Giovanni Battista Tiepolo:
Punchinellos Cooking and Tasting Gnocchi
[Punchinellos’ Repast] (1740/52)

Stay My Course
This week, I saw inklings that we are moving back into a post-truth era with Zuckerberg deciding to stop fact-checking on his Meta platforms. Also, President-Elect Unmentionable released a fresh stream of whoppers. I suspect he's warming up for his inaugural speech, which should set fresh records for fictional content. The need for reliable witnesses has never been greater. In my eighteen years of posting here, I have tried to avoid sharing lies and advice. This hasn't been much of a stretch. I've thought of myself as a principled contributor. I have occasionally, like anybody, been caught echoing what turned out to be false stories or lousy advice. I've quickly taken them down when notified of my error. I look back and wonder how that one slipped through my defenses. I come to the same conclusion. I want to believe the best of everyone. I find it incredible that anyone might want to deliberately spread false information. My nature has made it difficult for me to create this present series, where I'm striving to describe patterns that often violate what I consider to be moral and ethical boundaries.

When our leaders lack moral foundations and ethical edges, their only recourse might be to spread more lies. Hence, another post-truth era. I will not be vacating Facebook, though. I intend to stay and remain the bastian I believe I have always been there. The Muse promised to show me how bluesky works. I might dabble there as I dabble on SubStack and LinkedIn. If I stay in one place, the world will undoubtedly slip by me. It has slipped by me before. Whatever I do, this world will eventually learn to slip by me. For now, though, I will stay my course. Leaving FaceBook would abandon my audience. Why would I do that?

——

Weekly Writing Summary

This NextWorld Story considered the increasingly common BeingGrudged sense MAGAs share. It's a self-inflicted state justifying the beratement of many innocents. Those BeingGrudged become the authors of their own debasement.

Edvard Munch: Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones (1894)
" I'm hoping the arc of our collective experience turns toward enlightenment …"
—
This NextWorld Story completes my consideration of the five Stupidities I introduced last week in an attempt to comprehend what our NextWorld might entail. This story untangles what passes for Statusing among the grudgy Inanities, Vanities, and Certainlies affecting the unwanted toy MAGA members.

Nicolas Toussaint Charlet: Metselaar bij een muur [Mason at a wall] (1821)
"They despise themselves most."
—
This NextWorld Story finds me considering the transition we're facing, a shift from a President who upheld his promise to never lie to the people to one who seems capable of NuthingBut lying. We will know he's lying when we see his lips move. What we will do will be more important than what he will say.

Honoré Victorin Daumier: A Young Man to Whom Nothing is Sacred, plate 8 from Professeurs Et Moutards (1846)
"We will be inaugurating the lamest duck in our country's history …"
—
This NextWorld Story looks suspiciously at Newness, the one unavoidable aspect of every emerging NextWorld.

Attributed to Philip Dawe: The New Fashioned Phaeton (1776)
"There was never a prescience half as satisfying as projection."
—
This NextWorld Story considers the Threatenings that seem to be most of the public speech MAGAs engage in. These might seem like promises, but they're almost exclusively impotent threats intended to serve as punishments. They speak almost exclusively in distractions.

Attilio Mussino: Harlequin and Pulcinella... were threatening each other with sticks and blows. (1925)
"That's a promise, not a threat!"
—
This NextWorld Story considers false premises and Pretexting. These seem to be the MAGA preferred tactics. We can absolutely trust that their intentions are something like the opposite of whatever they insist.

Charles Williams: A New Mode of Presenting Two Addresses at Once (published February 1818)
"We must be their enemy."
—
This writing week felt terribly consequential, for it seemed as though I was finally getting to the point of this series. I reported in last week's writing summary that I felt I was finally progressing toward coming to terms with NextWorld. This week's explorations could have easily convinced me that I don't really want to know what's coming next. I might be much better off relying upon rapid adaptation rather than studied anticipation going into the next writing weeks. I finished rounding off the Stupidities this week with BeingGrudged and Statusing. I took a short breather to complain about Newness, which seems as though it's been getting awfully long in the tooth lately. I ended this writing week with portraits of two common MAGA elements: Threatenings and Pretexting. Threatenings are not necessarily promises and often serve as the full extent of any threatened aggression. Pretexting seems like the preferred tactic of those, like MAGAs, who fear the reactions if people understood what they were really up to. When you firmly believe God has chosen you to go on a mission to save civilization, there's nothing you might not be capable of justifying if you believe it might help you achieve that end. For the MAGA mind, the end justifies every means, even the unthinkable. Thank you for following along!

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #NextWorld