Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Tile Design - Theseus and the Minotaur in the Labyrinth
(c. 1861)

"There might not be a large enough 'enough' to ever regain that once lost balance."

The last forty years have witnessed a steady erosion of what we might acknowledge were decent values. Their replacements have travelled under a multitude of euphemisms, each of which seemed to have been chosen for their ability to elicit a felt sense of whatever they were eroding. Family Values seemed most popular for a time, though when I delved beneath its glossy exterior, it seemed to insist upon a narrow, exclusive definition of family that most couldn’t possibly relate to from personal experience. Other, often Christian-themed replacements, flooded the meme market over this time, each distilling into some fresh mammon unworthy of broad appreciation, though they gained broad appreciation, anyway. One could be excused for concluding that these terms served as Trojan Horses, intended to draw attention from the wholesale burglaries the billionaire classes were committing against the least of us. Income distribution skewed upward while the costs of living soared, utterly undermining what had previously passed for a middle class.

I remain amazed that the You, Ess of ‘A’ hasn’t yet suffered from a popular insurrection. Most remain unjustifiably decent despite these insults. The MAGA contingent was coached to engage in a backward insurrection instead, one insisting upon more plundering as its underlying intention, to steal equality from those most impoverished. Weaned on lies, they were easily manipulated into believing that the erosion in their standards of living was caused by immigrants and illegal aliens rather than the very Christian-values-spouting politicians they’d been so subtly coerced into supporting. The velocity of the resulting fleecing only accelerated as a result of Trump’s second succession, producing this sense that we’re now living in EndDays.

EndDays prominently feature a subtle absence of Enoughness. Anything worth doing seems to demand some sort of excess. It’s not enough to merely achieve success, a metric that now seems downright Gothic in comparison. One must now seek to utterly vanquish, to “kill.” Incremental improvement, iterated over time, has fallen out of favor for overwhelming force resulting in immediate dominion. These perspectives shouldn’t surprise us. Savings, even when possible, haven’t earned a decent return in decades. Thrift promises no opportunities for prosperity over time. Only speculation seems to offer any opportunity to achieve independence. It shouldn’t matter if the only avenue to freedom entails assuming burdensome risk. The risk associated with not betting seems to far outweigh any potential downside. Such considerations can’t possibly matter if you’re at least equally screwed whichever option you choose.

This palpable absence of Enoughness qualifies as a toxic substance. It’s one familiar to any odd billionaire, and even to a few of the more up-and-coming hundred-millionaires out there, too, for they thrive on an overwhelming sense of an absolute absence of Enoughness. Those who labor for their sustenance never lost their sense of Enoughness, even when their powers that be, those that sure used to seem one Hell of a lot more benevolent, basked in their absolute sense of near-absolute absence. What else could have driven them to become so untiringly driven? Beyond an uncertain level of wealth, any further increment could only fail to carry any meaning. Acquisition became a mindless reaction, voracious not to satisfy any particular hunger, but apparently solely to encourage an ultimately unquenchable one. Not even ownership of everything could have ever proven to provide enough. Our own governance became tenaciously rapacious.

It came to consume us, we who were once popularly characterized as The Consumers. We were the very foundation of our own economy, not these carpetbaggers lacking any sense of decency or Enoughness. Billionaires seem to believe that the lion’s share of everything properly serves as their fair share. Those unable to compete deserve their fleecing. Those unwilling to play should rightly pay for the privilege of failing in a game they never had even a distant purpose for playing. Many became evangelicals, having found in that false faith ample justification for the punishment and plunder that the world they insisted upon seemed to deliver. The pursuit of some abstract Heaven, achievable only in some hopefully distant future, might help make this contest seem benevolent to the faithful, if faith was what they were actually filled with rather than shit. A generation or three where the billionaire class was treated as they have treated the rest of us will not likely rebalance a society that’s lost its sense of Enoughness. There might not be a large enough ‘enough’ to ever regain that once lost balance.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz