Johann Wilhelm Baur: The Ordering of Chaos (c. 1639)

" … an undisciplined eight-year-old ruled by Whim."

The defining element of NextWorld might end up being Whim, our incumbent's impulsive choices. What if there never was a plan, if Project 2025 never influenced a single action by this administration? What if the continuing analysis intending to identify motive and strategic intent amounted to so much wishful imagining? In statistics, sophisticated tests exist to determine if apparent patterns amount to random events or contain potentially useful information. Since we are pattern-seeking organisms, we readily perceive patterns where there might be none. It can be damnably difficult to determine the difference in the real world. We presume strategic intent, whether or not it exists. We imagine that some plan informs action even though much of our own behavior might be best labeled unplanned. But we don't natively seem to perceive randomness, either. We might be incapable of perceiving randomness, especially regarding human events. We might accept that evolution depends upon random iteration without fully appreciating that it influences human events and world history no less.

The booming cottage industry focused on understanding our latest president's behavior never seems to sleep.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Charles Green Bush: Let Us Have Peace! -Fortissimo,
from Harper’s Weekly Date: published June 19, 1869

Inevitable Impeachment Trial
With only two more weeks remaining in this quarter—in this over-long winter—I realize that the NextWorld I have committed myself to describe in this series will not fully manifest before I exhaust my allotted time. Three months has been as long as I've cared to focus my attention on any topic. After fully immersing myself in prior series, I have required some fresh perspective. I sense that this series might have been a mistake, for I am not a political commentator or patriot by nature or interest. Yet, I have been watching myself channel my inner Thomas Paine in my writing each morning. I have felt genuine outrage that anyone would try to undermine MY democracy. My relationship with my country has never before been the least bit chauvinistic. I've thought the banner-waving patriots more hat than cattle. I have squelched whatever pride I might have felt, sensing my pride probably would preface some fall. The Mall in DC is lined with monuments to human folly, and thanking others for their service has often felt obligatory. I sometimes plumbed the edges of diversity yet still felt my country was of me. The criminals currently occupying the government disgust me, for I believe we should be gratefully bound by laws. The lawlessness exercised by these clowns might go unpunished, with four Supreme Court justices unable or unwilling to abide by our constitution. I do not aspire to be a reporter, though. I'm just a writer. I have surprised myself with the content of this series so far. I didn't know how deeply I felt about my government, how deeply I respected the patriots who populated the misunderstood bureaucracy until it was threatened by idiocy and lawlessness. There never was any master plan. The tactic was to disrupt, bring down, and humiliate, yet that tactic has been backfiring so far. Even the tariffs turned out to have been unconstitutional. Add that violation to the ever-lengthening indictments. I wonder what I'll write about when the inevitable impeachment trial gets underway.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Edwin Landseer: The dog and the shadow (1877)
Engraver: Charles Cousen

"Our antibodies should vanquish this evil infection."

The oath guides the oath-taker to swear to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic, without offering any instruction about how to identify an enemy. The most insidious enemies arrive unrecognizable or, worse, in deep disguise, so they seem friendly. Everyone assumes that they'll know one when they see one, but never having seen one, they have no experience from which to draw. False positives might be common, but false negatives seem far more worrisome. The literature has explored every variation, from the fox in the hen house to the demon born as the son of the American ambassador. Once they're through the door, defenses seem as useless as The Maginot Line. Once the infiltration happens, one faces a wholly different problem. One that might not have a solution, for then it's no longer an attempted intrusion but a full-blown infection, and we're usually loathe to take our medicine. We reason that we did not deserve this illness, that we had generally always been decently intended, but our pleas fall beside some more profound point. We're no longer independent from the threat. It has become us, so to live up to our oath, we must figure out how to defend against ourselves.

When the president commits treason, the defense must stretch beyond what would have once passed for reason.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita): let the sun shine (1968)

Inscriptions and Marks
Signed: l.r.: Corita
(not assigned): Printed text reads: LET THE SUN SHINE IN
the creative revolution—to take a chunk of the imagined future and put it into the present—
to follow the law of the future and live it in the present. Waskow
inscription: l.l., in graphite: 68-69-E

"We experience dying."

NextWorld is most assuredly not the present world and never will become it. It exists only as promises never intended to be fulfilled. It exists only as a placeholder to attract and hold attention away from present tensions, which true believers insist will prove to be only as temporary as necessary. We wonder how provisional that might prove to be. They tout the oldest excuses, insisting that nobody bakes cakes without breaking eggs when they're neither baking cakes nor breaking eggs. These are real people involved. Now! They do seem to be cooking up something, though, and it doesn't smell much like dessert. It smells distinctly fishy and not in any alluring way. It stinks! The promises are supposed to separate us from those senses, to fill us with satisfying hot air. It lacks substance, nourishment, and anything even distantly resembling truth. It only tastes sweet if you believe. Those who cannot or will not believe cannot receive the blessings only such belief can bring. NextWorld is nothing and never will be. It still wrecks plenty of havoc.

Those who somehow manage to believe baffle the rest of us, for belief never requires any sort of verifiable basis.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Edmond Guilliaume: Bismarck, from Les Génies de la Mort
[The Geniuses of Death] (1870)

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
Edmond Guilliaume’s images are blunt caricatures that combine well-known German symbols, war leaders, and macabre images of destruction. Otto von Bismarck became prime minister of the Prussian state in 1862 and of the unified German Empire in 1871. To a French audience, he was the cruel leader of the Franco- Prussian War (1870–71). With a skull head, pointed Prussian helmet, and Prussian eagle superimposed on his face, Bismarck looms like a poisonous, grasping plant over the destruction of the French countryside. Playing off a noble coat of arms, Guilliaume gave the French enemy a ghoulish image of death.

"We'll see who fills the gaps deliberately carved into our once-reliable safety nets."

When I attended high school, my part-time after-school job paid me $23.50 in today's currency per hour. Further, depending on the season, anyone who wanted a job could find one. Through the summer, even better-paying harvest work went begging. My actual rate of pay was $2.50. The Vietnam War raged in the background, and the economy was booming. As the war started winding down, inflation became a concern. Unemployment became a thing again as the economy cooled. Several shocks to the economy occurred in the early seventies. War in the Middle East spawned a slowdown in petroleum imports, which raised domestic gas prices by over fifty cents a gallon, doubling overnight. Interest rates soared as never before, with mortgage rates climbing into the mid-teens by the end of that decade. The Reagan Administration engaged in almost unprecedented efforts to reign in what was labeled "stagflation," economic stagnation combined with alarming inflation. The effort attempted to cool the price expansion without cratering economic growth. This was my introduction to Deflating.

For most of my life, the economy had hummed along growing.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Unknown Artist: Nullification….despotism (1833)
LITHOGRAPHER: Endicott & Swett

"Commerce between master and slave is despotism." Thomas Jefferson

"We were founded to instantiate E Pluribus Unum, never the other way around."

Democracy demands that the governed give consent to those who govern. The alternative, however else it might get dressed up, amounts to despotism. To clarify my terms, despotism denotes any form of governance depending upon absolute power to affect that governance. In other words, under despotism, the people do not have a say about who governs them or how that governance operates. It amounts to a Father Knows Best form of government where The People enjoy the absolute freedom to be treated as ignorant children. Many organizations operate under this form of governance, not least some of the more prominent churches. Traditionally, whatever The Pope declared was considered the word of God. It's difficult to imagine any more absolute power than that exercised by God or his duly designated representative here on Earth. Even The Pope holds an elected position, though. A general election of all Catholics might not have chosen him, but a collection of the second-highest potentates, who supposedly represent the interests of all their constituents, come together to select a Pope from a slate of candidates of their peers, effectively providing consent of the governed to the selection process. In this way, not even the Catholic Church fully qualifies as despotism since the power seems to initiate from the consent of at least the governed’s representatives.

Labor unions are founded upon just this principle: workers should properly have a say in managing the operations within which they labor.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Harold Edgerton: Hammer Breaking Glass (1933)

" … what might really make America greater than anybody ever expected, again."

The dedicated sociopath eventually oversteps his boundaries. He never could color within the lines of propriety, and, eventually, he strays too far over the lines and alienates his primary constituency. His was never more than theoretically anything, anyway. Its reality would, then, have to seem rather radically different from the illusion he so successfully managed to initially project. Making America Great Again couldn't have ever possibly felt like as great an experience in practice as it promised in theory. Once gravity actually engages, nothing seems to fly as easily. Hefting actual mass makes real work. Every action inevitably spawns a roughly equal and opposite reaction, and externalities tend to quickly start inconveniently piling up. Unintended and unexpected consequences burden acceptance. Targets move too close to home. We finally glimpse the long-reviled enemy, and he turns out to more than merely resemble us.

Even benevolent reformers encounter these effects, for old status quos, however ineffective, tenaciously hold their ground.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Jacob Jordaens:
The Master Pulls the Cow Out of the Ditch by its Tail (1652)

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
The title and subject of this etching come from a proverb in the Dutch poet and humorist Jacob Cats’s 1632 Mirror of Old and New Times. The proverb explains that it is necessary for a person to take responsibility for his or her own affairs. Jacob Jordaens depicted the proverb literally, showing a cow that has fallen into a ditch and must be pulled out by its master. The crowd of onlookers does not help the man, for it is his duty to care for his animal. The theme of this etching exemplifies the moralizing nature of many Dutch works of the period, and the composition recalls a tapestry by Jordaens in his Proverbs cycle.

"We dare not sit silently while this perverse, immoral minority tries to take over our state."

Our world has always been overfilled with seductions. Depending upon individuals’ proclivities, they might find infinite ways to fall. Some tumble to the ever-popular omission while others prefer to commit something, but none of us were ever impervious to some perverse attraction. Our moral and ethical fiber seem unlikely to ultimately save anybody, but a time will come when one will face a choice. Most choices will not come nearly as simply as any either/or, and many if not most, might manifest more like dilemmas, where your response will appear to damn you, whichever side you take. A moral or ethical compass finally shows its inherent usefulness after perhaps a lifetime of idling. Then, the defining difference might emerge. Then, the underlying purpose of every prior struggle might find meaning. Once one makes this choice, it's likely to be irrevocable. The fate's sealed. Identity is finally revealed. The question was always, "Will you become a Nazi?" You're already done for if the answer isn't "No!”.

The rise of NextWorld harbingered just such a choice.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz