Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Prince entering the Briar Wood
(1869)

"Sic semper tyrannis!"

Just like too many EndDays Stories, this one properly begins with the fateful phrase, “If anyone had told me just two years ago…”, before going on from there. Today, I routinely engage in previously unimaginable actions, formerly genuinely unthinkable ones. Some, in defense, hoping to ward off an indistinct yet ever-present sense of impending evil, and others in preparatory offense, as if for an anticipated assault. I’m mostly making my actions up as I go along. I engage in rituals every bit as effective as those my forebears invoked to prevent The Evil Eye from getting them, rubbing salve on imaginary future wounds. For the first time in my pacifist life, I’ve begun to understand the urge my Second Amendment friends must feel when they fondle their assault rifles. I feel protective of my past, which has most certainly already passed now, and I feel genuinely insulted by what seems too likely to become our future.

The Muse and I were invited to join a conversation convened by a local executive. She intended to create a coalition, a partnership of concerned citizens. We would try to coordinate our “thoughts and actions” to keep our valley “safe for all.” Her idea centered around the notion of a “lawful, coordinated, nonviolent, and united effort” that might, “in collaboration with other community partners”, strengthen public safety, reduce fear, protect immigrant families, ensure equitable access to services, and help keep business and community functioning smoothly. This gathering promised to be a far cry from a mustering of a more traditional Community Chest, for we were threatened with invasion, like what we’d been seeing inflicted on our neighbors in Chicago, Washington, DC, California, and Minnesota. We had been called to prepare for an invasion by hostile domestic forces under the direction of a madman, under the foreign and Domestic clause of the standard oath of office.

This call to conversation seemed more akin to what Lithuanian or Polish partisans might engage in. None of us who showed up very much resembled Minute Men, and our convener carefully refrained from explicitly naming the cause of the tensions she hoped to prepare us to better cope with. The draft wording of this proclamation seemed light and airy on first reading, so it seemed unnecessary to me to pore over the content for editing. We were directed to hold up a green, yellow, or red card to indicate our reaction to each of eleven statements. These seemed innocuous until others at our tables—we were arrayed around a room at small round tables—began reacting. Some took umbrage at seemingly harmless statements: motherhood, apple pie, and what on initial reading sure seemed like Fourth of July proclamations. We tried to resolve those tensions with a predictably clumsy group editing exercise, and ended that first evening mostly of one mind but also subtly divided.

The second session began by recapping the first. The convener had edited the first session’s comments into a second edition, preserving the complaints that surfaced in that session. That second evening would be spent fishing for red, trying to identify unworkable language that could not be preserved into common acceptance. The sheriff, absent in the first session, won the award for showing the most red. I found myself wondering what kind of sheriff would vote against apple pie declarations until he began to explain his objections. He was not betraying his oath of office, championing MAGA perspectives, but voicing some genuinely trance-busting observations. Many presumptions were subsequently questioned as our initial glowy, transcendent sense from the first meeting gave way to its real-world counterparts. Perhaps we shouldn’t declare that we’re “upholding constitutional and statutory protections” if few of us actually understand what constitutes constitutional and statutory. We caught ourselves way out over our intended skis.

It intrigued me how nobody mentioned the elephant in the room, the Republican Party. Not even me. Our convener’s grandson is brown. Our granddaughter has Hispanic and Native American heritage. We were there because a racist cabal was actively violating federal and state law, harassing innocent citizens, and committing greater crimes to arrest those only suspected of committing much lesser crimes: treating as criminals those only suspected of administrative infractions. The threatened and delivered punishments rarely fit the crimes, and due process had been almost universally denied. I felt like a Minute Man, studiously group copyediting a declaration of my outrage into gentle and respectful tones as if the opposing British General might be generously predisposed to reconsider his intrusion with a blushing, “Excuse me, please.” I wondered, “To be delivered to whom?” One attendee said he couldn’t vote for a statement unless it retained the phrase, “We believe in advocating for secure borders.” Rather than spend the rest of the night there squabbling over one man’s obsession with his secure borders myth, we voted to delete that statement, as if the revolution might ultimately be won by relatively simple omission rather than confrontation.

I stand in favor of neighbors standing steadfastly against the insults presently being visited upon the populace. I feel tremendously grateful that the worst promised has yet to visit us, but I’m not fooled by the apparent peace presently surrounding us here. I stand ready to stand, knowing that we might first need to muster a few inspiring words before we can properly respond by taking up arms, in whatever form that might need to be; hopefully by voting the sonsabitches out of office. I suspect there will be considerable violence before this scourge has been chased back into wherever it emerged. There will always be racists with us, though they only occasionally accumulate enough power to deeply trouble anyone with anything as innocuous as a brown grandchild. We bless ourselves with our best intentions. Anything we can agree to do together makes us stronger, and we’re better when we can chase off some of the glowy trance before we engage. Sic semper tyrannis!

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz