Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Merciful Knight
(1863)

"I am surrounded by legions of church ladies pursing their lips at modernity and reason."

One of the more reliable indicators that we’re experiencing EndDays comes from the seemingly sudden presence of MonkeyTrials. I’ll coin this term, referring back to that famous trial a hundred years ago, in which the State of Tennessee charged a schoolteacher with violating their Butler Act, which forbade teaching about human evolution in public schools. The resulting trial brought together two of the most famous lawyers of the time, Clarence Darrow, who appeared for the defense, sponsored by the American Civil Liberties Union, and William Jennings Bryan, a three-time populist Presidential candidate, arguing for both the church and the state. The trial became a classic fundamentalist-modernist controversy. It attracted plenty of attention both locally and in the national press. The courtroom was packed with people who appeared solely to demonstrate their support for the Bible, believing that teaching human evolution was somehow unholy. Most of the observers of the trial would have been perfectly satisfied if the judge had found old Scopes guilty at the outset, since few seemed to believe that any defense could render him innocent. He’d admitted his guilt so he could become the show defendant at trial. He did not disappoint.

Today, our justice department, under our present incumbent, has taken to acting as if it were presenting before Kangaroo Courts. They make absurd motions that are often quashed the moment they’re submitted. Government attorneys have received innumerable threats of disbarment, and the whole concept of justice seems unusually strained. Thousands of Justice Department employees have left rather than engage in such shady dealings. Our incumbent asserts guilt and innocence without bothering to provide evidence beyond the fact that he knows, because he’s looked; nothing admissible ever appears. A slathering crowd gathers around to witness the persecution of the latest victim of another deliberate miscarriage of justice, and all’s supposed to be right with this world. Like strongmen everywhere, our incumbent considers himself to be the finest judge of character. He considers actual judges to be at least somewhat less skilled than he. This practice exemplifies tyranny and capriciousness, not justice. In MonkeyTrials, the outcome seems a given, evidence remains optional, and a cruel certainty influences the proceedings. It takes a judge with superhuman forbearance to adjudicate such trials.

In the court of public opinion, the MonkeyTrials ethic seems more prominent now. Poisoned by certainty, mobs form around positions blessed by the absence of what might constitute actual evidence. Our Data Center controversy, the first in my recent memory where I’ve found myself on the opposite side of what most seem to consider reason, has been deeply troubling me. If I attempt to correct what I know to be a counterpart’s misconception, my contributions aren’t welcomed. I usually receive an”I don’t believe that” response and a look that tells me they’re now even more convinced that their misconception’s true. These seem like self-inflicted wounds. They make their holder more miserable for their trouble, yet they seem to genuinely delight in identifying another complication, another odd reason to disbelieve what might be easily proven to anyone more open to orthogonal information. I often find myself surrounded by a crowd of certainty that, frankly, terrifies me. I know these people to be decent, as decent as any Tennessee fundamentalist showing up to a trial to demonstrate that they’re on God’s and the Bible’s side. The devil lurks within this most curious detail.

I am no exemplar for any duly diligent trial. I hold my personal prejudices as gospel, too, just the same as you do. I jump to conclusions long before conclusive evidence even imagines entering the deliberation. Hell, I often refuse to deliberate at all. I insist that I know what I couldn’t possibly know, or that I’ll know for certain only after I see it. I go looking for what I’m seeking and, praise God, I find it almost every time, on my first query. Isn’t that a mystery? Actually, I am probably only successfully fooling myself. I am at my most influential when I’m actively trying to convince myself. I almost always manage to make that sale. It might never occur to me that I’ve successfully constructed a personal Hell within which I securely gloat about my God-given certainty. God might exclusively exist in inquiry, never in any answer. I pray for outcomes nobody deserves. I preserve my delicate ego first.

So many seem to have just jumped at the chance to be counted among the holy, opposed to all things Data Center. They find justified criticism of damned Data Centers everywhere they look, often conflating some alarmist characterization as well-understood common sense that just isn’t so, and never was. Of course, Data Centers use inordinate amounts of water, more, they feel certain, than any other industrial application. Except they don’t, and it’s not even close. They don’t inject “forever chemicals” into pristine aquifers, either. They might emit dangerous levels of ElectroMagnetic Flows, though the WHO doesn’t know what a safe or dangerous level of exposure to those might be. That uncertainty seems to be a good enough source for many. Most seem to hold Data Centers to performance standards no other construction has ever been held to, and they seem to feel more holy about these convictions. I am surrounded by legions of church ladies pursing their lips at modernity and reason.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz