Kafka as Prophet

Kafka tells a story of a traveler to a penal colony to witness an execution of a soldier condemned to death for disobeying and insulting a superior. The superior officer is also the prison’s appointed judge. As such “he goes by the simple rule that guilt is never in doubt.

Kafka spells out, in his novel Amerika, what this principle of basic law is in Europe and America:

“The verdict was determined by the first words that happened to come from the judge’s mouth in an impulse of rage.”

How Kafkaesque is Kafka’s story of the Penal Colony, and how apt when viewing the Kavanaugh rebuttal of Ford?

He displays at 53 years of age the very nature of his being – his superiority over those less privileged – guilt is never in doubt – it is the judgment of the superior class regardless of their debauchery when in high school and  in college. It is never cleansed especially when “he first opens his mouth in an impulse of rage.”

The irony is, he cannot escape his past – it is his nature molded in him day by day that made him so.

William A. Cook is the  author of Decade of Deceit and Age of Fools.