expiation

But “Runaway Train” the book is not some weepy expiation for past sins, a Hollywood reclamation job designed to kick-start a once-buzzy career.

Art uses life to its own ends; it doesn’t offer expiation to its subjects.

One is reminded of the ritual scapegoat on which the high priest of the Old Testament unloaded all the people’s sins before shunting the poor creature off into the wilderness—moral expiation by way of the transitive property.

Rather, each of these minions is in thrall to the project of keeping the lie alive, complicit in a pathological system of mortification, expiation, and fear that has taken on a life of its own.

And for every coward that secretly confesses to Romney, there is yet another coward in his shadow, seeking expiation from him, in a seemingly endless chain of people who say one thing and then do quite another, because they want to be famous, or because they want to hang on to power, or because they are afraid someone with a gun will murder their children.