Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Golden Stairs
(1880)

"…greater respect than his soul's former vessel ever once managed to."

Today’s thought experiment takes us into a netherworld, one that some believe exists between states, during periods of transition. Tibetan Buddhist belief labels this no-place Bardo. It holds that Bardos exists between death and rebirth and also between birth and death, that both life and death themselves amount to periods of transition. Existence might be transitions all the way down. A Bardo offers opportunities to experience insight and achieve enlightenment. One might perceive perspectives there that they never before imagined. The naturally self-reflective might experience a satisfying lightness there, while the normally reactive, more superficial actors might experience great distress and discomfort, to the point of believing they’ve landed themselves in Hell. The shock that must occur when a malignant narcissist first experiences what it had been like for everyone else who had ever found themselves in his presence should properly shock any cockiness right out of the least of us.

I have been considering the various scenarios under which our malignant narcissist might leave office, but I would be remiss if I missed considering the transitions, both for himself and his minions, for his disappearance will throw the MAGA Movement into a social Bardo all its own. Without their dear, malignant leader to draw attention to the stage, the audience will very likely, rather quickly, disperse and might well permanently disappear like a bathtub fart bubble. Even the least self-aware crowd ever assembled will likely experience some semblance of an existential crisis. A few might glimpse something akin to their first peek at a Woke-like self-awareness, and such experiences tend to feel like ends; little deaths without much immediate sensation of eventual resurrection. I imagine that the MAGA Bardo will induce a deep sense of absence, with little sense of direction or immediate salvation. Even greater cynicism, if such a state could even be possible, could ensue, or even, gulp, some form of enlightenment. What form a MAGA enlightenment might take couldn’t possibly be mine or yours to propose, and I dare not speculate. I’ll just suggest that it will likely take a form that few outside that crowd would comfortably recognize as enlightenment, but then enlightenment was never not deeply personal and never for mass application.

Their malignant leader, such as he has been, might have been actively engaging in Bardo these last few years. What experts have speculated must be evidence of encroaching dementia might have just as easily been him slipping into Bardo, which might well appear similar to dozing. The clear disorientation he seems to carry into his reawakenings might just be the residue of his dabbling in enlightenment for a few minutes in the middle of his freaking press conferences. I find it reassuring to make this perhaps over-generous interpretation of these performances because this world works better for me when I believe that even he might just be being hounded by an insistent enlightenment; that even our sublord of Counter Enlightenment might eventually be overtaken by an inevitable lightness of even his being. Bardo seems to be the place for such transitions, so, however unlikely such a transformation might seem, it could be happening as he appears to be dozing. He might be preparing himself for a rebirth.

I tried to imagine what our incumbent experiences as he encounters his inevitable enlightenment. I suspect this mirror held up for him to peer into leaves him horrified at the figure he sees performing there; an Ebenezer Scrooge on steroids, a Manhattan Mussolini, goose-stepping in a skinny red tie. I wonder if he will recognize the characters he sees there, or if he can’t perceive himself as he really was. Perhaps his transition might unfold in small increments, tiny insights to match his shriveled attention span, growing into something more genuinely transforming over time, since time seems to be immaterial in Bardo. It’s not mine or yours to know, for Bardo does not follow any straight or narrow plotline. I suspect that it’s different for every soul that experiences it, and probably even radically different from moment to moment for any individual soul. I suspect it’s, at best, a harrowing series of experiences. For those still stuck in Heaven and Hell scenarios, Bardos offer more variety, I suspect, and less eternity, for as transitions, I suspect they’d be inherently unstable. Whatever one might feel moved to possess while passing through might well prove to be mammon there and forever after. Imagine if you can, the most acquisitive man in history discovering himself suddenly incapable of possessing anything tangible. That experience alone would make Bardo well worth the price he pays for admission. He will pay more than mere billions to enter, and, I suspect, ever more than that to exit if there’s anything like justice in this universe.

We have rightfully cringed at our incumbent’s routine violations of propriety, wondering at times whether he would ever eventually receive his proper comeuppance. I suspect whatever punishment he eventually receives will probably pale in comparison to whatever he encounters once he enters his Bardo, whether it’s his Bardo between birth and death or the one he’s said to enter after he dies here. Most satisfying for me might be the acknowledgement that whatever he receives in punishment there will be at his own hand. In Bardo, one performs the roles of one's own judge, jury, and bloodthirsty executioner, if, indeed, one can remain thirsty after drinking from Bardo’s firehose. The headlines continue screaming every damned morning that he’s dying for sure. I suspect that he’s up at all hours, madly deflecting via his TruthSocial media, trying to avoid entering his Bardo. If he enters when he dozes off during his press conferences, he might well enter with bells on when his head hits his pillow. Know on faith if we cannot know for certain that he’s in active transition now that the Supreme Court has insisted that he must cancel and repay his illegal tariffs. He’s lost most of his ability to inflict pain on others, just as he starts entering his latest Bardo. I am not holding my breath waiting for this incarnation to experience enlightenment and repent, but I will hold faith that the fruit fly he’s very likely destined to be resurrected into will gratefully hold other fruit flies in greater respect than his soul’s former vessel ever once managed to. Namasté.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz