G. Baldwin (Firm):
Baldwin's Nervous Pills
(1900?)

"…the inept and corrupted performer taking way more
than his fair share of our stage."

Over approximately three years in the early 1970s, while I was wrestling to resolve a troublesome military draft problem, I lived every day in dread that I might be spirited away somewhere against my will. I gained Non-military Conscientious Objector status after a lengthy, terrifying process of petitioning my local draft board and appearing before a hearing. I’d thought I’d be assigned to change bedpans for half the prevailing minimum wage in some military hospital somewhere, but I learned no formal process existed for assigning Non-military COs. I was responsible for identifying an available position and convincing the local commanding officer that I was qualified. I was charged with reporting to the draft board’s “evil” secretary (a label I’d given her because I thought her job responsibilities were essentially evil) and showing proof of my attempts to secure an assignment. I wrote letters in my poor, if honest, hand, and dutifully photocopied them as evidence of my diligence. After a few months, the evil secretary confided that I could stop reporting to her each month because I’d demonstrated my due diligence. I still had to fulfill my CO stint, but I never got a response to any of my many letters. Still, I lived in constant dread that I would wake up some morning to find a couple of hostile MPs waiting on my porch to drag me off to my Comeuppance.

Because of my tenuous status, I couldn’t agree to take a permanent job, nor was I qualified to attend school.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Carlo de Fornaro:
George Jay Gould
Portfolio: Millionaires of America
(1902)

"…any story that somehow manages to slip out around its edges…"

Most days, I feel as though I’m engaged in a contest of DuelingComeuppances. I feel almost certain that one or more of my activities, probably a combination, will ultimately contribute heavily to doing me in. Yet, I persist, if only because I honestly know no better. I don’t do my best, but I also rarely, if ever, really try to do my worst. I inhabit the horse latitudes of human behavior, experiencing far more calm than storm, with inspiration blessedly rare. I understand that living involves accepting certain complicities, that there never was, nor could ever be, immunity from any inevitability. I lack the vegan’s sincere dedication to any ideology. I soothe myself by insisting that at least I don’t kill my meat myself. Yes, I still feel urpy whenever I pass a feedlot, and likely always will. I am not engaged in any activity intended to reform or improve me. I have been known to drink to excess at times of celebration or sincere heartbreak, neither of which really offers a decent excuse for engaging in such obviously self-destructive behavior. I excuse these and many other personal shortcomings by touting how I no longer maintain any shred of tobacco dependence, but I’ve known the attraction to addiction in my time, and the depression that comes from denying even a perverse desire.

I am learning that Comeuppances are not just passion plays between good guys and worst ones.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Carlo de Fornaro:
Theodore Roosevelt
(1911)

"Those never nominated also receive a prize."

Be especially careful about what you lust after, for these tend to turn into Comeuppances. Our incumbent has lusted after being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize, but has always been thwarted. Though he insists he ended eight wars in the first few months of his second term, maybe ten, depending on who’s counting, the Nobel Prize Committee still hasn’t considered him a serious candidate. One woman who earned her prize the old-fashioned way reportedly gave our incumbent her prize to gain favor with him, a favor that was won but which just as quickly evaporated as he failed to reward her with what she’d probably wanted. The latest winner was announced this week, which prompted a raft of fresh grousing from the general direction of the bathroom just off the Oval Office. He went so far as to declare sanctions against this year’s winner’s former employer, officially treating the International Court of Justice in The Hague as if it were a terrorist organization because it spoke of bringing an actual terrorist to justice. Between all his pouting and touting, Our Incumbent remains unnominated for the one prize he seems to lust after most. This failure to gain his heart’s desire seems like the perfect Comeuppance for him.

And so it might go.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Robert Howlett:
Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern
(1857)

"Maybe there's always a Comeuppance."

The term Comeuppance suggests two players, one receiving and one delivering, but since I started this series three weeks ago, I’ve noticed that some Comeuppances seem more like the solo variety. At first, this felt like pounding one’s head against that proverbial brick wall, but this kind of Comeuppance doesn’t quite work like that. Some activities just seem to have some Comeuppance built right into them, as if the Comeuppance was an integral part of the experience, cause and effect so tightly coupled as to seem inseparable. I was reminded of this this morning when an old friend texted me that my email inbox reported itself full when he tried to drop me a note. Emails have always been my foil. I have not yet learned how to elegantly manage them, so they tend to manage me, and rather hostilely. I forever lose incoming mail, miss important messages, and get chastised by the sender. The same happens with voicemails and text messages, too; each silently builds a queue until it overwhelms the technology’s capacity to cope. Then an old friend or an upset creditor sends a note via another medium, and a self-inflicted Comeuppance begins.

I have received innumerable lectures on the proper ways to manage my message queues.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Alphonse Bertillon:
Tableau synoptic des traits physionomiques: pour servir a l'étude du "portrait parlé"
[Synoptic table of physiognomic traits: to be used in the study of the "spoken portrait"]
(c. 1909)

This week’s Comeuppance essays move through the series’s darker chambers, tracing the distance between how I imagine justice, mercy, and civic virtue and how I actually practice them. I offer no comfortable resolutions, only clearer maps of the territory where Comeuppance accumulates.

Thank you for following along!

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Heinrich Kley:
Demons Pulling People into the Jaws of Hell
(c. 1910–15)

"We nonetheless insist that this behavior represents a more perfect union."

The Founders wisely designated the supreme law of the land they founded as being of and by “We, ThePeople.” Individuals had previously signed the Declaration of Independence, but our Constitution addressed its contents in the name of a more amorphous presence. ThePeople suggests a majority opinion without hinting at any underlying dissent, though we know from personal experience that every law, every statute, was the product of disagreement and debate before ever being approved. Agreement was never the native state of even these United States. We rely on this studied misrepresentation to project a necessary sense of union. Dissent might better describe the advocacy we practice, though every minority, no matter how marginal their actual position, insists that their parochial perspective most accurately represents the opinion and will of We, ThePeople, echoing our founding and preserving ambiguity.

We, ThePeople probably serves as our most enduring virtue signal, for it designates the side where righteousness exclusively resides.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Antoine-Louis Barye:
Tiger Stalking Prey
(c. 1850)

"I, of course, know much better at least half the time…"

I hadn’t a clue I was a Stalker, even though The Muse had been steadfastly attempting to clue me in by complaining about my apparent obsession. No, I did not feel especially compelled to write about our incumbent. I honestly felt that I was performing a necessary public service by being a vocal critic. Hadn’t God given me the gift of criticism? What was I supposed to do with that gift, if not exercise it? Yes, vehemently at times, perhaps in tones that might have come across as overly strident. Had he not richly deserved every critique I dealt? Did I not still have the right to say whatever I damned well pleased, even if I also carried an equal and opposite obligation to not always say whatever I pleased in public?

I see now that I had been Stalking, though I still strongly feel that my effort was necessary and well within my rights, since our incumbent had been a public menace.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Richard Dadd:
Sketch to Illustrate the Passions—Senility or Peevishness
(1855)

"I fear we're just investing in an impending Comeuppance instead."

If I asked you to name the most likely outcome from a country being named the most prosperous in the history of the world, I doubt that you would reply, “Paranoia,” yet that’s what we find. We are that country. We could have been recognized as the most generous or the most peaceful in the history of this world, but we aren’t. We aren’t, and we’re slipping further into Paranoia. Congress allocates around 50% of our annual discretionary budget to Defense, though it comprises only about 15% of our overall budget. We spend more on mandatory spending like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, but we also complain much louder about those choices. In some ways, our Federal budget mirrors our society’s Paranoia: we focus the bulk of our spending on ensuring our future security, yet we remain perhaps the most Paranoid country in the history of this world.

What justifies such a self-image?

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

William Blake:
Nebuchadnezzar
(1795)
God stripped the king of his realm and drove him to “eat grass as oxen, . . . his body . . . wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws” (Daniel 4:33)

Yea, we all could use a little mercy now
I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow
-Mary Gauthier

Mercy might represent the most powerful Comeuppance available anywhere, any time, to anyone. It seems to be the absolute antithesis of Comeuppance, though, almost the exact opposite of what first comes to mind when the word Comeuppance comes to mind. I think of vengeance first: swift, terrible swords and harsh words. Mercy seems beside any cogent point at the point of final punishment. Yet the choice remains, whatever the infraction, whatever the sentence, to mete out Mercy instead. But doesn’t that behavior just encourage what Comeuppance intended to discourage? Perhaps. Therein lies a rub. Mercy cannot possibly be a transactional response to any infraction. It might be the very soul of relationality, intent on enhancing a sense of community, just when that was supposed to be beside any remaining point. When I considered whether or not I really wanted to become the monster I intended to punish, when wreaking Comeuppance, I might have been deeply considering taking Mercy on myself first, less an act of generosity than self-preservation. It might be that no punishment ever adequately fits any crime, especially any peacekeeper.

In theory, Comeuppance seems quite obvious.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Unknown Artist, after Jacob Matham:
Justice
(17th Century)

"…just a self-proclaimed son of a bitch."

Justice serves as a secular society’s primary religion, for it promotes fairness, ethics, and even morals. It properly seeks to treat everyone fairly and as impartially as humanly possible. It performs retribution when necessary, but also seeks to restore and repair when harm occurs. In any society proclaiming freedom of or from religion, such as ours, Justice might well serve as the bastion defending any individual religion from persecution. In this second- or third-degree paradox, the secular protects the sacred. In an instance where a religious belief attempts to overtake a civil society, which one might reasonably argue describes the MAGA desecration our incumbent has attempted, Justice might reasonably be the first focus of insurrectionists because they might believe it properly threatens any other sacred movement’s dominance. Those who firmly believe, for instance, that these United States should properly be ruled as a White Christian Nation stand opposed to the secular religion that each formal religion’s practice utterly depends upon, be it Christian, Muslim, Taoist, or otherwise. White Christian Nationalists undermine their own insistences without recognizing they do.

Of all the insults visited upon our society by our incumbent and his minions, the assault on our sacred secular religion has proven the most terrifying.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

John Doyle (H.B.):
Lord Melbourne speaks his thoughts aloud. Coloured lithograph
(1841)

"…I will never know what is or isn't."

Of all the civil and criminal infractions, Trespass seems the most passive. One need not prove motive to bring charges against a trespasser. Nor does anyone need to prove physical damage, for the very act of presence serves as adequate evidence of the commission. If I “get in your space,” I might violate your subtlest rights, the rights to control your space. The Lord’s Prayer asks for forgiveness for any trespasses committed against us as well as those we might have committed against others, challenging more vengeful notions of jurisprudence, for any decent Comeuppance might well stem from any odd trespass both committed and unforgiven. Comeuppance seems unjustified in those cases where the Trespass was contritely forgiven. “No harm, no foul,” in the popular jargon. This convention suggests that jurisprudence might first demand an absence of forgiveness and, perhaps, at least a little taste for vengeance. Of course, many have characterized this universe as natively dog-eat-dog, with the wronged perhaps perfectly or even imperfectly, but nonetheless justified in pursuing redress to the extent any court might grant it.

I am eventually forced to ask myself if I really intend to encourage this dog-eat-dog nature by actively engaging in it.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Ted Noten:
The Revenge of the Pearl Necklace (2009 )
Zuiderzee Museum, Netherlands - CC BY-SA.

This first full week of Comeuppance dispatches established the series’ central argument and its range. The writing moved from the hollow irrelevance of unchecked power, through the mechanisms of self-destruction, escalation, and class entitlement, to the quiet devastation of the deep influence of what was never experienced at all. The series opened looking outward at a political spectacle and ended looking inward at a universal, inescapable condition. That arc, from the overt to the tacit, from the incumbent’s Comeuppance to everyone’s, may be the series’s most important early discovery.

Thank you for following along!

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾 北斎, Publisher: Tsuruya Kiemon
The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji
(c. 1831–32)

"…those burdens must remain as tacit as any primary experience never chosen."

I usually think of a Comeuppance as an overt event, an active, observable verb, one of those actions often classified as equal and opposite, a tangible result. But in this story, I want to consider a separate and more common kind of Comeuppance, the kind that, once I mention it, might seem shockingly familiar: The TacitComeuppance. These occur as a result of choices or, perhaps, of events. Because I chose to go West, I tacitly forfeited every opportunity to experience East. That eastern extent of my former possibility, therefore, became forever inaccessible to me. Whether I forewent great good fortune or avoided catastrophe must, then, remain forever unknowable to me, except, of course, through imagination. That road not taken might well take on a mythical magnitude, a sense that it must have been beneficence foregone or a curse, but nonetheless lost.

I experience these as tacit events, if tacit doesn’t render them too indistinct to count as events.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Camille Corot
The Curious Little Girl
(1860–64)

"Wait until he experiences what another focused, just prosecution feels like, with a conviction attached"

It would not surprise me even a little bit if our over-the-top flamboyant incumbent was done in by a humble civil servant named JackSmith. Anonymity incarnate, a career prosecutorial investigator, veteran of a long posting to The Hague. A man without a political axe to carry or grind, a relative innocent who never lost his faith in truth, justice, or even the recently beleaguered American Way. It will be a very cold day in Hell before anyone successfully tarnishes his reputation. He respectfully declines to be led to slaughter by a hapless Senator out to make a name for himself. He appears with gratitude to report that his investigation, the one that crooked judge in Florida sidelined on party lines, found clear evidence that our incumbent broke the law when trying to overturn a free and fair election, and that he was undoubtedly guilty of multiple felonies, including but not limited to the January 6th attacks on our Capitol. The rest is history.

His testimony came across as absolutely unimpeachable, unlike our incumbent, who appears to have committed more than a few additional impeachable offenses before he was even elected a second time.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Thomas Rowlandson, Etcher
The Country Club
(April 7, 1803)

"Their Comeuppance has been stalking them for centuries."

The United States has always been divided by class, if by nothing else. As F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrator stated in his 1926 short story The Rich Boy, “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.” Even if they aren’t really all that different, they certainly seem to want to be recognized as different, as exhibited by what appear to be their obviously exclusionary lifestyles. In every truly prosperous person’s portfolio lurks a country club membership, often treasured as validation of the difference they seem to need to assert so vehemently. Country clubs have storied histories as persistent bastions in overt opposition to any notion of E Pluribus Unum, for they were first and foremost exclusionary. Out of many, a select few were chosen, with a member typically inviting a desirable candidate, and the membership voting on whether to actually allow them in as a member. Historically, Jews, blacks, and other “undesirables” were excluded from consideration. These were originally white, male Christian institutions. Women could join as spouses of actual members. Fees were assessed based on each club’s status. Our local little version is not nearly as exclusionary as it once was, and relies upon self-selection to survive.

Today, anyone willing to cough up the $9,500 initiation fee and $440/month dues for a regular golf membership, with a $60/month food minimum, is welcomed.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

John Kay (caricaturist)
Mr. OBrien the Irish giant the tallest man in the known world being near nine feet high.
(1803)

"Maybe that means that he secretly wants to be sent there, too?"

Our incumbent’s Comeuppance seems inevitable because he possesses a single defense, or perhaps that defense possesses him. When faced with even a minor conflict, he always escalates. I do not mean to suggest, by mentioning this fact, that he has not amply lived up to his newly minted reputation as also always ultimately chickening out, but on his way to the henhouse, he tends to escalate whatever tempest he’s stumbled into this time. He seems especially blessed in his ability to attract tempests, so he’s forever producing headlines and sparking provocative commentary. “What’s he up to now?” Nobody seems the least bit surprised when (never if) another controversy emerges, for he spawns them as reliably as a low-pressure ridge produces tornadoes. He might go into business as Calamity, Incorporated if he weren’t already so damnably busy perverting the sacred office of our presidency.

I speak today of his Escalating nature, for his cure for whatever even distantly threatens him always involves escalation.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

John Kay (caricaturist)
The Favourite Cat and De La-Tour Painter
(1813)

"Maybe his omniscience amounts to his Comeuppance."

At some indefinite point, our incumbent became a caricature of himself, an open running joke that he himself never suspected. Oh, his spider senses might have registered his growing unpopularity, but he had never developed the senses to accept such judgments. To him, he was a misunderstood genius, a wrongly maligned savior. He never stopped believing his own propaganda. Comeuppances work like any other experience. They ultimately demand acceptance, but like any difficult-to-swallow medicine, they often spark a process. Disbelief commonly accompanies initial twinges that something might be amiss. Anger might reasonably follow and precede some bargaining, which often feels like negotiating with an insistent demon. Acceptance might follow, but as a practicing malignant narcissist, our incumbent has been cycling through his disbelief, anger, and bargaining stages without seeming to come any closer to exiting into acceptance. His Comeuppance might manifest in just this cycling and end with him never even suspecting that he was never anything but the very soul of accepting.

Advisors and supportive followers eventually come to see the swirling, and they begin their own cycling toward their own unwished-for acceptance.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

U. S. Government
30-foot-long section of border fence that separated
the Mexican city of Mexicali from the U.S. city of Calexico, California
(c. 1950s)

"Few will mourn what had already become just more Irrelevancies pretending they're dancing on that stage."

Most presidential acts are destined to become Irrelevancies. Heartfelt proposals meant to transform mostly fall far short of their promise. A few of the least obviously brilliant ideas might eventually morph enough to contribute to making a real difference, but these will largely go unnoticed. The first nuclear reactor accident was not the result of clever technology failing, but of a maintenance man accidentally dropping a wrench: an inadvertence. That innocent incident rendered all the clever safety mechanisms deliberately embedded in the technology irrelevant. Much of what we insist must exist for any society to thrive will likewise probably ultimately amount to simply more Irrelevancies. I might rail about people who wear their pajamas to shopping centers, but I suspect this practice will not ultimately cause the fall of anybody’s civilization. My youthful self would not have believed that I would one day voluntarily submit to vaccinations in the meat department of my local Safeway store, for that would have been unthinkable. When the unthinkable becomes commonplace, old insistences have already become Irrelevancies.

We’re entrained to believe that our President is the most powerful person in the world.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

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!

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

Bernhard Åström
Indianer i Masaby
(c. 1925)

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

Donald J. Trump’s second term was almost entirely a fictional affair. This alone explains why it had no central theme beyond incoherence. It was not just that the incumbent was increasingly displaying the effects of his widely speculated prefrontal dementia, something he referred to as “fake news,” but that he lacked coherent purpose. He had no reason even to become president. No agenda. No motive, other than self-service, which had always stood in for his missing character. He recruited an equally unfocused cohort to populate his administration that, unsurprisingly, never once proved itself capable of administering anything. It would have been a complete joke had it not injured real people by inflicting actual damage, much of it inadvertent. It was as if we’d elected a chimp president. He could wear the uniform, albeit cut funny for his figure, but he couldn’t steer anything, much less our ship of state. Anybody could explain his track record by randomly sticking pins into something, drawing the resulting perimeter, and calling it a work of original art. It was all a fiction.

Much of whatever anything becomes results from our own more or less willing suspension of disbelief.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz

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

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"That overlong Arc of Decency will perhaps this time finally inflict his Comeuppance."

Twenty-one months ago, on the Winter Solstice, anticipating the inauguration of who, I felt certain, would prove to be the worst President in the history of our country and probably in the history of this world, I began writing a series I entitled NextWorld. In it, I reviewed a few of my memories from his forgettable first term and speculated on how those patterns might manifest during his second. He seemed no less malignant than he had been through his first attempt, and I had no good reason to expect he wouldn’t be worse through his second. I needed reminding because I had reset into a contented complacency through Biden’s Presidency. I know that many seemed deeply dissatisfied with Biden’s performance, but their complaints seemed petty to me after observing his predecessor’s turn. I was preparing myself for an eclipse, where a reliable sun would be overshadowed by forces far more malignant than any moon.

I took no pleasure in this exercise.

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz