Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Golden Stairs
(1879 )

"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;"
William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII

"I tire of these endless, meaningless performances…"

Contrary to popular misconception, all this world was never a stage, and human existence never once very closely resembled mere players. Shakespeare’s assertion, delivered via character Jaques, seems like a cynical approximation, perhaps an apt analogy, but falling far short of anything resembling definitive. Though in our time, one might be forgiven for believing that everyone’s more or less acting their way through life. So much of our experience gets represented on the same small screen on which we’ve seen actual performances, with actual actors: merely players. It seems important, though, to draw at least one fundamental distinction between acting and living. What might such a distinction entail?

Authenticity seems utterly different for a player and a person. For the player, it roughly measures how similar their actions seem to resemble those of an actual person under similar conditions. Believability seems to be the primary metric by which a player’s authenticity might be measured. People often behave in unbelievable ways, and one roughly equivalent measure of their authenticity might just be the exact opposite of the players’ measure. The unexpected, indeed, the unbelievable acts tend to be those with the greatest impact, the truer measure of authenticity. Of course, a skilled actor can fake even that, the backward authenticity that you and me find familiar. Nobody acts authentically to achieve some end, though, for whatever behavior signifies authenticity tends to ooze out around often carefully reinforced gaskets.

When The Muse ran for Port Commissioner, she faced an essential dilemma. Who should she present herself as being to her electorate? What sort of costume and makeup should she adopt to consistently appear to be her? Our incumbent, for instance, adopted wearing a stupidly long red tie, and that became a significant part of his so-called iconic identity. It didn’t provide an ounce of insight into any of his underlying authenticity, if, indeed, he even had any, but it did display a consistent way to identify his presence, however otherwise vacuous. The Muse decided to attempt to just be herself on her campaign trail. This meant not wearing makeup or dressing up, attempting to impress. She chose to show up as the midwestern farm girl she knew she still was, not all that deeply down inside. She chose to play the one character who wouldn’t require her to perform as if she were somebody different from who she really was. She knew that, for her, any alternative would have required more guts than she probably has, and would have been nuts in terms of projecting her authenticity.

Not every politician has undergone this conversion. Many, if not most, still subscribe to Shakespeare’s notion and attempt to pass themselves off as somebody other than who they actually are inside. Some, unfortunately, seem to possess no notion of who they might actually be, having been cultured in toxic environments where they could never disclose who they might have been beneath their wardrobe. These seem like lost souls. They might be skilled in projecting some sense of competence, but they also tend to carry the stench of whatever they cannot disclose. No news cycle goes by without some fresh high and mighty receiving their public comeupance, without their actual authenticity finding presence, and the shocking difference undermining their performative credibility. No story in this world ever adequately mends any identity so rent.

Our incumbent seems to trade exclusively in inept StageCrappery. He carefully sets each stage before he takes to it, yet he still manages to generally make another hash of each appearance. He might project some significant backdrop, then deliver a speech that violates the first tenet of whatever that stage set was intended to represent. He often dozes through his delivery. His lack of authenticity has become the most prominent feature of whatever character he’s intending to perform. Everyone who witnesses the least of his performances understands that he’s lying to them. It almost seems that he’s deliberately speaking in reverse, and that his audience is supposed to translate each of his proclamations into their opposite in order to understand the message he’s intending to deliver. He’s either the most inept actor ever to take a stage, or he’s an irrelevant genius, the master of a craft that has no plausible use in this, or any other universe. I tire of these endless, meaningless performances, and I ache for at least an ounce of genuine authenticity from our presidency.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz