Herri met de Bles
Chōmeiji Temple (Chōmeiji), from the series Miracles of Kannon
(1859)

We live in a time that might have been specifically designed to spawn one of those destined to become immemorial epic poems. Ours would be known as ProsperityLost and written by someone hopefully far more secular than Milton and less reckless than the probably apocryphal Homer. Our would be no less epic, however, for we lost something far more precious than even a biblical Paradise or an ancient Greek empire, for our Prosperity had the decency to aspire without explicit expectation that it would result in any physical manifestation. We were free to believe without regard to the likelihood that any of us or our progeny would ever really realize the promise, yet that promise held true. Hell, it was born self-evident! With it, we could succeed as a mere matter of birthright or adoption, for we were largely, by design, a nation of immigrants, citizens by some designation superior to race, creed, or religion. We shared a dream of Prosperity together rather than any individual lording over any other. We aspired to equality together rather than dominion over.

The enemies of this curious state were with us from before the fabled American Revolution in which a minority asserted rights no nation had ever once guaranteed before and had no idea how to uphold. We made our civility up as we went along, often getting it wrong on the first few tries, so we'd try, try, and even try again if absolutely necessary. We were defined by our acknowledged imperfections and greviously wounded by repeated attempts to whitewash or other wise gild our humbling history, for we a nation founded on asperation. One properly aspires by aiming a ways beyond one's range before taking chances. Sometimes, fortunate accidents deliver the prize with little fanfare, though that was never the usual method. The more usual way to achieve a decent asperation ws to start by making an absolute hash of it, by maybe even losing faith in the possibility of realization, then to reorganize the mess and make another, perhaps teensier bit wiser, attempt. One achieves a resulting Prosperity through iteration, must of which must be attempted blind nd result in wounding disappointment. Prosperity was never once chieved by appointment to any king or potentate.

The enemies of prosperity seemed to be incapable of dreaming, big or otherwise. They were interested in sure things and certainties, both of which have always been avowed enemies of the faith Prosperity utterly relies upon. Curiously, one of the primary tools these opposing fools employed was religion, which I must designate here as another historical foe of faith and Prosperity. Religion might have begun as faith-based, but it came to become its antagonist. Who needs mere mustard seeds when they might muster Onward, Christian Soldiers or fearless Muslim soldiers, Hell-bent on spending eternity with virgins? Who needs faith when the money behind your movement ensures you can but the feality of anybody fooled into following any false faith religion? Remember, Milton worked for Cromwell, a cynical politician who leveraged the Church of England to foster a punishing revolution against faith and Prosperity, and only managed to lose Paradise in the process.

Our enemies were largely financiers, people who fancied themselves better than others by dint of the lucre they'd managed to swindle out of who they considered less worthy people. The Gilded Age gilded lillies while millions sweated and starved pursuing the Prosperity they were deliberately denied by their cynical "betters." Later, the Robert Tafts and his Supreme Court harrassed Roosevelt, who was only struggling to put a chicken in every pot and thereby achieve a Prosperity the ruling class had long believed impossible. He decisively proved their founding assertion wrong and fostered generational Prosperity which the modern Repuglican Party took as their cue to do whatever they could to undermine. They employed racism this time, along with a religion equally as perverse and any Cromwell and Milton pursued when they Lost Paradise the first time. They called Prosperity Communism or Socialism, or some handly -ism or another, trusting that these essentially meaningless names would confuse and enrage enough of the populace into voting against their own best interests. They conscripted the Charismatic Christian sects, which had about as much in common with the Main Street Presbyterian and Baptist folks we imprinted on as representing religion in our youth as the Main Street crowd had with those who actively practiced pornography. It turned out that many of the leaders of this stalward opposition actively practiced pornography as more than a hobby on lated imfamous places like Epstein Island.

These born-again Christian nationalists were born into a world utterly unfamiliar with Prosperity, for their faith relied upon the accumulation of grudges and the pursuit of retrobution. One cannot meaningfully pursue Prosperity while trying to get even. One must abandon petty differences to enjoy the many benefits Prosperity bestows. Likewise, those seeking to reform or punish forfeit the possibility of enjoying the many fruits Prosperity bestows.












©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz