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

"On the Seventh Day, The People rested."

However unsettling the election results had seemed, TheBeast that emerged from that victory was much, much worse. It became clear even to those who had not before figured out the scam that they had been had, and not by any particular master. They had been fooled by a fool, which only amplified their sense of betrayal. The sacred promises he swore all along the campaign trail fell one by one into a gutter soon overflowing with treachery. His inauguration came off as more like a funeral, with fewer attending than at any such gathering in modern history. That first day in office set a fresh record for perfidy as each presidential proclamation seemed to amplify a sense that he was abandoning reason to pursue who knew what? A deep sense of dread and stunned recognition echoed out from the quickly despoiled Oval Office. We were being screwed.

The resistance responded immediately. No typical period of solidarity followed that swearing-in ceremony. TheBeast had not even held his hand on the ceremonial Bible. Perhaps he understood that he would have certainly burst into flame had he done so. His already teetering popularity plummeted immediately and never recovered. As he ineptly began making America Great? Again, his popularity fell ever further. There were protests in the streets, the size and vehemence of which were initially only almost unprecedented in size. Subsequent ones quickly outpaced those passionate initial ones. Millions were taking to the streets to express their distress and heartfelt opposition, especially as innocent children, full and legal citizens, began being deported to countries their families had never before visited. The courts, always slow to respond to real-time crises, ruled against these measures almost every time papers were filed. TheBeast typically refused to obey lawful court orders. The people became ever more incensed with his insolence.

On the Sixth Day, Genesis insists, God created the animals, TheBeast, included. He was also said to have created man and woman that day, and bestowed upon them dominion over the beasts of the field, especially including TheBeast so recently inducted in a feeble-minded attempt to set the clocks back to achieve some imaginary greatness. The people know from where greatness actually comes. It cannot be found in any yesterday, but only before us. Eternally ahead. Those who would attempt to reverse progress to recover some lost sense of dominion deserve to discover neither dominion nor greatness awaiting their arrival there. Only betrayal hovers there, and The People instinctively understand which way time inexorably runs. Backwards couldn’t work because it can’t exist, except as a putrid promise. Nostalgia is the sense that if I didn’t exist, then things might be better. It’s the self-saboteur’s creed, never The People’s. The People understand this difference.

Someone asked a local congressional candidate what good TheBeast had done since he took office, and after recovering his composure, he responded that he had inspired The People to rise up and insist upon their birthright again. Our democracy had become as passive a pastime as watching a cut-rate television serial featuring an irate boss surrounded by hapless apprentices. Nobody progresses if the only meaningful direction they ever receive amounts to a vehement, “You’re fired!” That’s not direction but abrogation, an insistence not upon progress but abasement. We were always better than that. Activism was never a matter of trashing our Capitol, but more a matter of defending what actually matters, and TheBeast’s insistent nattering never once qualified as anything that really mattered, not even to him, self-saboteur that he always was.

It was a crime that real people died during the painful transition from hibernation to engaged response, but the resulting response has inspired a sense that some had sworn had been worn out of us by a complacent prosperity. We suddenly and decisively cannot perceive complacency from here, with TheBeast resorting to withholding statistics to maintain some sort of grace as his imagined world crumbles and burns around him. His popularity numbers embarrass the pollsters, who wonder after their methodologies as the president becomes almost but not quite as popular as herpes. The People now know, and The People will never forget. TheBeast will suffocate on his own vomit, and his sycophants will quickly dissipate. Those few who will continue to lobby against decency will rightfully regain their proper status in society and resume accumulating grudges for little more than fun and profit. The People will regain their authority again, and not only because justice demands it. We, The People, will have earned our Big D Democracy again, our lease having temporarily lapsed under the promises of TheBeast, ultimately only an uncommonly clever ass.

On the Seventh Day, The People rested.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz