On Family Sagas & Bowls of Protection

Two articles caught my attention today, via a comment link elsewhere to The Tablet, where two different family sagas are presented and portrayed.  According to the stories told about them, both families appear to have been responsible for marking the tablet of history through the employment and deployment of two different bowls of protection. 

The first piece, entitled, The Mystery of Noah’s Ark Solved, involves a long account of the speculations, theories and math calculations based on the description and numbers provided in the Hebrew account of the ark supposedly built by Noah to preserve his family and earth's animal pairs from a catastrophic flood.  And the author, who offers evidence to support his belief the ark was most likely a bowl shaped affair, concludes with this takeaway:

"Noah and his family may stroll on the deck of a ship in Hollywood movies and modern fiction, but Genesis makes it clear that they were shut inside the ark before the flood and emerged only afterward. Noah is not a heroic sailor, like Odysseus or Sinbad or Horatio Hornblower. He is an elderly man of great piety, locked behind a door that was closed from the outside by the Lord himself, huddling with his terrified family and frantic animals in a giant container that bobs up and down on the waves like a buoy.

That is why it matters that the ark is not a boat that can be steered, but a passively drifting basket. Among other things, the story of Noah in Genesis is about being faithful during terrible events, in spite of being powerless to help yourself and those whom you love."

The other, entitled, The National Tragedy of Hunter Biden’s Laptop, goes on to describe “ How a country’s political corruption, institutional decay, and moral decline can be summed up in one sad family saga.”  A sad and damaging family saga that continues to unfold, with huge implications for those living through current reality and enduring the aftereffects of that bowl full of dysfunction, denial and duplicity.  The author outlines the timetable, describes the contents and the involvements and distancing that make up the other bowl, the bowl of protection that to this day surrounds Hunter and the family at large, with this conclusion:  "But none of these powerful and experienced men, presumably dedicated to defending the national interest, lifted a finger to stop Hunter Biden—and really, how could they? He was Joe Biden’s son, after all. And by doing nothing about him, the pillars of America’s intelligence community became the curators of the Biden family’s scandal..."

"It hardly needs to be said at this point that, contrary to media reporting on the left and right, there is no actual investigation of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In August 2020, an FBI agent who played a role in framing Trump as a Russian agent dismissed the laptop as Russian disinformation. This assessment, according to a recent letter from Sen. Grassley, caused the FBI’s investigative activity to cease. It doesn’t matter how damning the laptop’s contents might be, or whether they include child pornography or photographs of Joe Biden cashing checks from China. Whatever investigation might exist is performative, meant to show that the agencies are treating the president’s son like any other U.S. citizen. It’s a Potemkin investigation, obscuring the wasteland that was once the constitutional order before 9/11 legitimized the intelligence agencies’ ruinous attacks on it.

Still, even without a trial, it’s clear that Hunter Biden has enjoyed one of the most maniacally reckless careers in American history. What distinguishes him from real daredevils, like rock stars, test pilots, and terrorists, is that he always worked with a safety net—one billed to the American public, which will continue to pay dearly for the excess his father afforded him..."