Unidentified Artist: The Nonsense Seller (1814)
Published by Aaron Martinet

"We will doubtless continue feeling disoriented … "

Ordinarily, following a few months' immersion, a new context starts making sense. I can one morning suddenly properly anticipate again. I rarely feel blindsided or surprised, even when some fresh inanity appears. Here, though, my experience has so far seemed unprecedented. I feel no sense of what might be coming next. My dread quotient sits near the red line, and I do not know how to quiet it. I feel deeply saddened as if utterly surrounded by stupidity, and it's stalking me. I daily learn of some fresh indictments for actions that don't qualify as crimes. Since when was it likely that one might be arrested for insulting a president, for showing genuine disrespect, especially after he'd earned it? Since now, I guess, though the courts seem as though they are already clogging up with what will inevitably be judged as frivolous charges. I expect a record number of disbarments as the Justice Department ramps up to become the incumbent's lap dog. The Nonsense might have made sense had Jonathon Swift, Lewis Carroll, or Mark Twain spun this tale. Instead, a third-rate, unreality television actor with declining cognition seems to have jumped the rails to become his own scriptwriter.

A respectful amount of literature was written to ridicule absurd rulers and their policies. I anticipate a renaissance of such works as we move further into this fresh theater of the absurd. The only sense remaining might be Nonsense, so I suppose I really should embrace this context. It's tough not to poke fun at the incumbent and his incompetent ministers, even though they inflict real pain and produce genuine tragedies as they rummage around trying to become noteworthy. Most seem destined to be remembered as cruel clowns who, when offered a clear choice, enthusiastically mortgaged their legacies and sold their souls. It would be more entertaining if it weren't for the pain and the crocodile empathy. Their insincerity seems especially insulting. How stupid do they suppose us to be that we can't see right through their ruses? If I've come to understand anything, it's to deeply distrust any of their labels. Anything labeled Efficiency might mean anything other than whatever Efficiency might mean. Most actions go unlabeled and unexplained as if everyone should quite naturally understand. The disorientation might be part of their power. I suspect that even the thoroughly entranced never understood but never required that to support their president.

The Muse confided that children grow up paranoid when their world becomes incoherent. They never learn to properly anticipate anything because they were reared without predictable boundaries. What might be rewarded one day receives punishment the next. They grow up essentially contextless. I subscribe to the notion that a leader's first responsibility must be to create a coherent context. One must organize the chairs to suit the purpose of the gathering. The worst meetings are those where nobody attends to setting the context, so they are attempted in some context unsuitable for accomplishing whatever the purpose might have been for that meeting.

My old friend III (pronounced "three"), now deceased, used to convene a workshop he called A Course With No Name. He carefully prepared the classroom by haphazardly stacking all the tables, chairs, and easels into one corner so that participants found no place to sit when they showed up. They'd mill around uncomfortably until he declared the class started. Many wouldn't have said anything about the mess they found. Others had asked questions that III easily deflected.

He'd call the class to order and ask if anyone had questions. There were always several. Eventually, it became clear that this would be an unconventional workshop where they'd be expected to engineer whatever meaning they might find. The first exercise would entail designing a space appropriate for the learning they anticipated without very much prompting from the facilitator. The following days didn't get any better, for many of the elements the students had learned to expect their teacher to provide fell on their shoulders to engineer. By the end of the workshop, everyone seemed satisfied, though they hadn't been fed, baby bird-wise, a single lesson.

My lesson from this present context might be that I'm immersed in A Course With No Name. The Muse and I have been struggling to cope with the paranoia resulting from the suddenly absent guard rails. We ache for the ease with which we lived before that last election and have cursed plenty at what we've all lost since. But the complaints don't seem to buy us much of anything, and our discontent seems bottomless from here. It might be our unwanted but necessary responsibility to tear apart that messy pile of tables, chairs, and easels and set about designing a space appropriate for this context, for this time, however unwanted. We could pine after whatever we lost, and we will most definitely continue to poke fun at the inept performances before us. Still, we'd best get focused on something for ourselves here, lest we fritter away some of our golden years in discontent. We will doubtless continue feeling disoriented, but what else might inject some meaning and purpose into this otherwise Nonsense Punch And Judy Show existence? What else besides Nonsense?

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz