The prophet does not scold or reprimand. The prophet brings to pubic expression the dread of endings, the collapse of our selfmadeness, the barriers and pecking orders that secure us at each other's expense, and the fearful practice of eating of the table of a hungry brother or sister. It is the task of the prophet to invite the king to experience what he must experience, what he most needs to experience and most fears to experience, namely, that the end of the royal fantasy is very near. The end of the royal fantasy will permit a glimpse of the true king who is no fantasy, but we cannot see the real king until the fantasy is shown to be a fragile and perishing deception. Precisely in the year of the death of the so-called king does the prophet and the prophet's company see the real king high and lifted up (Isaiah 6:1)
[In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. (JPS 1917)]
I believe that the proper idiom for the prophet is cutting through the royal numbness and denial is the language of grief the rhetoric that engages the community in mourning for a funeral they do not want to admit. It is indeed their own funeral.
I lave been increasingly impressed with the capacity of the prophet to use the language of lament and the symbolic creation of a death scene as a way of bringing to reality what the king must see and will not. And I believe that grief and mourning, that crying in pathos,s the ultimate form of criticism, for it announces the sure end of the whole royal arrangement.
I was thinking of leaving this out, leaving it to be found by those who are reading the book for themselves and having their own ideas from it. But that was before watching the face of Amy Coney Barrett as one after another Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee forced her to look at the people she will certainly vote to kill as she kills the Affordable Care Act, the disideratum of her Republican-fascist party and the degenerate Trump who appointed her to the Court. It was a stage masque of Susan Collins' patented style "concern" which will certainly not cause Barrett any moral qualms about or sleepless nights anymore than her soon to be fellow "justice" Neil Gorsuch was bothered by saying that a trucking company had the right of a trucker in trouble freezing to death on the job or her hero Scalia much worried about possible innocent people being put to death painfully, something he joked about from the bench reportedly getting chuckles from some of his fellow "justices". No doubt the TV coverage of the hearings will soften her public image as intended, I wouldn't be surprised if the Republicans' stage manager of stunts like Alito's wife dramatically fleeing from the room in "tears" or, as he saw their hired woman prosecutor questioner wasn't working out the way he'd planned he stepped in to attack Christine Blasey Ford, breaking the dam to drown the truth that they were putting a sex criminal on the court.
This morning, looking at RMJ's blog, I saw a picture of the statuary group on the facade of the Supreme Court building, I don't know how I ever missed that there, to the right of "justice" there is a solider holding a fasces, the symbolic bundle of reeds from which fascism draws its name. I'd never given the matter of that building much of any thought except to note the clearly dishonest label it carries above the main entrance, "Equal Justice Under Law" which it seldom has delivered. The building was pushed into being by one of the stupider of the Chief Justices, the former president Taft who, or so I read today, saw it as a symbol of "the royalty of justice". It is a creation of the 1920s and 30s, I had figured the fasces must have meant something different than it has come to symbolize in the wake of Mussolini's and Hitlers fascism but, no, as they were building the thing the architect and designer was in contact with the Mussolini government assuring that the Italian marble that much of it is faced with was of top quality. So as they were putting the fasces over the door they knew EXACTLY what it meant in the world of the 1920s and 30s.
One of the early commentators noted that the new Supreme Court building had big windows through which they could throw out the New Deal, even as the country was in the throes of the Great Depression, something which greatly empowered fascism in Europe and which also emboldened fascists in the United States. Looking back in the truncated, falsified history as seen in history books instead of at the wider contemporary reality, the close call the United States had in that regard isn't as obvious as it seemed at the time. If we had not had a Franklin Roosevelt instead of a Teddy (who put Taft on the Court) we probably would not have escaped at least a closer brush with disaster and a president who would probably have been more ready to make peace with Hitler and Imperial Japan, avoiding American entrance into WWII. Franklin Roosevelt no doubt had to contend with the disaster that the Supreme Court would have brought by striking down his relief programs in political reality instead of the lofty, Olympian detachment that we stupidly allow the Supreme Court to wallow in. I think they should be required to watch the executions they permit, see the faces of those they get killed with their rulings, have to face the consequences that they get to choose for all of us. The stinking Supreme Court is way too royal in its detachment from the lives of We The People. Though I don't have complete confidence that at least several members of recent courts would not have enjoyed watching people suffer and die. They certainly don't mind knowingly bringing it about.
I wonder if Fr. John Jenkins will ever think of them as the member of his law school faculty whose elevation he welcomed - getting covid in the deal - does the terrible things that she has advocated in her professional life. As she gets people killed out of the loftiest of legal principle, such as that is. Though that doesn't seem to have bothered the heads of elite Catholic schools much, what those they credential and hire turn out.
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