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

"…a Goodness we will certainly have earned when it finally arrives."

The definition of Goodness changes during EndDays. What was bad before becomes a deeper sign of impending collapse, and so it becomes a harbinger of sorely needed change. In most ways, things have gotten worse each day as our self-saboteur incumbent reliably raises his already unwinnable stakes. It’s as if he’s trying to prove he can do even worse if he simply applies himself, and, increasingly, astonishingly, he repeatedly succeeds at appearing increasingly simple. However low he already showed he could go, he goes even lower. However indictable he had already seemed, he becomes convictable. However survivable his previous perilous state might have appeared, he seems just that much more like a gonner this time. While each infraction fully qualifies as truly terrible, not mere misdemeanors, the accumulating undermining effect arrives as curiously reassuring. Each insult brings him closer to total collapse. This might be the only beauty in self-sabotage.

I find many once-sturdy isms undermined like this. Patriotism, once a haven for jingoism, no longer seems to mean unquestioning support. I consider refusing to tune into his State of the Union address a patriotic act because it means I stand against the incumbent’s lies. He didn’t disappoint. Those who tuned in were subjected to the most transparent misrepresentations ever publicly presented. They experienced another new low. Those who refused to tune in were not surprised when the newspapers reported on the performance, and we felt vindicated that our judgment was sound; there was no need for us to suspend our disbelief. I even thought it a generally good outcome that he continued his descent, leaving even partisans wondering if his dementia was acting up again in public. This, too, qualifies as a public good whenever our incumbent comes across as an ever-more-perfect idiot in public. Anything to undermine the public delusion in his competence.

Religion has also been taking it in the shorts under this incumbent’s abuses. As his sexual history bleeds into public awareness, those evangelicals who swore he was the anointed second-coming increasingly appear to have been out of whatever might have been left of their minds. They bet whatever credibility they might have held within their communities on the apparent chance that their choice might offer them immunity when their eventual indictment finally comes in. Their more rapacious religious practices, those that more than bordered on sexist and racist, have come into even greater public scrutiny as the underlying perversity of their plans has been introduced into enforceable law: courtesy of Old-Testament Catholicism and Sharia Christianity. What once insisted it represented absolute morality now seems much more closely associated with odd forms of perversity. The undermining of the vast right-wing evangelical conspiracy against representative democracy can’t help but eventually turn into a very good thing for our country, permanently solidifying that sacred separation of church and state our founders insisted upon and evangelicals have been infringing upon since.

The injustice visited upon the least of us by this non-administration might ultimately result in ushering in the greatest Goodness we will enjoy from enduring through this often hopeless-seeming period. Each oppressive act seems to awaken something dormant in the American spirit, indeed, in the spirits of decent people worldwide. As our country, so recently “’tis of thee,” and a “sweet land of liberty,” becomes the primary source of injustice in the world—The Great Satan—more than public opinion shifts. Decent people cannot sit through such an insult. We must act, even act up, and we will, of course, prevail. It’s not that right makes anyone necessarily mightier; it’s that righteousness renders some behaviors intolerable. Self-evidence empowers a Goodness that only ever manifests when it really matters. Despots have never possessed any defense against this force. Decency relatively easily vanquishes such evils, and this response represents what our incumbent cannot sense coming.

EndDays Goodness comes in surprising guises. It often seems to creep in on less than the tiniest cats’ feet and often seems like it will take forever to fully manifest before us, especially before the least of us, who must absorb the lion’s share of the incumbent’s unwarranted abuse. Each insult serves to further undermine his dominion. Each cruelty comes at some ultimately collected cost. We’re rarely tested in this way, but I have faith—even if I’ve abandoned all faith in formally-organized religion—that the human spirit remains more or less intact and more powerful. This has not been anything like a vacation from what might have become complacency. Despotism was never anybody’s destiny. We might be remembering what we should have never forgotten in ways that we’re unlikely to ever forget to remember again. In this way, if few others, EndDays introduce a Goodness we will certainly have earned when it finally arrives.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz