All this talk of fame and applause and society, however, is secondary to Comey’s No. 1 theme: Justice. Reinhold Niebuhr is going strong in the feed. “Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary,” Comey tweeted in October. More recently, he quoted King— “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”—but attributed it to Bruce Springsteen “quoting Martin Luther King, Jr.” If there’s a noble alpha male in sight, Comey is going to namecheck him.

And then of course there’s the passage from Amos 5:24, which he tweeted with an Instagram photo of the formidable Great Falls, along the Potomac River. “But justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” Comey uses a modern translation of this passage from Amos, who was one of the minor prophets of the Torah, and to be a brat I might say I prefer the King James, which still echoes in the baritone of King: “Justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”