A special prosecutor, named by Joe’s own attorney general, to investigate his illegal retention of classified material, scattered willy-nilly in boxes determined that he willingly and illegally retained classified material from his days as a senator and vice president. That is a crime, although Joe can’t be prosecuted for it until he leaves office. However, the report did not recommend prosecuting him because a jury will conclude that he is just a well-meaning old man with a bad memory and not convict him. Joe conducted a furiously angry press conference in which he declared that there is nothing wrong with his memory. Then, in almost the next breath, he referred to Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as president of Mexico. Doesn’t sound like a Spanish name, does it? That is because al-Sisi is actually president of Egypt. Andrés Manuel López Obrador is president of Mexico. That’s a pretty serious lapse of memory for the President of the United States to make. I can see him having a memory lapse on the name of the leader of some postage-stamp size island nation in the south-west Pacific, but not the names of the presidents of two major countries that are important to U. S. international relations.