Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Studies of a Suit of Armor
(1875)

"…that's what always happens when Vacuity LLC,
gets himself elected President of a country."

If every particle possesses an opposite, then, I suppose, every polity must also carry an opposing polarity. During our own American Revolution, fewer than half of the colonists supported the patriots’ position: 40–45% were Patriots, 15–20% were Loyalists, and roughly 35–40% remained neutral or “fence-sitters”. (USHistory.org) Nearly as many were apparently indifferent to that world-changing opportunity, and many were opposed. Once won, the resulting freedoms were not universally embraced. Several of my forebears felt oppressed by the emerging Federals and fled into territory not yet governed by anybody but natives, preferring their own chances for liberty over those offered by any more newly-formed polity. Some were religious zealots who firmly believed that The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, had predetermined history so it couldn’t possibly make a lick of difference what anyone resolved to achieve, and that went at least double for any earthly government or slave.

Those anti-polity sentiments followed us through the two and a half centuries since independence. Few predicted that an antimatter party would ever capture the Presidency and both houses of Congress after being so long out of fashion. They characterized themselves conservative, but not conservative in merely any conservatory sense. They were more akin to Dark Ages Conservatives, ones who firmly believed that human rights, as plainly spelled out in our Constitution, legislation, and case law, presented a genuine threat to their liberty and freedom. These people represent the antimatter in the physics of our nation and the chemistry of this world. They strongly oppose democracy and decency, straight-facedly characterizing both as forms of forced inequality, championing equal or better representation for good, Old Testament cruelty instead: an eye for an eye, or worse. Proudly ignorant and defiantly begrudging, they seek to undermine rather than encourage stability. They apparently see instability as the opportunity to get even with those who repeatedly embarrassed them in elementary school, showing off because they could read and somehow succeed at performing long division. E Pluribus Chaos seems to be their enduring motto.

Those who so strongly oppose enlightenment ain’t what anyone might call bright. They seem quite remarkably dim in comparison to even the more mildly enlightened. They see what civilization has called a great light in this world as a great darkness. They quote non-existent scripture as pretty much their sole source of reference. They ascribe to God what not even a self-respecting demon would attempt. They consider cruel and unusual as sacraments. Every President since Washington complained about this disturbingly vocal minority, for they supported every opportunity to undermine the body politic. They have been in more or less permanent insurrection since before their ancestors were indentured here to get them the Hell out of the old country. Those courts considered such a finding paramount to a death sentence, except these SOBs were so mean that many of them didn’t expire before their indenture, so they gained freedom and some land, both of which apparently went straight to their heads. They joined Mosby’s Raiders and, later, the Ku Klux Klan, and were, to a man, traitors. Some call themselves Survivalists today, an apt label since, if anything, they certainly seem to have somehow survived, perhaps on meanness.

These are the ones who firmly believe that those who defended our Capitol on January 6 were the insurrectionists. They believe themselves to be the last bastion of something they refer to as freedom, but to the rest of us, it sure seems like its opposite. Their intellectual justifications for their actions seem empty, but only because they are. They would be silly if not for the ramifications that echo across the broadest expanses of our otherwise civilized world. They are thugs in thug clothing, praising the very Military-Industrial Complex Eisenhower tried to warn us against. They seem like Distopia, Incorporated, specializing in legitimizing corporate corruption and greed. They seem to be precisely who Our Founders tried to co-opt out of being capable of undermining our continuing noble experiment. They deny science, eschew progress, and conspire with the Russians as if that’s what The Founders intended.

They personify Vacuity: carelessly thoughtless. They seem surprised when tariffs turn out to act just like taxes. They seem shocked when missiles won’t cower others on command. They seem appalled when the courts hold their president accountable for his actions. They say they’d rather have a king, but when their forebears had a king, they treated him just as disrespectfully as they’ve treated every President we’ve had since, even, eventually, finally this one now: theirs. For they seem to have authority issues, as if some political system could exist that could favor their preferences without enforcing some common rules. They want to be the exception to every otherwise reasonable rule. They seem to seek anarchy even though they will surely suffer more than most under its ultimately inexorable authority. They’ve succeeded in putting nobody in charge because that’s what always happens when Vacuity LLC gets himself elected President of a country.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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