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

"…if, indeed, our politics even survives this latest unbridled EndDays assault."

Few human activities can seem more boring than the practice of good governance. It definitely does not ordinarily qualify as anything resembling any actual spectator sport, except sometimes it engages in activities of such monumental importance that it manages to attract quite the audience. This quality of only occasionally qualifying for full attention encourages politicians to engage in some studied myth-making. They speak of such things as Masters of the Senate, a label that at best describes some especially skillful bureaucrat. They occasionally engage in brinksmanship, seeming to leave society teetering on some cliff-edge, but much of that amounts to performative statecraft. The actual deals get struck far away from the House and Senate floors, though the office of the President carries by far the greatest volume of mythos, if only because the presidency’s responsibilities definitely border on the mythical.

Chief administrator of every department of government, Commander-in-Chief of the military, perennial plenipotentiary of seemingly damned near everything in our political universe, our president more than borders on the edge of a mythical being. Checks and balances on presidential power seem more mythical than actual, too. We hold that one role to the highest standards of any elected official. The expectations of the office alone should guarantee that nobody could ever actually satisfyingly fulfill them. Surprisingly, few have ever been impeached, and none have ever been removed for cause. Not that a few didn’t deserve to be removed for cause, but that the electorate, as well as that typically excruciatingly boring legislative contingent, have never managed to gain adequate focus or traction to eject from office even those that clearly deserved it. This has resulted in periods where our government has so failed to live up to its founding aspirational myths that it essentially became a fictional presence for a time. Mythos became what I’ll call fictos, a living betrayal of its founding creeds.

The point at which the founding mythos shifts to degrading fictos marks the beginning of EndDays. The stop clock starts there. It’s not that our governance starts existing on borrowed time then, but on stolen time, burgled and quintessentially irreplacable. Our future starts consuming our accumulated goodwill, and that will degrade a justifiably proud old state very quickly into a degraded and, eventually, an inescapably jaded one. Cynicism becomes the currency of governance then. Where word was once bond, it becomes the primary misdirection intended to distract from whatever’s going wrong. Much goes wrong, though reports of distress somehow miss their press conferences, unless those pressers are called by the frustrated but still loyal opposition. The contention seems continuous. Our present incumbent has transformed our solemn mythos into a series of seemingly degrading running jokes, as if the populace were merely rubes and he played the role of perennially believable confidence man.

He more than deserves to be impeached. To so violate the governing mythos should be at least a capital offense, considered treasonous, for no decent governance can properly represent any electorate without upholding its originating mythos. Nothing trumps this importance, and though it might seem subtle and indistinct, its absence seems as tangible as tyranny and infinitely more abominable than simple dereliction. It might be the only crime higher than those high crimes and misdemeanors that qualify an officeholder for impeachment, and it must be the highest responsibility of all those held responsible for maintaining a government to enforce this edict in every instance, without exception. Those who undermine a mythos attempt to murder the spirit that inspires the whole idea of self-governance.

There were those then who insisted that no populace could ever prove qualified to govern their own affairs, that they were essentially children when it came to such things. Our mythos was the only element that proved that perspective wrong, and it, alone, has enabled our impossible existence to sustain itself for two and a half centuries. It was f.u.c.k.i.n.g self-evident, for cripes sake! Those who would do anything to undermine this most essential fiction of a nation must remain the most reviled enemies of the state. They create their EndDays by introducing their cheap-looking, phony gold-plated styrofoam Oval Office decorations. They place themselves beneath contempt, though our legislators and judges seem hesitant to act. Fictos renders otherwise decent public figures corrupted and inept. Their chief responsibility goes unfulfilled while their sorry incumbent gnaws away at the foundation of pretty much everything any of them ever stood for. Their inability to act in defence of our governing mythos should rightly haunt them for the balance of their political lives, if, indeed, our politics even survives this latest unbridled EndDays assault.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz