Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Tête d'étude
(1870)

This week’s EndDays dispatches arrived as the series rounded a philosophical corner it had been approaching for seventy installments. Truth preceded justice and justice preceded reconciliation, and the week traced all three: from the TRC model of Truth& to the paradox of &Retribution, from the structural inadequacy of Impeachable to the bicycle that won’t float in TheMidasPoint, from the bleak arithmetic of Retirement to the quiet accumulation of limits in Resigning. The series found its destination this week; then, suddenly, it was, in the best possible sense, already Thursday again.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

Truth&
“Let the rest of us seek reconciliation and forgiveness.”

This EndDays Story turns the series’ corner toward what comes after EndDays, beginning with Truth as the necessary precondition for anything resembling justice or reconciliation.

In this EndDays Story, I considered what form our necessary reconciliation for the crimes committed by this administration might take. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, convened after apartheid’s end, sought something akin to the opposite of Nuremberg’s retributive justice: to acknowledge the wrongs and seek forgiveness. This high-minded effort fell short of its aims, yet still serves as a model for seeking alternative justice beyond the individual and into the social. As much as I might feel attracted to the concept of a bloodletting impeachment, I acknowledge we might need more realignment than retribution. Nobody could ever live long enough to atone for these sins. We must reclaim our identity if we are to continue as the nation we believe we deserve. Free speech does not even imply any right to engage in loose talk. Reconciliation demands not just Truth, but the courage to honestly seek it, and, perhaps, the foolhardiness to stand up and declare it. Let the rest of us seek reconciliation and forgiveness.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The tree of forgiveness (1881-1882)

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&Retribution
“Let us, in our future, not go quite so blindly into any upcoming darkness or sunrise.”

This EndDays Story finds me examining the limitations of retributive justice — and wondering if justice itself might be a sophisticated form of denial.

In this EndDays Story, I confessed to my own revenge fantasies, which proved enormously satisfying right up until they produced revulsion — right up until they insisted I commit a legal murder to settle the score. The process of retribution seemed at best paradoxical, requiring that the judge, jury, and executioner engage in what would otherwise be criminal behavior. The Columbia Gorge’s ragged burn scar, reduced to ashes and stumps by a thoughtless teenager playing with fireworks, reminded me that nothing any court might find will ever restore that pristine woodland. The worse the crime, the more inherently toothless the punishment. At Nuremberg, leading Nazis ultimately received anticlimactic deaths. Perhaps justice is just a sophisticated form of denial, a studied refusal to accept that we cannot fix any past. May we learn from their vengeance that vengeance might not have been the solution we historically held it to be. Let us, in our future, not go quite so blindly into any upcoming darkness or sunrise.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: Laus Veneris (1873 - 1878)

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Impeachable
“Perhaps the founders intended this.”

This EndDays Story examines the Constitutional impeachment process and concludes that it amounts to little more than Constitutionally-sanctioned politics — inherently, inescapably corruptible.

In this EndDays Story, I traced the history of presidential impeachment: Andrew Johnson impeached for cause and acquitted by a cowardly Senate; Bill Clinton brought up on trivial charges and gratefully acquitted; Trump committing treason twice and acquitted both times by an equally guilty and complicit Senate. It takes much more than committing a crime to be considered Impeachable — even committing unspeakable crimes daily doesn’t rise to any Impeachable level if the incumbent’s party holds the legislature. This regrettable reality feeds an Invulnerability Myth, encouraging precisely the behavior the impeachment process was originally intended to address. I predict strategic chaos to emerge as the primary defense — troops deployed to sanctuary cities, phony US Attorneys arresting witnesses called by the prosecution. Impeachment seems nothing more or less than Constitutionally-sanctioned politics, and because of this, it seems inherently, inescapably corruptible. Our incumbent seems unlikely to live that long, anyway. Sigh! Perhaps the founders intended this.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The tomb of Tristram and Isoude (1862)

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TheMidasPoint
“…awaiting somebody capable of riding a goddamned bicycle to take over.”

This EndDays Story finds our incumbent having arrived at TheMidasPoint — that place where commandments fail to elicit the expected response and checks and balances hem in the would-be authoritarian.

In this EndDays Story, I proposed that in a similar way that a bicycle is not a boat, our Democracy was explicitly designed not to be a kingdom, monarchy, or authoritarian state. Any odd President might mistake one for the other, but the context will quickly and reliably betray him. Our Founders had seen the troubles that too much latitude could foster, so they prescribed a more rigorous administration featuring strict roles and even stricter limits on any individual's power. Damned nearly everything required a fucking act of Congress to proceed, which meant any individual incumbent would feel like an admiral on a bicycle, toothlessly proclaiming "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" to absolutely no effect. Our incumbent has reached TheMidasPoint: that place where commandments fail to elicit the expected response. The system was specifically designed to chew up and spit out such pretenders. The underlying Democracy stands essentially intact, awaiting somebody capable of riding a goddamned bicycle to take over.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: Christ in Glory (Salvator Mundi) (circa 1874)

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Retirement
“Good riddance to bad dictators.”

This EndDays Story surveys the widely varying Retirement options available depending upon whether one is a regular person, a democratically elected President, or a despot.

In this EndDays Story, I surveyed the retirement landscape: those who hold ten dollars in cash and no debt belong to the wealthiest portion of the population, yet few employer pensions remain since Reagan-era delusions replaced them with stock market speculation. About 78% of currently retired Americans rely on Social Security to pay necessary expenses, with the median senior living on less than $2,000 per month. Retirement features no dental insurance, no vision insurance, and Repuglican Congresses have, for years, cut the remaining meager benefits available to regular people. Despots, meanwhile, might retire with vast fortunes, though they face much greater uncertainty about whether they’ll live to see their Retirement. As for our current incumbent: denial serves as his 401(k). He over-contributes daily. Few expect him to live long enough to cash in his Social Security, though he probably wouldn’t need it anyway. He richly deserves poverty. Good riddance to bad dictators.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Perseus Series: Atlas Turned to Stone (1878)

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Resigning
“…regrowing our backbones that render him powerless to do much more than resign in response.”

This EndDays Story considers the least likely but increasingly plausible conclusion to this administration — that our incumbent simply resigns, not from principle but from the reactive exhaustion of a man who has finally run out of room.

In this EndDays Story, I saved what I long considered the least likely EndDays scenario for last: Resigning. Even a Truth & Reconciliation Commission seemed more likely than anything resembling acceptance from our resident malignant narcissist. Yet recent events have suggested other possibilities. As his difficulties have exploded, his options have more than merely stilted. The courts have finally issued injunctions that have slowed what had seemed like inexorable downward momentum. He has recently become practiced at feigning indifference as he shuffles away from each fresh purely Pyrrhic victory. He governs like a drunken sailor dances, practiced at compensating for wave action but still stumbling his way around the dance floor. Our country was founded by a band of resisters, and we're never better than when we have something to passionately protest about. Against this growing force, we might not have found the greatness again that he overconfidently predicted, but we certainly seem to be regaining our backbone, rendering him powerless to do much more than resign in response.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Three Fates, gesso rosso (circa 1868)


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They Delighted Their Author


Not every performance manages to manifest as the best ever. Those arrive one at a time, and without precedent, so preparation proves impossible. I have practiced my writing, for instance, virtually every day for decades, but I remain less skilled than I imagine an actual master must be. Still, occasionally, even I experience the extraordinary. I might finally be experienced enough to understand that I very likely won't discover some previously hidden magic pattern that I might access to manifest this sensation more often. Such experiences don't seem nearly volitional enough to qualify as a skill. They can't be possessed. They seem more like visitations, the result, perhaps, of some alignment of invisible celestial bodies. Appreciated, sure, but essentially irreproducible.

It's just as well. Would such phenomena be explainable, I might be tempted to design a process or even (shudder!) muster a workshop where I could impart my wisdom as if mine came in anyone else's hat size. My wisdom seems indistinguishable from Cluelessness, most days, and I honestly only rarely ever aspire to anything different, as if there could be better. I figure the struggle I experience every damned morning might distill into an essential element of what I might mistake for my creative ability. It does not seem all that special to me. I swear it shouldn't seem all that special to anybody else, either.

But this week, the ideas and their conveying words just seemed to appear on the page. I'd fuss for an hour or two, trying to identify a worthy title or topic, then sit down and begin. The daily ritual varies little, except for the volume of procrastination I start with and the image I choose to inspire me before I begin. Maybe the images in this EndDays series carry some of the magic I've been experiencing, for I've used artwork for each installment created by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, mostly in the second half of the nineteenth century. His subject matters and styles fascinate me, for they seem to combine familiar reality with the deepest fantasy, Sleeping Beauty as portrayed by the girl next door. Heroes with familiar faces; demons equally familiar.

I claim to have authored this week's stories, though I deep down doubt the veracity of that statement. Perhaps I channeled their creation. I found them revelatory, anyway. They leave me feeling like an Old Testament prophet, whether or not any of them actually manage to prophesy. I see how I might project a reality plenty and enough capable of sustaining me, even though it might be 99 and 99/100% fantasy, an Ivory soap of imagination. I feel as though I spent the week foretelling a future, even if none of what I disclosed ever comes to pass. The stories themselves, their structure and logic, delighted me for a few minutes, and lifted me up and out of a wearying and increasingly terrifying place. The fact that this MAGA crap is crap does not necessarily render it a joke.

I've reached another Thursday, grateful for my practice, the one that spawned my Cluelessness book, which might not ever become a bestseller, whatever that entails, but still inspires me to continue creating even though, or perhaps because, I still have little idea how to accomplish whatever it is I set out to achieve when I set my fingers to keys each morning. I encourage anyone who might happen upon this note to take a few precious minutes and attempt to waste them on this week's stories. I hope they delight you at least half as much as they delighted their author!

Thank you for following along!

You can order Cluelessness from Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or Amazon. It's now more widely available, just as the publisher predicted. I still haven't discovered the e-Book location for ordering the book, other than this Kindle link. (I didn't know that KIndle was still a thing, if it ever was.) I saw a .pdf link somewhere, but lost the location and couldn't find it again. My publisher is enamoured with their flashy portal that I keep getting lost in. See if you can do any better: Link To Publisher's Website Here

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz