Again, the nation's difficulties seem to entirely be from too much prosperity in the middle bits of the population. A far higher number is above poverty (see the second Picketty book), but this freedom from want has prompted some strange wants indeed. In any society, you really do need a comprehensive notion of what it is to be a human being, and not just someone who has managed to survive the ex-post-undescribed culture and civilization. There has to be a civilizational context -- a shared notion of being with others, and this shared notion gives the rule to smaller judgments within the social life.
On today's Gospel -- I've never thought of it, but the "okay, now slay my enemies" at the peroration might have a hermeneutic function. If those left behind when the leader went off to the foreign court to get the crown had all stayed inside with doors locked for fear of the others, perhaps they wouldn't have enough social cachet to carry off the massacre.
Odd evening last night, walked down to the park piers in the West Village just past NYU -- usually a peaceful place. But almost completely deserted, on not that chilly of an evening. Will resist the temptation to the long journey in the evening hours -- walking can use up the evening hours rather speedily. Not to mention the dragons.