Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
La Belle au bois dormant-[Sleeping Beauty]
(1890)

"…the physics of making this country great again
seem to reliably result in rendering it worse."

Aristotle posited that two forces governed the positioning of the four fundamental elements: Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Gravity ruled over Earth and Water by encouraging them to sink to what he referred to as “their proper level,” which sat beneath air and fire. An opposite force, he labeled levity, ruled Air and Fire’s behavior, which, according to their nature, levitated above both Earth and Water. Though his notions would later be shown to be incorrect, they successfully explained the observed behavior of these fundamental elements for two millennia. Earth does indeed tend to sink below the water, and bubbles rise through the water, occupying the space above. Fire produces smoke that naturally rises through air, though the elevating force Aristotle insisted upon calling levity turned out not to exist as he’d envisioned. Still, he described what we might easily accept as our a priori world, the one we all inhabit until actual scientific knowledge supplants our original innocence.

My intuition still expects my universe to sort itself out on Aristotelian terms, and I feel deeply disoriented whenever it doesn’t. EndDays seem to deliver just this unsettling sensation, that gravity, for some strange reason, seems to have stopped working correctly, and levity, too, seems strangely absent from this administration that never once had any notion of how to go about administering anything’s repertoire. Their world seems to contain far too much gravity, especially Earth, since every one of their damned initiatives seems to largely exist underwater. Gravity’s suddenly working overtime. What in before, more ordinary times, would have served as a foundation for operations has been steadily sinking, resulting in mild to severe flooding of seemingly every initiative attempted. It seems as if some especially talented gremlin had taken over as Director of Operations and turned every attempted improvement into shit. Likewise, levity seems strangely absent. The traditional White House Correspondent’s Dinner, usually an evening of light-hearted banter between incumbent and press, manifested as if armed camps were preparing for mortal combat. It was hardly surprising when a phony assassination attempt “spoiled” the evening, and everyone went home without dinner. The incumbent had prepared a few venomous remarks with which to respond to the correspondents’ attempts to make a little honest fun. Levity seems to be no longer permitted.

With gravity working overtime and levity curiously absent, a heaviness has settled in over the proceedings. Every action suddenly seems ominous. Each improvement attempt comes across as, basically, more meanness. Prayers sound like curses. Little differences of opinion have become firing offenses, and offense has replaced generosity as the default response to each and every little comment or criticism. Improvement has proven impossible when nobody can or will admit to needing it. Everything gets touted as already perfect, better than ever before, the best ever, though everyone knows they just witnessed another humiliating failure. Further, governance has never appeared less serious. The Supreme Court seems determined to trivialize every question that comes before it, even citing fake data to justify imposing penalties on precisely the wrong parties. Truth as well as justice seem to have left us for the duration. We pray for a speedy cessation of these trumped-up hostilities.

Gravlity obeys alien physics where what we should understand must be up gets continually characterized as down, and every attempt to go over seems to just come out sideways. We cannot help but feel lost if our compasses have lost the only True North ever known to exist. What curious navigation system must this administration employ to make headway? Judging by the obvious lack of headway made, it seems reasonable to conclude that nobody’s navigating at all. We’re seeing not so much a wholesale cessation of gravity and levity, but the steadfast refusal to refer to any of the usual gauges. This administration, whose head seems crammed so far up their collective backside that they couldn’t administer anything if they wanted to, but don’t want to, anyway, seems to navigate solely by whim. Aristotle never listed whim as one of the fundamental elements in his physics, though it most closely resembles his fifth element. He held that the heavens are made of a special weightless and incorruptible fifth element called Aether. Since only the previously corrupted prove to be uncorruptable, maybe the fuel on which this administration that wouldn’t recognize an administration if it kicked them in the ass runs amounts to the laws of the physics of corruption: aether, a gaseous substance that reportedly stinks to high heaven.

Those of us not used to inhabiting a world ruled by cartoon physics seem rightfully disoriented by the sudden absence of our good, old, reliable, and ancient four elements, arrayed in their properly anticipated hierarchy. We’re unsettled when balls seem to roll up an otherwise ordinary-seeming inclined plane. We’re concerned when we find fire sinking beneath our once-dependable water, and when air repeatedly seems to get sucked out of what used to be reliable briefing rooms. If only our world seemed merely upside down, we might adapt more fluidly. There seem to be no rules, traditional or otherwise, and the physics of making this country great again seem to only reliably result in rendering it worse. When might this corrupting curse disperse into what was once good, old, reliable aether again, and Earth, Water, Air, and Fire disappear into their familiar roles?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz