Adrian van de Venne:
The Donkey Laden with Food,
from Emblematic Figures of Animals (1633)

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
Prints of animals could be accurate and fanciful simultaneously. This finely engraved yet slightly caricatured scene from Aesop’s Fables depicts a donkey laden with fine food and wine who nonetheless happily gnaws at a prickly thistle instead. Moral interpretations of the text have ranged from “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” to a critique of stinginess. Though unsigned, this humorous image of feast and famine set off a chain of copies, ironically ending with a dozen Aesop roundels that decorated the back of trenchers, wooden plates used for the final fruit and nut course in England.

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"It's probably nobody's friend and certainly everybody's enemy."

With this incumbent, a raft of archaic usages appears to have made a comeback. Perhaps it's the conservative lilt, which intends to return to simpler times, but terms not seen in public since the Old Testament have been appearing on the lips of even the most unqualified cabinet secretaries. Many commentators have compared their vocabulary to that which emerged in 1930s Germany, where certain terms had to be resurrected to describe the horrors being initiated. Nobody had seen anything like them since at least the Dark Ages, and, sure enough, the emerging vocabulary did, indeed, accompany a replaying of some of the Dark Ages' greatest hits. Proper euphemisms gained popularity to avoid describing what was actually happening, just as they have today. Concentration Camp looked better in print than the more direct Death Factory, and the meaning of rights and freedoms were flipped on their heads for the duration. Rights became unspeakable obligations. Freedoms became insidious conscription. Life became death, and death equated with a better life.

Venge has become perhaps the most frequently used. Everyone in this administration seems to be on an unholy mission, seeking revenge for some past real or, more often, imagined slight. This should seem ridiculous since the wealthiest seem to hold the largest grudges. Most of the rest of us could never afford to hold much in the way of those. We never expected this playing field to be level, and we never cared to engage in anything like serious competitions. We learned to let bygones be gone and pasts be past, lest they overly complicate our presence. We believe in endless second chances and in burying hatchets, but not this new crew contaminating our Federal administration. The primary reason they may struggle to administer anything might lie in the distraction they consistently seem to require. They are forever chasing getting even, mainly for things that never really qualified as an infraction. Came to the defense of someone being bullied? This has become the new stand-in for discrimination … against the bully. Take a public stand for decency and learn that somebody has recently declared decency a retroactive sin, and that sin itself, once an issue between sinner and their god, has now become the primary focus of the new and wholly unqualified Secretary of Education. You're busted!

To the vengeful, the spoils fall because their focus tends to spoil otherwise perfectly healthy activities. Venge produces nothing, contributing to nobody's national product. Its primary intent seems to be humiliation. Humiliation for who might be the most crucial question. Those exacting revenge never seem to notice how much their slip seems to be showing. They march on their crusades in unflattering underwear. They claim to represent righteousness, but they dress like they're representing J. C. Penney's husky sizes. Their sense of righteousness seems wrong to the rest of us, we who are admittedly dependent upon one or another government program. The victim always seems to be the same: another everyday member of We, The People. They seek revenge against a righteousness they have never experienced, a sacred space they for some arcane reason seem to reject as somehow profane. They seem to believe that just being born was a crime perpetrated by trans people against "the rest of us decent folks." They hold a twisted sense of decency.

I pray to find new ways to offend those with these overly delicate sensibilities. Whenever anybody tries to tell me what I have to do to go to Heaven, I try to patiently explain that I long ago stopped striving to achieve Heaven. I traded in that striving for deciding that I'd already succeeded. The Lord (whomever that might be) in his/her infinite wisdom, seems to have created a curious Heaven and invited me in. Of course, it often confuses my finite expectations, for it most definitely does not preclude suffering as one of its eternal sacraments. It includes all the usual suspects, including, on occasion, horror. What it has going for it has always been its convenience. Why strive when just being alive means you're already present? Why aspire when you could choose to retire into an always handy satori? No need for Venge if everybody's always even. Of course, this little fantasy of mine might never achieve broad public acceptance. Too bad for the broad public. I'll feel free to practice my eternity until or unless one of these Old Testament bastards decides to go all Holy Roman Emperor on me. Then, I guess I'll enter a more conventional Heaven. The Good Book (I always wondered how it got that name) suggests many things. It giveth and taketh away. It promises before reneging, the last half seems to negate much of what the first half insisted.

The problem with Venge has always been that it cannot restore any past, and it tends to goober up every future. It's expensive, to say the least, even in those rare instances where exercising it produces satisfaction. Venge almost always promises more than it ever seems to deliver. That sweet sensation anticipated almost always produces a bitter underflavor, often one more revolting than even the memory it was intended to resolve. This world would be more like conventional Heaven if we could rid ourselves of the urge toward Venge. If we could take our lumps and rely upon karma to settle scores. If we could somehow manage to get over ourselves. The Lord (whomever that might be) was said to have insisted that Vengeance was his. This might be another way to say that Vengeance belongs to nobody. It's an orphan in no need of foster parents. It's probably best left to fend for itself. It's probably nobody's friend and certainly everybody's enemy.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

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