Frederic Edwin Church: Our Banner in the Sky (1861)

Gallery Text:
"Within this vibrant scene of atmospheric flux, an opening within a roiling cloud layer reveals stars against a blue firmament. The barren tree in the foreground doubles as a pole for this celestial apparition of the “broad stripes and bright stars” of the U.S. flag. Following the rapid succession of political provocations that led to Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, Church channeled his belief in the divine righteousness of the Union cause into this patriotic visual spectacle.

As the sectarian conflict stretched from weeks into months, the oil sketch, with its allegorical river valley resembling the Catskills and the Hudson River, was translated into a popular chromolithograph. The New York branch of Goupil & Cie issued the prints as a subscription fundraiser to support the families of Union soldiers. This is one of the few lithographs from the series that Church painted by hand."

" … trying to rebuild a society similar to the one that existed on the last day of Joe Biden's administration."

It seems in the nature of countries that they do something monumentally stupid every once in a while. Some of them might have seemed like a good idea to a few. Still, ultimately, nobody holds that opinion because these events introduce an extended recovery period during which the country gets to reconsider every belief it ever held. Brexit was such an event for Britain. The firing on Fort Sumpter serves as an example of us doing stupid to ourselves. We still struggle with integrating the ramifications of that single short-sighted act.

However wise or wonderful, every country takes its turn. We're presently lined up for seconds, having stepped into the middle of it in our last election. I wondered before that ballot what effect bald-faced lying might have on the outcome. It had turned into a game of liar's poker where the liar, the one with the fewest scruples, would likely win. Some wondered if the honor of being elected might somehow blunt the raw stupidity the winner ultimately demonstrated. They wondered in vain, for that winner was only in that game for himself. The day he was inaugurated, he commenced violating his oath. He started using our Constitution as his toilet paper. He invited his colleagues to join him, and he received few rejections. The corruption ran deep.

Almost everything that followed was illegal, immoral, or both. Most were both. The perpetrators praised a god they probably couldn't recognize. They were Backward Christian Soldiers, marching as if against themselves. They seemed enthusiastically self-destructive. With them, the stupid ran soul-deep, as if they ever even had souls to begin with. They had traded more than their souls for their engagement. They betrayed their country. We were once, if nothing else, a society of laws. The price of belonging required respect for the rule of law. Sure, some laws seemed less than stellar, but the individual laws were not the issue. The framework within which we could rely was our most staunch ally. Impunity never was our brand. We each carried a duty to respect that framework as we respected ourselves. This notion required self-respecting citizens. What might happen if a citizen without an ounce of self-respect was ever elected President? We could not have imagined.

Impunity became the new meaning of liberty. Freedom became more an excuse than a foundation. A few suddenly felt free to inflict their sense of propriety on everybody else in a sort of Sharia Christianity. They just started shutting down essential services. Preschools were shuttered. Clinical Trials disrupted in the middle of treatments. Life-or-death decisions were taken with all the gravity usually reserved for choosing ice cream flavors or even less. The daunting effort required to select was often side-stepped, and whole portfolios were deleted as if they'd never existed. I wondered what we'd do for money after everybody lost connection to their personal information.

If they had been serious about cutting two trillion out of the Federal budget, they could have just canceled those ill-advised tax cuts implemented in his first term. Those cost enough to eliminate childhood poverty in this country. Let me repeat that: they swindled enough wealth toward the oligarchy they could have eliminated childhood poverty in this country. Childhood poverty might be the root cause of most of this country's ills, well, that and Republicanism. It causes life-long health problems. It fuels crime. It prevents kids from getting a proper education. It destroys families. It costs the nation many times more than it would to eliminate, yet we chose not to eliminate it in favor of refueling some trickle-down pipe dream nobody has ever seen deliver on its promises. We might have done better just flushing those trillions down the toilet.

Our newly-elected president is clearly insane. I do not say that as a partisan position but as an observed condition. Nothing else explains his behavior. It makes batshit seem lucid. He should eventually be imprisoned if and when we finally regain our sanity. In the four years since Britain blew itself up with Brexit, it has lost a significant percentage of its net worth. The conservatives lost in the last elections in ways previously unimaginable. It might be that Britain will finally forever be a Liberal Parliamentarian Democracy, as it was envisioned. The conservatives undermined whatever they might have had in mind when failing to properly rule the country. We're producing our version of the same play. A day will come, once we've come to destroy about a quarter of our economy (if we're fortunate), that we might awaken from the sadly mistaken notion that we're better Christians than Jesus ever was. The guilty will be duly imprisoned, and we'll continue trying to rebuild a society similar to the one that existed on the last day of Joe Biden's administration. That will take longer than I have left to live and might be accomplished by the time my grandson's fifty. He's thirteen today.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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