Guiseppe Scolari: Saint George and the Dragon (1570/1600)

How You Decided To Treat Me
Cruelty might be the most unnecessary weapon. It sits like a turd atop an already desecrated dessert, an always absolutely unnecessary embellishment. Whatever might have been intended, its footprints point toward the perpetrator as the guiltiest party because he chose to mete excessive punishment rather than justice. Cruelty might be the victimizer of choice, exclusively employed by those most skilled at victimizing themselves. It remains the bully's favorite response and properly frames the bully's character. Cruelty is always beneath its deployer, effortlessly degrading whatever their standing. The more lofty one's position, the greater the perversion cruelty produces. Our President seems to revel in his power to inflict cruelty on the most innocent among us. This renders him cheaper than most imagined he was, and most already imagined him as cheaper than a two-dollar whore. He'll try to see you by betting a buck-fifty. So far, His administration has suffered greatly from its focus on retribution, not to even scores but to humiliate those not even charged with crimes. This renders them petty rather than powerful, impotent instead of strong. When they assert extra-judicial powers, they disclose how little they know or understand about the land they insist they are dedicated to improving. If humiliating themselves will make America greater, their tactics might prove successful, but in the curious calculus of cruelty, the outcome always mirrors how you decided to treat me.

Tags: #NextWorld

William Hogarth: Cruelty in Perfection
Series/Book Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751)

"May we finally rest in peace without him."

As The First Stage of Cruelty finding a foothold created space for the institutionalization of cruelty in the Second Stage, the efficient expansion of cruelty within Stage Two burst the barriers into casually practicing any and every perversion after guilt-free cruelty comes unimaginable brutality. What might have started as torture morphs into murder. No limits exist for the experienced. Those who might have dabbled in Stage One Cruelty or felt sucked into Stage Two, if they didn't excuse themselves or flee, finally feel free to simply go off the rails into Stage Three. Hogarth referred to this stage as Perfection because nothing inhibited its excess. It could no longer be considered anomalous. It became just whatever it always was, but now without limits. No guilt intrudes—no sense of error or danger. If pure evil exists, it only persists after reaching Stage Three. Stage Three Cruelty puts everybody at risk because its artillery knows no trajectory. There will be accidents, and innocents will, of course, be destroyed. The perpetrator will have lost their inhibitions by then.

There will be no reformation.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

William Hogarth: The Second Stage of Cruelty
Alternate Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty, Plate 2.
Series/Book Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty
1751

" … no business even attempting to lead others."

Cruelty becomes insidious once institutionalized. However benevolent an institution might have seemed when founded, it might always remain vulnerable to corruption. The corruption might first seem merely seductive, a not-quite guilty pleasure, diverting entertainment. It was probably championed then by someone who seemed unafraid of judgments, somehow above routine worldly cares, a millionaire, seeming unusually powerful. Few would have noticed how vulnerable he felt, for even he was probably not in touch with those depths. He stood securely in only two dimensions and, lacking depth, could have been easily toppled then by even a concerted casual wind. But he stood. He stood and didn't entirely embarrass himself, and he took the wrong message from this early success, which was actually more like an early absence of overt failure. He continued until his behavior became his identity, and it became merely expected. He attracted followers who, accustomed to mimicking, behaved the same. Soon enough, those performances no longer raised so many eyebrows. They still seemed uncouth but no longer obscene. Values had already eroded.

When institutions turn to cruelty, they render it efficient.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

William Hogarth: The First Stage of Cruelty (1751)
Series/Book Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty
Alternate Title: The Four Stages of Cruelty, Plate 1.

"I'm asking for a dear friend of mine and yours."

The initial stage of cruelty must come subtly if it's to be sustained. Too overt an entry can shock even partisans into premature recognition. It ideally occurs against some other, preferably one long-reviled. The torturer often targets minorities for precisely this reason. The best victims naturally have the fewest supporters. Some leakage remains unavoidable, though, scrupulously one designs their offensive. Remember, cruelty is inherently offensive. It will seem at least somewhat repulsive to every witness, even the most thoroughly enthralled. The executioner, therefore, has, by long practice, characterized himself as the greatest victim in the transaction. "Poor Henry, whose fate calls for him to behead people for a living!" In extreme cases, the director of the cruelty can comfortably characterize himself as the worst off for the experience. Just imagine! He has to forever live with the memory of the execution while the victims hardly felt a thing as they exited.

The psychology does not seem terribly complicated.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Christoffel van Sichem II:
David receives the news of the death of Absalom
Alternate Title:
A ruler on a throne rends his clothes upon receipt of a message (1646)

"I can't be bothered now!"

I was once a perfect news consumer. At ten, when I started delivering newspapers, I read each edition from cover to cover, skipping over the parts that didn't interest me. I was there when NPR first launched and quickly became an ardent listener. For decades, my alarm clock woke me with BBC or Morning Edition. I rarely missed a broadcast and felt deficient whenever I did. I thought I could not live without those twice daily doses, morning and evening. I subscribed to the local paper, too, and read it through. I considered these habits to be necessities of citizenship and to be ill-informed, a high crime, or at least a significant misdemeanor. When our newly-instilled Chief Executive was sworn in the first time, I found myself suddenly unable to listen to the travesties reported twice daily as news. It seemed like unnecessary information, as meaningful as something produced by the Worldwide Wrestling Federation because it probably was. Further, my old, reliable NPR reporters were retiring on me, replaced by what sounded like interns who insisted upon ending every declarative statement with another question mark. I felt as though the more I heard, the dumber I became. I painfully weaned myself off of my NPR habit.

I retained my New York Times and Washington Post, though I made no attempts to scour those from end to end as I had with my small city publication.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Corita Kent (Sister Mary Corita):
(tame) hummed hopefully to others (1966)

Inscriptions and Marks
Signed: l.r.: Sister Mary Corita
(not assigned): Printed text reads: TAME [IT']S [NO]T / Somebody up there likes us. / A hum came suddenly into his head, which seemed to him a good hum such as is hummed hopefully to others. Pooh / Deep within every man there lies the dread of being alone in the world, forgotten by God, overlooked among the tremendous household of millions upon millions. That fear is kept away by looking upon all those about one who are bound to one as friends or family; but the dread is nevertheless there and one hardly dares think of what would happen to one if all the rest were taken away. Kierkegaard

"They are terrorists …"

The dream was back again last night. I do not recall the last time it visited, but it had not been so long ago that I wasn't familiar with the scene. We were driving through a hallucination. I'd lost my visual field, so when I looked out through the windshield, it looked to me like we were driving on a body of water. I knew there had to be a road there somewhere, and I suspected The Muse could see it, but I couldn't. There was also something about the music playing that seemed especially upsetting. We were in a precarious balance but at great risk of crashing. I woke up, but the dream persisted. It took an hour of sitting up in the dark for the vestiges of it to finally leave me, and even now, the memory persists.

I realize how exhausted I feel.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Kiyochika Kobayashi: The god of cowardice (1895)


"Only cowards engage in endless wars."

Ares, the Greek God of war, was known for his brutality and cowardice. When discovered to have been conducting an affair with Aphrodite, he and his lover were humiliated before the other Gods. Throughout history, mythical and not, great leaders have been reluctant warriors. They could muster an army but would rather settle differences more peacefully. The inherent cruelty of battle renders it a distasteful choice and always has. Beware leaders who rattle swords, for they disclose the opposite of what their saber-rattling might suppose. They might outwardly appear brave, but they will be quaking beneath their armor. Those who pick fights are rarely the mightiest. They attempt to chase off their opponents by appearing fierce. Once engaged, they're more likely to attack the most vulnerable than the more powerful. They invade schools to entrap parents rather than engage with peers as peers, perhaps because they never feel equal or superior.

Our MAGA maniacs come similarly shackled.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Jack Gould: Untitled [composite photograph of a man doing a jumping twist; continuous motion] (c. 1950)

I Dare Not Avert My Eyes
The content shift seemed stark enough, but the underlying context shift seemed more consequential as we moved away from a government sworn to tell the truth to one dedicated to delivering only self-serving lies. Lies betray even the liar, though, and prove unreliable. They backfire. What might have been intended to help the cause often hurts it. In just four days, our new/old Chief Executive sparked several constitutional lawsuits and ample attempted crimes and misdemeanors to justify at least one impeachment inquiry. More will be coming, for this guy clearly knows no limits and personifies self-delusion. His performance seems more feature than problem and reassures me that this NextWorld Series might prove to have been amply justifiable. Under Yogi Berra's old advice that one can see a lot by looking, merely observing and reflecting upon this performance seems to have already better prepared me to cope with its presence. I remain perhaps unjustifiably optimistic that this performance won't last long, certainly not for four more years, but its inherent self-sabotaging nature probably amplifies its fragility. Tough guys feel the weakest inside.

The most confident require continual reassurance.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

John Singer Sargent: Figure and Head Studies (1872)

" … his Base eases into apparently effortless understanding."

I cannot comprehend most of whatever The Incumbent says. He mumbles. He exclusively speaks in incomplete sentences that often lack an object, subject, or coherent verb. He seems to speak in a shorthand dialect that some of his more fervent followers certainly seem to understand. I do not know how they accomplish this feat, which seems like mindreading to me. My best explanation comes from my experience working with a partner named Jeff after I joined that boutique Silicon Valley consulting firm back in the nineties. Jeff had previously worked as an engineer for Attari, the early video game producer, and with Apple. He was considered a rainmaker in the consulting firm, for he seemed to know everybody in the valley. Name a company, and he invariably had an old friend there with whom he was on a first-name basis. Several of them were CEOs. They'd grant him an interview and often enough agree to sponsor at least a trial workshop.

Jeff baffled me because as I was learning how to teach that firm's flagship workshop offering, I had been sitting in the back of the room watching Jeff facilitate.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Unknown: Clown riding donkey backwards (1820 - 1835)

"Yadda yadda, spink, spank, spink!"

Forward progress induces much Backpedaling for the experienced self-saboteur, who tends to make a hash of most things. They cannot seem to stop themselves from going overboard with every initiative. He includes a full cup or more if the recipe calls for a tablespoonful. Consequently, his cakes tend to crumble. He unwittingly encourages his opposition and chases away his partisans with each pompous proclamation. Part of the problem seems to be his penchant for proclaiming, a pastime most Presidents use sparingly, if at all. They were apparently more aware that most changes, indeed, most expressions of a President's power, have to pass through those contentious halls of Congress before they have lasting effect. Proclamations tip off the opposition and so render whatever's proclaimed much less likely to happen. Proclaiming remains an integral part of every self-saboteur's portfolio, though. This inclusion results in much pomp but very little circumstance, some smoke blown over what might have been much more loyal partisans. This even offends those who might have otherwise been a more loyal opposition.

At some level, attempts at Backpedaling rarely succeed.

Tags: #NextWorld

Oliver Herford:
The Goat, for "The Crocodile," by Oliver Herford (1891)

"When you're President, the Apologist supply is infinite."

Whenever a new incumbent ascends office, a crowd of true believers quickly encircle the new President. Their primary purpose might be the opposite of their apparent one, for they might seem to be there to ward off any serious misperceptions and set the story straight from the outset, though they're likely also defending their delicate egos lest some inconvenient truth slips out. It's important to understand that everyone engaging in the following farce already knows the worst about the incoming President. They know most of his most serious shortcomings, for he'd been featuring them as evidence of his superior experience for the position throughout the campaign. Seriously, anyone still able to stand in public and spout self-importance after being convicted of rape and fraud might have curiously earned his place as the leader of the free world, a role that might require an egregious amount of shamelessness.

The Apologists have a ready response to every criticism.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Helen Hyde: In the Rain (1898)

"The result will mete out its own punishment. Vengence was never mine to deliver."

Slightly more people voted to elect The Oldest President (TOP) than voted against him ever holding public office again. He had abused his privileges during his first turn. He had been promising ever greater abuses if returned to office, so those who couldn't see any attraction to him as either candidate or ex-president were baffled as to why anyone might feel moved to waste their franchise on such a clearly unworthy character. Their vote amounted to an act of self-abuse, I suspect, or maybe it was just a mistake. Ask, though, and one acquires a fresh lesson in the human power of Rationalization, the attempt to make some irrational act seem reasonable in retrospect. Every terrible public servant has trailed a long line of Rationalizers behind them. They've attracted the Lesser Of Two Evils Crowd, who always seem to see only the worst in anyone representing an opposing party. They'd vote for Hanibal Lecter if he were a Repuglican running against anyone enjoying a more conventional diet. They also attract the partisan who never even investigate alternatives. They vote without reflection, choosing not to choose, a part of this country's sometimes overly-proud suffrage tradition. Democracies include even those opposed to democracy.

Then there are the Pig Shavers, the ones who split hairs.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Adriaen van de Velde: Dogs (17th century)

" … they will insist that they represent the real spirit of the laws …"

We speak of the Republican'ts and the Democans as if our society's essential divide lay in mere political labels. It likely lies much deeper than that, as deep as belief and perspective might lie. On one side, we have a cadre who, try though they might (they don’t really try at all), still firmly believe they inhabit a zero-sum world. Conversely, we have those who understand it needn't necessarily be so characterized. It can be a zero-sum world if we insist that it must be, for the world, indeed, our universe, seems poised to be responsive to whatever belief we bring when considering its nature. When it comes to universes, it's not believe-it-when-we-see-it, but we see what we believe—it cooperatively becomes whatever we believe. The eyes we bring to the inquiry make all the difference. Of course, we're always blind to the eyes we cannot bring to an investigation. The Republican'ts, like the Southern Confederates a century and three-quarters before, experienced a zero-sum world of their own projection, where one person's loss was necessarily another's gain. They seriously entertained the notion that force alone could secure their future. They held hostage the means for securing their fortune, believing they could hold justice at bay indefinitely, infinitely.

The zero-sum people see a dog-eat-dog world, where every newborn puppy's destiny must be to either master the skill of puppy killing, or they will undoubtedly be killed and eaten by another puppy.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Allart van Everdingen: Reynard disguises as monk and distracts cock (17th century)

"Hail to the chief."

[Author's Note: I draw this story from various archetypal descriptions of a psychological type: this one, the eternal eight-year-old who cannot successfully focus upon anything for long. The particulars might misrepresent, though I feel confident that these patterns paint quite an accurate portrait. When dealing with Inconstancy, any opponent can feel confident that their opponent will be their opponent’s most effective opposition, for they cannot maintain their focus or attention long enough to achieve any strategic objective. Hell, they rarely maintain focus long enough to settle on a coherent strategic objective. They mainly pursue warm air, not possessing adequate attention to heat their story to the point where it truly qualifies as hot air.]

Perhaps his sole superpower lies in his sheer Inconstancy.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

John Singer Sargent:
Sketch of Sir David Murray [1849 - 1933]
and John Seymour Lucas [1849- 1923] (Jun 18, 1907)

This Seems Inevitable
Winter finally came in the middle of January. Its tardy arrival served as a lesson for me that all inevitabilities eventually occur, however delayed, and that I might depend upon this one principle. Hell might never freeze over, but nobody ever proposed that it should. It will be enough if the backyard pond freezes over, which it usually does, for a week or so before the end of February. Next week, another long-dreaded inevitability will occur when the least capable individual ever to be elected to the highest office twice is supposed to take an oath he has no intention of even trying to live up to. Warren G. Harding might have been less interested in the office, but he had the public courtesy to die before anybody proposed he run for a second term, and nobody would have. It's inevitable that our next incumbent's lies ultimately get the better of him, for he convinced a spare majority under decidedly false pretenses, and he will prove incapable of delivering on his many contradictory promises. I do not know where his sandcastle will first exhibit cracks, but I sense it won't stand long. He inherits an impossible act to follow, an economy in better shape than any odd anyone can remember, and an unparalleled-in-generations standing in the international order. It seems all downhill from here for him. This seems inevitable.

Tags: #NextWorld

Honoré Victorin Daumier:
Very High and Mighty Legitimate Brats.
Peoples, defend yourselves, tear yourselves to pieces,
sacrifice yourselves for these royals,
you belong to them, imbeciles, plate 19 (1834)

"He firmly believes he's smarter than everyone else, which renders him the stupidest …"

On inauguration day, the adults will leave the administration, and a malignant narcissist will move in. He started TakingCredit for good things his predecessor accomplished before he even took office. He seems to maintain such a high opinion of himself that he simply cannot help himself. He seems to firmly believe that he is, indeed, the greatest. He accomplishes this astounding feat of self-esteem by steadfastly refusing to acknowledge anything he might have attempted that didn't quite make the grade. Indeed, his actual track record shows him mostly failing, though if you listen to him and his minions tell the story, he never fails. He will rather quickly begin identifying people who disappointed him. He claims to pick only winners, but his choices inevitably prove faulty. He will fein surprise then and insist that this seldom happens to him and that it was actually somebody else's fault that he selected a faulty incumbent. He maintains a queue of even better candidates, though he insisted before that his original list comprised only the best and brightest.

I will have to get used to having a malign eight-year-old in the highest office in the land.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Anonymous, after a design by Hans Baldung Grien:
Tenth commandment:
do not give false testimony about another
[iende gebod: leg over een ander geen vals getuigenis af]
1539

" … the least qualified President in history about to begin his second term."

It would simplify the situation if certain nominees would appear to testify wearing orange jumpsuits. Some of these guys seem like they're interviewing to be included in the Colorado Supermax Class of 2030. They quite transparently lie or withhold or deny. Their clever attorney clearly counseled them to go ahead and be disingenuous. They give Disingenuosity a bad name. History will remember them, but not kindly. Those disseminating straightforward questions become infamous, especially when 60 Minutes replays the juicy part of their testimony after the future incident. There will always be a future incident with these clowns. There always has been. They are uniformly unqualified for whatever role the incoming executive has nominated them to fulfill. Everyone in the hearing room understands they are not voting for or against the clown before them but the impending executive who chose him. Partisans need to appear supportive. Opponents must appear fair and balanced, which is always tricky in a context where the clown in question won't answer even the most straightforward question. This one's mom submitted testimony against him.

He calls known facts with sufficient evidence anonymous rumors and innuendos.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Israel van Meckenem the Younger:
The Fight over the Trousers (c. 1495)

" … the patience of Job and the countenance of Greek statuary …"

Through his first foray into The Presidency, our impending incumbent proved incredibly, if intermittently, inept. Usually, his operation proved capable of producing run-of-the-mill cruelty and only managed anything more significant by accident. Many attempted initiatives got away from their initiators to take on their own lives, seemingly without meaningful external control. They proved the adage that a broken clock works twice each day, even though it's ordinarily so wrong as to be useless. Those of us opposed to those initiatives learned that we could usually rely upon that administration's inherent Ineptitude, which would have been humorous had it not also been occasionally so disastrous. It was as if the incumbent brought no executive experience into his role, for he seemed incapable of even the barest executive performance. He exhibited little strategic influence, frittering away his time on initiatives that could no more than temporarily annoy his opposition. His opposition would occasionally register outrage when something especially egregious occurred, but they primarily focused on building their coalition and expressing gratitude their opponent was so poorly resourced.

Before taking the oath of office that he will have no intention of upholding, he's been busying himself with selecting prospective cabinet members.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Rembrandt van Rijn: Peasant Family on the Tramp (c. 1652)

"I might even rediscover who I always was …"

Trump's election as President for the second time left me peering into a dreaded future. I felt curious and confident that he would once again prove himself not nearly up to the task and dreading the inevitable failures he would most certainly produce with his inept attempts. His successful campaign rendered him no smarter or more popular, and it seemed inevitable that he would be dragging his familiar ineptness into everything he attempted to accomplish. I most dreaded that impending bumbling, for he would set about attempting to reinvent wheels his predecessors had already successfully invented, leaving us worse off for his efforts. It seemed a certainty that he would leave us all worse off. We liquidated our stock portfolios and hunkered in, though that's not all we did in response. We also fled IntoFamiliarity as an antidote to the dread.

Finally, almost three years after returning from Exile, I began organizing my tools and basement workshop.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

William Blake:
To annihilate the Self-hood of Deceit & false Forgiveness
(1804-08)
"The usual answer will be, "No, there wasn't," but only because there never is."

After any significant loss comes a period of SelfRecrimination, I suspect that the healthiest might engage in the deepest reconsideration of their former positions, for a loss should properly bring some of anyone's basis into question. What of what then seemed so right was so wrong? Could I have credibly owned any alternative position? Would I have agreed to pursue any other end with anything resembling a similar passion? Were my convictions wrong enough to warrant a reconfiguration of my perspective? Each of these questions should rightly feel unsettling, for these challenge the very basis upon which any thinking person holds any position.

Contrary to popular opinion, the best team does not always win.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Spex:
The sovereigns offered their subjects entertainment and fierce beast fights in circuses
[Les souverains offraient à leurs sujets des divertissements et des combats de bêtes féroces dans les cirques]
(1882 - 1884)

" … we cannot help but hear their disturbing noises."

Outrage, outward rage, might be the signature emotion of the MAGA movement. They seem consumed by theatricality, always performing as if they were cast in a production from Ancient Greece where the actors needed to artificially project their voices so the backbenchers could hear their lines. Their every expression seems cartoonish and caricatured. They seem incapable of thoughtfulness or gentleness. They never seem to be merely disappointed with an outcome but enraged. Their emotional content seems unsustainable, but with each new performance, that same familiar character emerges. Whatever the role, they seem to overplay their part. They seem decidedly self-conscious, not just in role but hyper-aware that they're in that role. They rarely, if ever, let down this facade. Some speculate that they're deep down shallow. A seething frustration lies just above their surface. They have an unscratchable itch. They bitch about everything. They would seem ferocious if their performances were in any way believable. They project a phony-seeming form of ferocity instead, mere Pherocity.

They seem to believe everything's a life-or-death matter and a zero-sum game.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

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?

Tags: #NextWorld

Charles WIlliams: A New Mode of Presenting Two Addresses at Once
(published February 1818)

"We must be their enemy."

When one feels called to save the world, one must find some Pretext for engaging because nobody would ever recognize their savior should they happen upon them. Vonnegut described The Second Coming as featuring an undescribably ugly alien who appears at a suburban shopping mall and communicates exclusively through tap dancing and farting. Rather than recognize salvation in their midst, a disgruntled crowd beat him to death. One might choose to dress themselves up in any costume, but whichever one they choose, it will be a mere Pretext, a cloaking mechanism primarily intended to prevent others from understanding one's agenda. This charade must occur if the means don't matter. If the ends truly justify whatever must be done to achieve them, then deception becomes job one. Making America Great Again, for instance, must involve tearing down America's reputation. The best economy in the world must be characterized as failing. Justice must be framed as fundamentally unjust. Wrongs become violated natural rights. Up must always be referred to as down.

Educating a population in this kind of negative thinking also involves continuous Pretexting.

Tags: #NextWorld

Attilio Mussino: Harlequin and Pulcinella...
were threatening each other with sticks and blows. (1925)

"That's a promise, not a threat!"

Another common aspect of the MAGA style seems to be a fierce vacuity. They spend inordinate amounts of time threatening people, places, and things, even nothings. They always seem ready to interpret any butterfly's shadow as a mortal threat and overreact. This comes across as needlessly theatrical, maniacal ravings rather than well-thought-out intentions. These performances might primarily serve as distractions because any attempt to parse any deeper meaning or significance or, heaven forbid, pattern out of them will leave one grasping hot air. There's rarely anything there, and whatever manages to manifest bears little resemblance to the fire and brimstone characterizations that utterly fail to describe what was supposed to be coming. These performances almost always prove unsatisfying both from a content perspective as well as from any resulting action that might have been expected. In retrospect, they seem like Daffy Duck or Donald Duck rants: many feathers, little consequence.

They do seem to satisfy themselves with this barking, though.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Attributed to Philip Dawe: The New Fashioned Phaeton (1776)

ABOUT THIS ARTWORK
Devoting less effort to the fabric textures and pearly luster of high-society mezzotint portraits, publishers also mocked sartorial excesses, especially those with foreign sources. In 1770s London, the epithet macaroni was directed at dandyish men and overdressed women who adopted an outrageous, European style and acted in an affected manners that their genders were said to become indistinguishable. Such costumes evidently even made leaving home difficult. This print’s subtitle, “Sic Itur ad Astra” (which translates as “Thus one goes to the stars”) comes from the Roman poet Virgil and suggests that the wigs and expanding carriages shown here have reached astronomical new heights.
—Art Institute of Chicago

"There was never a prescience half as satisfying as projection."

Newness is getting old. As I have aged, the new has increasingly lost its attraction. The information age might have finally done it in, what with the daily builds and too-frequent upgrades. I can't hardly start my laptop without some update needing to be installed, and the old, once-reliable app suddenly behaves differently, never to regain its former utility. We seem too anxious to abandon what was in favor of what never quite is yet. We speak of evolution but experience near-constant revolution. What might I depend upon now?

I struggle even to imagine replacements when an old and once-reliable falls by some wayside.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

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 …"

In courts of law in this country, witnesses are compelled to swear to tell "the whole truth and NothingBut." Consequently, telling falsehoods can result in a perjury charge for lying to the jury. Outside of court, nobody holds anybody to such stringent expectations. We all can get a little loose with literal truths, but most of us work hard to avoid materially misrepresenting ourselves if only because few want to be fairly characterized as loose with the truth. We rely upon each other to fairly represent our experiences, so it’s scandalous, if not strictly illegal when a private citizen routinely misrepresents himself. Further, deliberate misrepresentation tends to introduce a parody of a response as repeated attempts to uncover the truth produce responses intended to cloak it further. These interactions resemble old I Love Lucy episodes from the fifties but are not nearly so entertaining.

As of this writing, our current President, Joe Biden, has kept his promise to tell The People the truth.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Nicolas Toussaint Charlet:
Metselaar bij een muur [Mason at a wall] (1821)

"They despise themselves most."

With the MAGA crowd, I sense that I could never belong. Though I cannot delineate their selection criteria, they run a more exclusive operation than most country clubs. It seems backward and upside-down from more established segregations, though a few selection criteria seem obvious. They stand in apparent deliberate opposition to more traditional segmentations as if formulated to thumb their nose at an establishment. However, they seem every bit as exclusive as any old-school gentleman's club. Those granted entrance can seemingly do no wrong until they do. They remain blessed regardless of their sins, former or ongoing, much as their leader enjoys blind forgiveness from his followers. They do not perceive themselves as members but as loyal and devoted followers. They insist they're Christian, though apparently only in name. They also claim conservatism as a central organizing principle, which seems unlike any conservatism the good old days knew. It seems secret, though, as if its members were plotting the overthrow of something. Those not allowed into their club believe they represent a malign influence on our politics and treat them with the same respect they traditionally extended to the Klu Klux Klan.

The apparent obsession with status, though, baffles me.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Edvard Munch: Two Human Beings. The Lonely Ones (1894)

" I'm hoping the arc of our collective experience turns toward enlightenment …"

Last week, I proposed five elements of what I referred to as The Stupidities that seem to be ascendent as we move into our impending NextWorld. These elements terrify me because they seem to reduce our polity's resilience. They amount to increasingly popular fallacies, mis- or dis-representations of our everyday reality. They undermine an individual's ability to agilely navigate together into our future. Gathered together as a common practice, the group engaging in these behaviors damages their abilities and hobbles their societies. As I explained before, those engaging in The Supidities tend to insist that they're certain about what nobody could ever be certain about, often about delusions and fictions. They engage in what The Muse refers to as The Sins of Self-Importance; they are vain and sincerely believe that everything was always actually all about them. They also exhibit a discernable addiction to common Inanities. They seem dependent upon and exclusively informed by unreliable sources that have few compunctions about just making shit up as news.

Another common presence in this mix engaging in The Stupidities seems to be, among a significant portion of the population, a sense of BeingGrudged.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

Jan Goeree:
Frontispiece Design from Corpus Inscriptionum (c. 1707)

Gallery Statement: A weeping Minerva is depicted here near a dilapidated statue of the city of Rome, surrounded by all manner of ancient remains. The drawing is the design for the title page from a collection of Roman inscriptions compiled by J. Gruter and published in 1707. The engraving was used once again in 1726, with a different text, as the frontispiece for a survey of the monuments of ancient Rome.

—-

The Day Inexplicably Turns

Into the new year and still without a killing frost. My Magnolia tree is budding out and will bloom before the end of January unless some winter settles in. I'm now praying for what I so recently dreaded, though the extended rainy season has already answered many prayers. It still unsettles me to acknowledge that we utterly rely upon the rains, which come more or less randomly. Anyone still holding on to the conviction that we must have strong central coordination might have missed this underlying condition. The context within which we exist was not concocted by us, no matter how much we might have tried to reengineer it to do our bidding. Now that we're actively influencing age-old patterns, our world responds, coloring outside expected lines. Summer gardens extend into the following January. Winter might not come this year. Magnolias might bloom twice. Our NextWorld seems only tangentially related to our more familiar ones. It's a wonder I hadn't noticed much earlier. I might not have been paying close enough attention, but I suppose it's our nature to take much for granted. We might be more blessed than we could ever appreciate. As I've watched my world slink toward the dreaded upcoming inauguration, I have been paying closer attention. I suspect the tardy winter will arrive to inconvenience what might have been an early spring, and everything will become jumbled again as if that might constitute a difference. I anticipate everything becoming strange once the new administration begins with their abomination. I savor these final few days before the air turns gray and the day inexplicably turns into a long night.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

George Wesley Bellows:
Dance at Insane Asylum (1907)

"I'm confident it's coming."

In the late 1980s, a relatively new phenomenon entered America's media landscape. A disc jockey from Miami found traction as a political commentator. He was never knowledgeable. His superpower seemed to have been his willingness to say anything on air. He was not careful to distinguish between fact and fiction. Indeed, almost everything he said on air was provably fictitious, but the delay between utterance and rebuttal rendered his utterances most memorable. Ordinary people were attracted to this doubtlessly entertaining programming, and very quickly, the vocabulary of political dialogue changed on Main Street. What had previously seemed unspeakable became common vocabulary. In this way, formerly arch-conservative opinions slid into more of a mainstream position.

A decade later, a media billionaire from Australia started an alternative news service patterned after the worst of the British Fleet Street rags.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz

In the manner of Adriaen van der Werff:
Bubble-blowing Girl with a Vanitas Still Life
(1680 - 1775)

"He spends his wealth on the equivalent of candy and gum."

We were the first country founded on the principle that every citizen was granted the freedom to pursue happiness. Unsurprisingly, this freedom has not resulted in unbridled happiness. Like always, true happiness seems intermittent and the purview of a select few. Most seem to more or less content themselves with the understanding that they possess the right to pursue happiness, even if it continually eludes them. Happiness, under this freedom's influence, seems to have taken many curious forms, the Second Amendment right to bear arms among the strangest. Who would naturally correlate gun possession with happiness? The Beatle's tune Happiness Is A Warm Gun was intended as irony rather than a declaration of natural fact.

Happiness can be a tricky objective.

Tags: #NextWorld, #PureSchmaltz