Monday
Watching the hearings of the Congressional committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt, I was struck by the moral clarity of Liz Cheney, the daughter of the principle architect of America’s disastrous Iraq invasion and a man who promoted torture. It’s ironic that, if we are able to recover from Trumpism’s attack on our democracy, a Cheney will have played an important role.
Cheney reminded me of Abdiel, the angel in Paradise Lost who first stands up to Satan when the latter is planning his rebellion against God. Abdiel finds the necessary courage in the zeal with which he “adored the Deity, and divine commands obeyed.”
Satan has persuaded a large contingent of angels that God is robbing them of their freedom by promoting Jesus over them. Of course, “freedom” for Satan is what it is for any number of authoritarian personalities: freedom to impose his will on others. One hears the word “freedom” from many on the right, but it often just means the freedom to impose their will on people of color, women, LBGTQ folk and Democrats in general. Or, in the case of millionaires and billionaires, freedom from taxation and regulation. Here’s Satan sounding like a white supremacist spouting fears of being replaced, only the replacer here is Christ (“King anointed”):
Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers,
If these magnific Titles yet remain
Not merely titular, since by Decree
Another now hath to himself engrossed
All Power, and us eclipsed under the name
Of King anointed…
We must cast off this yoke of oppression if we want to be free, he tells the angels:
But what if better counsels might erect
Our minds and teach us to cast off this yoke?
Will ye submit your necks, and choose to bend
The supple knee? ye will not, if I trust
To know ye right…
Of course, Satan, like Trump, wants others to bend the supple knee to him, even as he rails against tyranny. From his point, anyone who doesn’t allow him the highest rank is a tyrant. Therefore God is a tyrant.
Abdiel points out that Satan talking about God as his equal misses the framework within which they all exist:
Shalt thou give Law to God, shalt thou dispute
With him the points of liberty, who made
Thee what thou art, and formed the Powers of Heav’n
Such as he pleased, and circumscribed their being?
Narcissist that he is, however, Satan gives all credit for his achievements to himself. As he sees it, he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps:
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised
By our own quick’ning power…
For Liz Cheney, the higher power is the Constitution, to which Trump himself once swore an oath, as did many of those fallen angels legislators enabling him. To this yoke she submits her neck and bends the supple knee. To the Trumpist GOP, however, doing so is an affront. After all, she is putting the country’s founding principles over them.
Further thought: My friend and colleague Ross MacDonald, who has written a scholarly article on Milton’s angels, notes that angel issues were a hot issue when the poet wrote Paradise Lost. John Calvin was worried that, if people focused on guardian angels, they would focus on them more than on Christ. He even considered jettisoning angels altogether.
Milton acknowledges Calvin’s worry by elevating Christ above the angels. This elevation, in fact, is what triggers Satan’s rebellion. But Milton saw angels as too deeply embedded in people’s imaginations to ignore them. He therefore threads the needle, showing them as cherished guides to Adam and Eve but operating as a delegation, with each having different responsibilities. In other words, they don’t grab the spotlight the way that Satan does but divide counseling responsibilities; while powerful, they are noteworthy for their humility. They are everything that Satan is not.
This is what we want from our public servants and, for that matter, from all citizens: lean into your strengths but always remember that you are to use them in service of the greater good, not to aggrandize yourself. That is the only cause that will give your life meaning.