Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Third Day
(1870-1876)

"…these thoughts haunt and terrify me every day."

Collapsing cannot be properly characterized as a state, for it cannot be validated until after it completes, and much naturally prevents that end from ever appearing. Certainly, the peril might always exist, but distinguishing between growing pains, for instance, and Collapsing patterns should properly prove frustrating. Societies thrive on experiments. They can also die due to them. There can be no sure or certain recipe for avoiding Collapsing, and even the Ancient Greeks understood the principle that one tends to produce whatever they vehemently attempt to avoid. Fifteen months ago, the United States’ economy was widely acknowledged as the envy of the world. It now seems to be leading the world into an economic depression the likes of which we haven’t experienced in almost a century. Leading indicators seem grim, though still not yet completely certain.

Our incumbent seems to embody the very ills he visits upon our society. Commentators disagree on how to properly diagnose his difficulties, but based upon family physical inheritances and obvious symptoms, his mental and physical health appears to be Collapsing. He still stands before The Press, though his announcements make ever less sense, contradicting themselves even in the same speech, even minute to minute. It seems impossible to conclude that he’s not Collapsing up there on the biggest stage, yet the train wreck insists on maintaining its traditional slow-motion momentum. His otherwise obviously steadily diminishing capacity has still been largely treated as innuendo rather than clear and present evidence. If he has been actively Collapsing, we somehow, for some unknowable reason, seem satisfied to just let it happen.

We are a nation occupied by hostile domestic forces Hell-bent on destroying whatever’s decent. They seem determined to undo what’s worked in favor of a collection of extremely odd minority opinions that have never once been held to be true in practice. They seem to balance their books with belief and a curious kind of faith. They sublimate our society’s inevitable imperfections into evidence of certain damnation and seek to punish in advance any who might promote building on what’s worked in the past. They even vilify aspirations of equality, equity, and inclusion, cursing enlightenment as “woke,” without even defining their derision. We have no idea what they’re so upset about other than that they seem to ache to get even for something they’ve not bothered to define. They say they’re only trying to Make America Great Again, but they seek a greatness nobody’s ever once experienced, and few agree with what they believe greatness entails. Worse seems to be what feeling surrounded by these notions does to me. I cannot for the life of me, for the life of my precious society, seem to be able to soundly rebut these abusive sentiments. I sense their deep-down wrongness, yet have no convenient countervailing righteousness to inject into the wholly unnecessary argument. My outrage feels powerless!

The inability to agree on the simplest concepts complicates every attempt to right our floundering ship of state. Our incumbent enjoys manufacturing upsets: he’s a masterful Uproar Inventor. He seems to have no interest in calming any waters. He much prefers to roil them instead. He can turn any odd issue into another ultimatum, and minor disagreements into Federal cases, complete with masked enforcers and remarkably inept prosecutors. He specifically specializes in gumming up works. The underlying momentum preexisting his conditioning served to steady the freshly continuously insulted state, but how long can such accumulated momentum compensate for his clearly compromised mental state?

It seems likely that his physical limitations will ultimately decide. Once he dies, the negative momentum he injected during his final throes of existence will continue to influence. We will not magically find our balance once he departs. Several would-be pretenders to the imagined throne will attempt to preserve the disunion for their own profit and amusement. They will certainly fail, too, and their efforts will inevitably prove to be incoherent. At some point, the experiment, however noble and flawed, might ultimately collapse. Then, and only then, will we be able to confidently say that we had been Collapsing for the period leading up to where virtually everything fell apart. That point remains unthinkable, but terrifyingly not quite beyond the realm of my imagination now. I fret that we might be Collapsing and these thoughts haunt and terrify me every day.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz