Who's to blame.

 Who’s to blame. 

A knock on the door. This was last night late. The damned itinerant preacher.*

“Do you read Amos?” Nils asked apropos of nothing. I was trying to distract him by talking about the Nats-Giants series, which I was trying to watch. The Nats were up 4-1, batting in the top of the fifth.

     I waited as long as I could. “The prophet?”

     He nodded as if “Which other?” “I’m sure I have,” I said, “but I don’t make a daily practice of it.”

     “You should. Or: At least once a week you should read Amos.”

     “Yeah?”

     “Then you’d know,” he said.

     “Know what?”

     “Read the damn book,” he said.

I turned the down the game, because that’s not all he said, of course not, talking so fast I couldn’t write it out in my head. 

 

Nils' first wife Judith's family home

    Basically: It’s all the fault of the rich, no matter how they got there - the court, or (today) the government and its hangers-on; the courts - lawyers and their hangers-on; the church, or the opinion-makers and their hangers-on; the traders, that is, business and its hangers-on; all those that live in glass houses behind iron gates or doormen; all those that fly first class to Paris or Rio or Tokyo or Perth; all those that sleep in ivory beds, that eat lamb in expensive restaurants and drink old wines they hoard in their cellars; that go to the opera and the symphony, and premieres of the movies their friends make.

     “They can point every which way,” Nils said, “but take semi-automatic weapons,” he paused, “and the morons poisoned by whatever they’ve been drinking that together can kill thirty people in thirty seconds.” Ultimately, it’s the fault of the rich because it’s not enough to say that you hate evil and love you’ve effing got to do something about it.” It’s not enough to affect being good if you’re only good in the abstract because the bad can’t get past your gate or your doorman; when you clearly don’t intend to act on your so-called affections.

This morning I’m trying to explain it to Uncle Albert. I am doing no better than what I’ve written above, but he seems to get it.

     “Nils,” he says and shakes his head. “It’s not a very nuanced position,” he says. He rocks slowly, tiny tick-ticks, back and forth and back and forth. We’re sitting on the front porch of his boarding house. It’s still cool at nine in the morning - the cardinals are still tweeting and chirping; the porch faces north.

     “But that doesn’t make it wrong,” Uncle Albert says.

08.07.19

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  * Drammatis personae, click here.