Kabuki (歌舞伎) is a classical Japanese dance-drama. Kabuki theatre is known for the stylization of its drama, the often-glamorous costumes worn by performers, and for the elaborate kumadori make-up worn by some of its performers.                     — Wikipedia

Judge Barrett is from the South and Midwest. Her career has been largely spent teaching while raising seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome, and living according to her faith. She has made no secret of her beliefs on divisive social issues such as abortion. A deeply religious woman, her roots are in a populist movement of charismatic Catholicism.

From her formative years in Louisiana to her current life in Indiana, Judge Barrett has been shaped by an especially insular religious community, the People of Praise, which has about 1,650 adult members, including her parents, and draws on the ecstatic traditions of charismatic Christianity, like speaking in tongues.

The group has a strict view of human sexuality that embraces once-traditional gender roles, such as recognizing the husband as the head of the family. The Barretts, however, describe their marriage as a partnership.

— excerpt Rooted in Faith, Amy Coney Barrett Represents a New  Conservatism, by Elizabeth Dias, Rebecca R. Ruiz and Sharon LaFraniere New York Times Oct. 11, 2020

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I did not listen to the live feed of the first day of the confirmation hearing for Judge Barrett.  She is a person who has a cult-like dedication to Catholic dogma.  Upon her investiture as judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, one of the speakers,  Donald F. McGahn II, President Trump’s White House counsel joked, “We now affectionately call her Judge Dogma.”   She will be confirmed by a 51 vote Republican senate majority to the Supreme Court, — a judgeship with a tenure for life.

The already restrictive right to abortion is highly likely to be eliminated for one half of our population.  Legal recognition of gay marriage will be in jeopardy as well.

“She represents the antithesis of the progressive values embodied in Justice Ginsburg, her life spent in a cocoon of like-minded thinking that in many areas runs counter to the views of a majority of Americans, ” to quote the NYT article once more.

I could not listen to the posturing, the dissimulation, the raw hypocrisy of the hearing proceedings.  The  entire event, including today’s questioning is a choreographed refusal of compromise by the party of Trump with Senators of the Democratic party.   A candidate suitable to both socially conservative and progressive traditions might have been introduced, if there had been any inclination, any empathy, any intention to compromise.  A hearing is an empty formality, a transparent disguise of a sinister bid for domination, repression, control over those who do not view life exactly as you do.

Why do I have such a visceral reaction to these proceedings?  I am repulsed by bullying.  I understand that a bully, a person gripped by  monomaniacal intention, is able to see only what they desire.  Bullying is not limited to racist cruelty, or to avarice.  Bullying has often been rooted in religious zealotry, the conviction that one is “doing the Lord’s work,” as one forcibly imposes one’s religious conviction upon someone else.  Religious fanaticism with a pretty face, and a picture book family…

I see a Torquemada, another Grand Inquisitor.

To read the Time’s article, Rooted in Faith Amy Coney Barrett Represents a New  Conservatism  CLICK HERE.