Unknown Lithuanian Artist
Taupyklė – Kliunkis Pliumpis („Humpty-Dumpty“)
""Piggy Bank — Klunk Plump""
(not dated)

This week's Prosperity dispatches completed the series. The writing moved from the paradox of NonBinaryProsperity through the machinery no sane person volunteers to work with, from the misconceptions I've been thriving on all along to the vengeance with which Prosperity always returns. Then Comeuppance began, arriving with a wanted poster and a fictional president ripening for his reckoning. The Prosperity series ended where it always had to: not with resolution, but with the recognition that Prosperity naturally expands beyond its originating boundaries, carrying its losses as credentials.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

NonBinaryProsperity
“…grateful we can actually employ our messy old, reliable Walla Walla Way.”

This Prosperity Story considers Prosperity’s essentially NonBinary nature, how it refuses either/ors in favor of both/ands, and how the Data Center controversy consuming Walla Walla might yet resolve into a win/win if imagination can outlast insistence.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how our controversies devolve into strict dichotomies far too readily, each side defending its misconceptions as if the invisible middle ground between them must remain invisible forever. Our local Data Center controversy lined everyone up according to the new rules of engagement — nors against neithers, zeros against ones — while the actual situation defied every binary the combatants brought to it. The Muse reviewed Amazon’s track record and came away impressed. The county’s commissioners wisely rejected the moratorium. The SEPA process moved forward as legally mandated. We are a boom-and-bust valley deep in a bust, down 500 living-wage jobs and heading further South, and austerity has never once spawned Prosperity. It seemed increasingly likely that resolution — genuine, livable, generational resolution — was possible, if we could bring ourselves to frame it as a win/win we created together. We might yet be grateful we actually employed our messy old, reliable Walla Walla Way.

Andrew Wyeth: Maine Fisherman (1936)

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Pwospwairatee
“…I might reasonably thrive on a few of my more reassuring misconceptions.”

This Prosperity Story closes the series with an honest confession: after thirteen weeks of inquiry, I still don’t really understand Prosperity — and the comforting misconceptions I’ve been carrying all along may be all I ever needed.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how mere reflection rarely produces wisdom, generating instead certain aversions rather than mature understanding. I’ve apparently been treating Prosperity as personal property, something to steward and defend without genuinely comprehending what it might be. I suspect I missed a formative lesson on the subject somewhere around fifth grade, and my parents never suspected the deficit. The Villa illustrates the burden: pursuing physical prosperity damaged my hearing through restoration work, and the seasonal maintenance now consumes energy I never budgeted for. I remember carrying everything I needed in a backpack and a guitar case, a simpler prosperity I voluntarily abandoned. After all this examination, I retain rather naive notions about Prosperity’s nature and origins. I might reasonably thrive on a few of my more reassuring misconceptions.
Guido Reni: Charity (ca. 1630)

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ProsperityMachinery
“…the least of what every Prosperity demanded in return.”

This Prosperity Story, the next-to-last in the series, examines the vast invisible infrastructure every Prosperity depends on — the landfills, the sewage plants, the burning coal and rotting onions — and the compromises that come standard with every free lunch that never was.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how much of what sustains our Prosperity stays deliberately hidden from our daily lives. The landfill sits Northwest of town, positioned so its sights and scents remain beyond most citizens’ routine routes. The sewage plant was damaged enough to make a neighbor’s porch smell like what it treats. The paper mill thirty miles away that greeted every morning with sulfur. The feedlot behind The Muse’s parents’ retirement home, which her mother deflected with the ironic observation that it smelled like money. We’ve made genuine advances in moderating many of the harsher externalities, though the current administration has been busy canceling them. On our Data Center controversy, opponents seem to ignore that the proposed development will use less water than what it replaces, on land that passed full environmental review less than two decades ago. Our Prosperity is presently gasping. I don’t know how much longer it can survive without some fresh Machinery. No free lunches attach, of course. Reasonable compromise was always the least of what every Prosperity demanded in return.

Edward Alexander Wadsworth: Illustration (Typhoon) (1914–1915)

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ProsperityLost
“Prosperity always returns with renewed vengeance.”

This final Prosperity Story finds that what was lost seventeen years ago — and what was lost more recently — was never the whole of Prosperity, and that recovery happens through emotional recalibration and renewed faith rather than through retrieval of what was taken.

In this Prosperity Story, I drew a parallel between our own experience of lost Prosperity and Milton’s account of the expulsion from Paradise. Neither loss was truly catastrophic, because both parties gained something in exchange for what they lost. When The Muse secured government employment and I assumed household responsibilities seventeen years ago, material circumstances diminished by bankruptcy, but something else deepened. Recent political developments have triggered a fresh sense of loss and dread, a betrayal that left faith feeling thin. But the search for renewed purpose proved to be the recovery itself, not the destination. Prosperity doesn’t return by retrieving what was taken. It returns through emotional transformation, arriving on its own schedule, in its own form. Prosperity always returns with renewed vengeance.

Edward Alexander Wadsworth: The Open Window (c. 1914)

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The Comeuppance Series Begins
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TheArc
“That overlong Arc of Decency will perhaps this time finally inflict his Comeuppance.”

This opening Comeuppance Story traces the arc of twenty-one months of writing — from NextWorld through CHope, Unscrolling, and EndDays, through the ProsperityLost summer, arriving now as witness rather than apprentice to what the moral arc has been bending toward all along.

In this Comeuppance Story, I retraced the writing that preceded this series: the NextWorld dispatches reviewing the lowlights of a failed first term, the CHope quarter of coping and hoping, the inquiry into whatever happened to Decency, the Unscrolling examination of our scroll-dependent culture, the EndDays watch. I grew less certain with each passing story that the incumbent wouldn’t outlast another quarter. Then came the ProsperityLost summer, which I found most reassuring. Now I come not to recover what was lost but to witness what the overlong arc has been chasing. The current president has served as cautionary precedent, a Don’t Be figure. The Comeuppance I’ve been circling for twenty-one months may be arriving at last, not through any army of King’s horses and men, but through the slow, certain bending of what the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. called that arc: Justice.

Multiple Artists/Makers: [Broadside for the Capture of John Wilkes Booth, John Surratt, and David Herold] (April 20, 1865)

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MakeBelieve
“Our current president only exists in fictional form on some livestream that never was alive, ripening for his Comeuppance.”

This Comeuppance Story examines the essentially fictional nature of the second term — an administration that attempted to administer as if it were administering, sustained by a culture already primed for performance over substance.

In this Comeuppance Story, I considered how this presidency operated as pure performance from the beginning, wearing the uniform, albeit cut funny for his figure, without ever managing to steer anything, much less our ship of state. Citizens always co-author fictions about their leaders, suspending disbelief as a form of civic faith. This administration differed by being substantively fictional rather than being merely perceived that way. Make America Great Again remained undefined and malleable across every audience that received it. Initiatives collapsed so implausibly under judicial or public scrutiny that even the failures rarely received the coverage they warranted. The fictional presidency found its perfect historical moment in a television-saturated, scroll-dependent culture already practiced at mistaking performance for governance. The Comeuppance awaits, potentially arriving from anywhere, because the performance ultimately lacks the believability necessary for sustained engagement. A livestream that never was alive cannot go on forever.

Bernhard Åström: Indianer i Masaby (c. 1925)

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In Its Own Form

This writing week’s question for my Third Party Perspective Editor: How did this week’s writing promote the Prosperity Series, and what seemed new and/or different?

This week, the series finished what it came to do and then handed off to something new.

NonBinaryProsperity demonstrated the series’ essential method one final time: take a local controversy, a Data Center fight in a boom-and-bust valley, and find inside it the same paradoxes the series has been tracing all along. ProsperityMachinery named the infrastructure we prefer not to acknowledge, the landfills, sewage plants, and rotting onions that subsidize every Prosperity we claim as personal achievement. Pwospwairatee arrived with uncommon honesty, confessing that thirteen weeks of inquiry produced negative knowledge rather than wisdom, and that the reassuring misconceptions might be all any of us ever really have. ProsperityLost closed the series where series always close: not with resolution, but with the recognition that recovery might necessarily be emotional rather than material, and that Prosperity always returns on its own schedule.

What was new? The handoff. Comeuppance began this week, and TheArc and MakeBelieve arrived already knowing what they are: not discoveries, but witnesses. The fresh series has already found its register. Twenty-one months of circling have sharpened the eye considerably.

What was different? The Third Party Perspective Editor finds this transition unusually clean. Prosperity ended without announcing its ending. Comeuppance began without a throat-clearing preamble. The writing simply continued, in its own form, as it always has.

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Thank you for following along!

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You can order Cluelessness from Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or Amazon. Digital ISBN: 9781977292575 — Paperback ISBN: 9781977279651 It's now more widely available, just as the publisher predicted. There's this Kindle link. Link To Publisher's Website Here

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz