Master of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist:
Allegory: Combat of Animals in the Presence of Man with Shield (1515/20)

"Everything except the lilac garden seems twisted and broken."

I inhabit a suddenly disorienting time when usual expectations no longer reliably produce. Emerging realities seem wacky. Our incumbent leads exclusively by whim. This might entertain He With A Negative Attention Span, but it exhausts the rest of us. He appears wholly presumptuous, as if he targets every one of his mindless proclamations for The Ages. I sense he, or more likely his fundamentalist followers, thinks his "reign" biblical and, as usual, the most devout take the allegories literally. This produces predictably ridiculous reactions, the sole predictable part of his many machinations. They always go sideways and are often rescinded after inducing some fresh, otherwise unnecessary, chaos. Some speculate that chaos must be the underlying purpose, keeping opponents off balance. This almost works, except it seems to off-balance the perpetrator more than the opponents. Consequently, the loyal opposition appears to be gaining the upper hand. As usual, the incumbent seems only capable of undermining his own plans, assuming he even has any plans.

He seems to live by presumption. He gold plates everything. He puts every drunken sailor to shame with his profligate spending. He even managed to spend more saving money than he managed to save. Can I repeat that, please? He said he set out to save the government money before spending more money in that endeavor than the endeavor managed to save. He claims to have been eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse, an obvious ruse, then spends more money trying to save money than he ultimately managed to save. His whole administration works precisely this way. Whatever he attempts, he achieves its opposite. This might be a curse, directly resulting from a generation of Repuglican word play where every bill and initiative was deliberately named the opposite of its intention. Balance The Budget Bills always managed to increase the deficit. Anything labeled peace resulted in war. Anything aimed at cutting taxes tended to dramatically raise them for everyone but those who never needed to worry about how to pay their taxes because they typically paid more than they'd owe to avoid them altogether, or they'd just stash their cash in numbered Cayman Islands accounts. Nobody's ever seen a more bereft individual than a Repuglican taxpayer.

He ignores the law and seems to prefer the antithesis of order. He'd rather break the law than uphold it. He fulfills his oath of office by continually violating it. On any typical weekday since he took office, he commits at least one felony. When he's finally impeached, the prosecutors will struggle to choose the bill of particulars because it could run thousands of pages, and thousands of pages make a messy indictment. Defensive attorneys can live forever on such excesses. His endless pretensions will require severe editing to secure a conviction. Eventually, He will get away with the bulk of his crimes because it would be too impossible to convict him of every crime he committed. In this way, his strategy to ignore the law means he'll get away with almost all his infractions. This result cannot be healthy for our judiciary or our legislature unless they take this example to remind them to stand their ground earlier and to lose most of the tolerance they extended toward this sad case. Let the punishment fit the crimes, even if he's only convicted of a few of the more serious infractions. He will, by default, lose his office, but he should also be fined to lose his ill-gotten wealth, which is to say the entirety of his wealth, and be quickly indicted and then convicted of the crimes he committed before he was elected. His time in office should be seen not as a reprieve but a delay of justice, and justice must collect her just deserts. Prison without hope of parole will be appropriate if still too good for him and his evil.

Without much fear of contradiction, I could say, "Forgive him for he knoweth not what he does." He's clearly clueless, but clueless with a vengeance. Some insist that cruelty must be his underlying purpose, to which I respond, asking, "What's so underlying about his cruelty?" It seems to be the primary effect. Whatever else he might be trying to achieve, his sublime disregard for his fellow humans remains his most remarkable and memorable trait. He's an insult to humanity and hardly deserves to be considered a member of the human race. Perhaps he senses that he's the subhuman species he accuses refugees of being, recognizing that if he doesn't strongly accuse the innocent, he and his presumptions might attract the next and more energetic defense. He presents as paranoid, terrified of his shadow. Like the groundhog, he cowers and, thereby, sentences everyone to six more weeks of winter. I no longer expect a Summer this year, though Spring's making a surprisingly resounding appearance. I savor the season without savoring the times I'm living in this year. Everything except the lilac garden seems twisted and broken.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz