Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Garden Court, photogravure print
(1892)

"…Heaven help us since we can't seem to help ourselves."

It might be that we’re each cursed to die in some foreign land, far away from familiar territory, especially if we stay close to home ground. Changes brought on by travel or relocation hold nothing compared to those that visit me uninvited. I might have expected to hold some of my old life static as I entered the traumatic final stages of my existence, but if so, I seem destined to experience ever more deepening disappointment. My old world was not even inherently that unstable. It seemed capable of continuing to nearly ad infinitum while entropy went right ahead and had her ways with me. But we grew impatient, I guess, or discontented with the balances that have managed to protect us for the better part of three generations. We opted to seek greatness, though we struggled to agree on what achieving that might achieve. We became the product of our discontent rather than delivering ourselves from any ultimately questionable evil.

I live and grieve like I once merely lived and breathed. I dread with each drawn breath, for I cannot make sense of what has become NewlyNormalizing. A new normal does not follow, just a continuing roil, unsettling ramifications, disorienting contentions. Obviously, no strategy, clever or otherwise, guides our path. Nor does it seem that anybody’s merely making very much of this up as we move along. Reactionary might better explain the commentary. I suspect that what seems like little more than lashing out at a disappointing fate amounts to little more or less than that. It seems thoughtless. Is this one of the final stages of self-sabotage writ large?

I do not remember agreeing to go along for this ride, because I never had. As awful as I imagined this term might become, it already seems exponentially worse. What was more or less (again), a local infection seems to have taken on global intentions. Dissatisfied with merely undermining this nation, he seems to have been targeting ruining civilization for all time. I make no exaggeration when I suggest he’s not seeking anything even vaguely related to world dominion. He apparently seeks total destruction, for what else could even begin to explain his actions? Yes, he’s clearly suffering from dementia, or would be if he weren’t so evidently enjoying his ride. Yes, he was never not deluded, and the kind of deluded that has apparently been communicable. Anyone who ever believed that what America really needed was to be “Made Great Again” suffered from the same ultimately debilitating disease. It comes as absolutely no consolation that I never caught the sniffles from that bug.

The NewlyNormalized will never qualify as normal. It will remain different for every minute of its hopefully short life. I doubt that we’ll ever be able to snap back to the way it was, though, for the NewlyNormalizing, however ultimately short-lived, has managed to significantly alter us. We are no longer so endearingly trusting, as we once prided ourselves at being. Neither are we nearly as forgiving as we once were, after having our best intentions swindled for nothing more substantial than hollow promises that were never intended to come true. We might remain disoriented well into and beyond any foreseeable future. We might even lose the power to foresee, which would be the greatest casualty imaginable from this delusional attempt at greatness.

Easter was less a celebration this year than a reunion. We marveled that we could still sit around a table together. We had all changed since the last supper we’d shared. We had been growing or devolving; however changing had visited us this latest time. We spoke of uncertainties rather than coming of age. We voiced concern over relationships straining around continuing NewlyNormalizing abominations. Livelihoods threatened. Safe havens suddenly turned hostile. Changes seemingly beyond anyone’s power to still. A quickening continues, unsettling nearly everything. We have a madman in charge. The best response he can muster seems to be proposing another round of mollifying golf, which won’t accomplish much. Heaven help us since we can’t seem to help ourselves.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz