Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Pygmalion and the Image - The Heart Desires
(1878)

"Nobody will ever properly govern for us; we’re required to be more than merely emotionally involved: of, BY, and for."

I suspect I know much less about how our government works than I suspect. I suppose that I’m not in anything like a unique position concerning this issue. I doubt that it was ever any different, though nostalgia might have affected my remembering. I would prefer to believe that we citizens, those of us for whom our government was originally constituted, the much-vaunted “We, the people,” were well-versed in the workings of our governing institutions, but I fear that we’ve never mastered much more than a Pidgin proficiency in either our government or our history. This condition makes us easy targets for unscrupulous operators who might feel little compunction about materially misrepresenting to us our rights and obligations under the law. Certainly, this current administration, which has never been rightfully accused of properly administering anything, has proven no exception to this caution, for it seems to operate as an exception to every actual rule constituted under our laws.

We haven’t responded with anything like the vehemence these violations have warranted. I suspect this might be because we aren’t clear about our actual rights and obligations under the law. We largely operate on interpretations dressed up as accurate representations: Second Amendment interpretations that could only embarrass Our Constitution’s framers. Violations of those sacred separations of church and state seem common now, nearly the expected norm for some. Equal protection under any law seems like fiction since Citizens United started ruling the purse. Our colloquial understanding of what we’re governing and how has eroded to the point where I seriously wonder how we might ever recover from what our ignorance has wrought.

Never strictly a direct democracy nor properly representative, our government was born hybrid. It carried a mythos from conception that not only allowed but actively promoted certain misconceptions. These might have always been necessary to smooth unavoidable surface imperfections, though they materially misrepresented who we were and our true intentions. From history’s immoral slaveowners to today’s derelict billionaires, equality has always been a popular fantasy, though belief in it certainly luffs our flags, always has, and likely always will. Perhaps every society might, at root, be mythical and utterly dependent upon the innate goodness and maturity of those entrusted to keep both public promises and secrets. Fingers tightly crossed and safely secured behind their backs, our Congress Members and Senators split mostly infinitesimal differences and largely irrelevant rules. They might make up with tradition what they tend to forfeit in execution, with few of us any wiser or better informed for their experiences.

The questions underlying the founding of this country and our government were serious inquiries into the rights of people relative to their government. These were only ever answered after a fashion, and relied upon a certain forward evolution to succeed in creating what Lincoln referred to as a “more perfect” rather than a perfect union. That pursuit continues in considerable earnest, with special attention to progress lost to momentum. Like a schoolchild returning to class after a summer spent away from academics, We, The People, seem out of practice relative to our great shared experiment. We tend to approach our obligations tabula rasa, as if we’d forgotten or never really understood the necessary and specific operations behind that kind of long division. We seem an ignorant polity, more interested in idling than in understanding how to properly fulfill our sacred obligations or even exercise our hard-won rights. We’re apt to abandon mankind’s greatest opportunity in favor of some partisan political chicanery. I wonder if we were ever worthy of receiving our precious inheritance.

We’ve experienced shortfalls before. We’ve seen the Boss Tweeds and Huey Longs, the Richard Milhouse Nixons and Henry Kissingers who twisted governance into seductive caricatures. We have been serially fooled by Trickle-Down deceptions and patriotic misrepresentations into believing our government was something other than it should ever have been intended to become, or actually was. We are presently under a receding thrall, by my accounting, the worst ever visited upon our innocently ignorant populace. The people might be less deplorable than suggestible, but it says little for the prospects of forward evolution toward more perfection if we can be so easily manipulated into swallowing our present incumbent’s bullshit, even for a minute. I feel the need for a Great Awakening, though I only hesitantly invoke the metaphor so steeped in manipulative history to describe it. We seem to require a little mass enlightenment, a general expansion of civic consciousness, a willingness to accept that we failed that last dedication test and to rededicate ourselves to understanding our Gumment and our essential role in preserving it. Self-governance is not a DoorDash order, commanded for our convenience, but more like a gourmet meal we prepare with respect for tradition and to showcase our ever-increasing, if not yet perfect, skills. Nobody will ever properly govern for us; we’re required to be more than merely emotionally involved: of, BY, and for.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz