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

"His results can't and don't validate anything."

The future of each despotism was written before it began, back when its founding deception barely qualified as a foundling. When the lie, wrapped in swaddling clothes, still seemed charming in comparison with many competing distractions. There will always be evil in this world, but some evils have always been worse than others. Those who merely color or circumscribe seem somewhat better than those who exemplify somebody’s essence. When their very presence depends upon some founding deception, the resulting story was already headed in an inexorable direction at inception, for there can be no redemption if the basis upon which one exists is, at root, a deception. Peel away the misrepresentations to produce perhaps much worse than a founding lie: an abiding, all-consuming hollowness inside.

Despotism harbors nothingness in its core. It possesses no backup plan. It dare not seek redemption. It’s worse than anyone could have imagined, layered upon itself. It was self-deception first, and it remains that as foremost, whatever else might get layered over to build the resulting legend. This result seems the equivalent of soullessness, incapable of receiving blessings. It thrives on curses instead, forceful, seemingly powerful, yet hollow. It rails in obvious frustration. If it were as powerful as it proclaims, it seems as if it could have vanquished everything that so frustrated its founding. The original sin would have ended with that first disapproving scowl. Later, that scowl becomes the chief recognizable profile representing the entire regime.

Even a despotism, even a budding one, amounts to an entire system, and a complex one. It survives, like all systems, on the quality of the feedback it receives and uses, especially on the quality of the feedback it feeds itself. Its founding self-deception fuels an ethic of ever-expanding deception, inevitably resulting in a state of MassDeception, where feedback fails to properly inform even its originator. The despot’s motive might usually be to try to get away with something, but the gods of feedback work diligently against even that working effectively. Instead of potentially constructive criticism, deception insists upon exchanging only positive feedback, a form useless for the purposes of regulation. The daily reports, then, espouse nothing but endless successes. Results, though, grow increasingly alarming. The gap between what’s experienced and what’s reported grows; eventually, it grows exponentially. Then, nothing stands between then and the despot’s unseemly end. Despots die near the end of a path paved with unfulfillable promises, in a fog of MassDeception.

The despot’s press conferences first become a form of entertainment. They lack serious content, though the despot might well seem like the very last one to notice. Lackies and hangers-on will, of course, attempt to amplify the message, though their performances accomplish nothing in terms of propping up the despot’s image. They rather amplify the underlying, unspeakable message. The emperor not only stands naked, but he stands before us soulless as well. We will wonder whatever got into anyone who supported his, by then, hopelessly inept seeming incumbency, and everything he even imagines turns to shit before his commandments. Ultimately, he will be the only one for whom his deceptions work, his founding self-deception devolving into the sole remaining duplicity. The rest have become little more than drama, signifying considerably less than nothing.

The legacy of every despotcy must be anonymity. Whatever was believed to be compelling reasons the despot was necessary must be forgotten to history. Later generations will marvel at all they couldn’t possibly comprehend, and doubtlessly think less of a few of their forebears. You just had to be there for the MassDeception to work. In the despot’s eventual absence, it reads more like a practical joke or a mass misunderstanding. Despots weave worlds that make neither believable history nor inspiring fiction. This characteristic might be the only one validating that the despot must have really existed in this world. His results can’t and don’t validate anything.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz