NegativeSpaces
Ira Blount :
A black cat looks up at a dragonfly fluttering above its head
in this black-and-white, cut paper silhouette.
(2009)
"…if it focuses upon NegativeSpaces, it reliably produces only Obsolescence…"
The oddest thing about our incumbent’s administration, besides the obvious fact that it never intended to administer anything, has been its apparent obsession with producing negative outcomes. Rather than create or build, it has focused almost exclusively upon dismantling, claiming to be all about eliminating Waste, Fraud, and Abuse, the Three Horsemen of Obsolescence. They have done this without first providing evidence that any of these attributes actually exist in any volumes that could reasonably be reduced with reasonable effort. Notice how their injunction omits what they aspire to leave behind. Once these three intangibles have been successfully eliminated, what might remain to confirm success? Apparently, just NegativeSpaces, or what we more popularly refer to as nothing. Nada. Zip.
Such negative objectives are never merely a different type of target, but a different kind.
ChasingGreatness
Unknown Artist:
The battle at Issus in 333 BC: Alexander the Great of Macedonia is chasing the fleeing Darius III. Coloured etching.
(Unknown)
"Nobody, other than a dwindling cadre of his truest believers and a whole bunch of clueless billionaires, will ever believe another word he says."
Alexander did not chase his greatness. His greatness chased him and ultimately caught up. His conquerings began with little greatness, for he had not yet proven anything beyond perhaps his audacity. Slowly, he came to conquer territory, eventually enough for his greatness to finally catch up with him. ChasingGreatness represents perhaps one of the greatest misunderstandings in this world. From the naive perspective that any beginning offers, it seems desired greatness simply must be chased, as if that were the right and proper process by which greatness had always been achieved. But speak to those who have managed to achieve greatness, if that’s even the proper description of the possession process, and they might disclose a surprisingly different experience, one where greatness eventually cornered and insisted upon inhabiting them. No chasing ever actually required.
They might also disclose their experience with chasing, how they invested much passion, treasure, and youth, only to produce disappointment and frustration.
StagesOfObsolescence
Hans Baldung:
Group of Seven Horses
(1534)
The next few Comeuppance Stories will focus on Stages of Obsolescence. I believe our incumbent has essentially spent his wad, largely on what history will probably consider to have been candy and gum rather than anything substantial. This pattern seems perfectly congruent with our incumbent’s historical behaviors, only even more so. The first stage of obsolescence might always be a sort of inadvertent overreach, where what once naturally fell well within grasp can no longer be held. The world starts losing her handles. Whether the following Comeuppance becomes a comedy or a tragedy might depend upon pre-existing conditions. I can’t see this incumbent slinking gently into any inevitable night. He’ll probably insist upon performing every stage of obsolescence under spotlights. Lucky us, I guess, or something.
“It’s tough to maintain decorum under those sorry conditions.”
It was supposed to be different this time.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/29/2026
Hans Baldung:
Bewitched Groom
(1544)
This week’s Comeuppance Stories found me ranging across a full spectrum of our incumbent’s unraveling. I considered the cumulative cost of chronic Impropriety, the self-defeating nature of EntanglingWebs, and the parody life our ParodyChiefExecutive has always led. I examined what it feels like to live inside a BatteredNation, watched with some satisfaction as innocent ham sandwiches walked free from our incumbent’s Injustice Department, and concluded by asking what it might be about failing right-of-center politicians that so reliably attracts the attention of supposed witch hunters. The midterms loom just days away as I write, and the week’s writing reflected that gathering tension.
Thank you for following along!
HuntingWitches
Hans Baldung:
The Witches
(1510)
"Who should we believe, failing right-of-center politicians or successful witch hunters?"
I had thought this expression a tic unique to our incumbent until I read in the morning news that the son of Brazil’s former, now-jailed president also used it to explain why he sneaked out of the country after his opponent’s electoral victory. He claimed that the investigation his government instigated against him amounted to nothing more or less than a witch hunt. That phrase rang a bell because it echoed what I had imagined to be uniquely our incumbent’s tell. Maybe it’s common among failing right-of-center politicians, if that term doesn’t seem too redundant. I understand that our Vice President welcomed this witch-hunt refugee with a fresh visa, even though he came from a country our incumbent has disparaged as being a shithole. Now I wonder what it is about failing right-of-center politicians that attracts witch hunters’ attention. Do these politicians tend to travel with retinues of witches? Is their presence somehow a reliable indicator of covens? I seem to remember that when Viktor Orbán was threatened after he lost that Hungarian election, he had also complained of witch hunters. Hmm.
It might be that the very proclamation of a witch hunt amounts to a feint, an attempt to deflect attention from that infamous failing right-of-center politician crouching behind the curtain.
HamSandwiched
Philippe Rousseau:
Still Life with Ham
(1870s)
"…inept attempts of his Injustice Department persecutors to inflict injustice on innocent ham sandwiches"
In a 1985 interview with The New York Times, former Chief Judge of the New York State Court of Appeals Sol Wachtler argued that grand juries had become so subservient to prosecutors that they would “indict a ham sandwich” if a district attorney told them to. He supported abolishing the entire grand jury system. Wachtler was not wrong. According to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, federal grand juries vote to indict in over 99% of the cases brought before them. Out of hundreds of thousands of cases brought by federal prosecutors each year, grand juries return a “no bill” (a refusal to indict) only a handful of times. Or, maybe I should say this is how it used to work. Since our incumbent assumed responsibilities for administering our Justice Department, successfully rebranding it as the Injustice Department and installing its signature We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Administration governance, ham sandwiches have been able to breathe a little easier. A series of relatively high-profile cases have been rejected by federal grand juries as unbelievable, and damned well should have been.
Of all the checks and balances embedded in our system, few would have suspected that the lowly grand jury system might have shown real backbone when challenged by some wannabe authoritarian.
BatteredNation
Johan Nieuhof:
Chinese men seeking alms by threatening to kill themselves by self-mutilation
(1768)
"We must believe our oppressor will ultimately fail and decency will prevail …"
What if we are collectively exhibiting symptoms of what one psychologist labeled Battered Nation Syndrome? Like members of a family oppressed by an overbearing, punishing parent, citizens in a society might catch themselves policing their own words and actions, lest their angry leader retaliate against them for exercising their God-given "Freedom of Mind." Last night, while attending a local gathering of citizens promoting immigrant justice, I caught myself noticing how our very gathering seemed somehow illicit, as if we really should keep our deliberations secret. Yet, there was our police chief and some prominent Republicans agreeing with our premise and our process. I told the story of The Muse and I boarding a plane recently, where the woman seated next to The Muse reported that her husband had just been “taken” in the terminal, and so she was flying on without him. When she asked who had taken him, she didn’t know. Nor did she have a clue about where.
I have noticed that since our incumbent was first elected a decade ago, my public speech has become more squelched.
ParodyChiefExecutive
Thomas Rowlandson
Publisher: Samuel William Fores
Blue and Buff Loyalty
(December 31, 1788)
"…the boy who matured into a boob from watching too damned much television."
Our incumbent trades in only two types of information: Misinformation and Disinformation. The difference between the two might be worth noting. Misinformation can be fairly characterized as mistaken, while Disinformation must be understood as deliberate. Neither form can be fairly characterized as anything more or less than lying, just different classes or grades. Our incumbent has never traded in anything but lies, for he has always been a fictional character, partly meaning the rumors that he has character have always been fiction. He has been one of those characters who decided early that he needed to keep the truth about himself from full public acknowledgment. This strategy pretty much guarantees that one creates a parody life, one resembling an extended I Love Lucy Episode where ultimately everybody from cast to audience knows the truth, but must pretend that they do not know it to maintain the entertainment value, I guess. Those who don’t feel they can afford to be known live parody lives as fictional characters.
Woe be to any society that loses its ability to distinguish between its parody people and its authentic ones, for it might end up with a parody President who can’t afford to tell the truth about anything.
EntanglingWebs
Thomas Rowlandson
:After: George Murgatroyd Woodward
Publisher: Thomas Tegg
The Corsican Spider in His Web!
(July 12, 1808)
"Dabble in tangled webs, and you will eventually end up tangling yourself."
Near the end of April of this year, while beginning my EndDays Series, I posted a story entitled TangledWeb. In it, I described how our administration incapable of administering anything conducted press conferences. I bemoaned having to interpret whatever was passed there as the opposite of what might have actually happened, and I complained about how strenuous this endless exercise had become for my wearying imagination. Opposites might attract, but they are rarely natively obvious. Further, I felt as though I was training myself in some perverse art by repeatedly attempting, and often failing, to properly interpret the probable negative from my natively positive position. I felt as though the exercise might be rendering me into more of a negative person than I ever intended to become. I ended that essay by declaring that our incumbent and his incapable administration were already done, finished, done in, though I sense now no small element of wishful thinking in this earlier insistence. Here we are, nearly six months later, and, if anything, this sideways administration specifically designed to avoid administering anything at all costs, continues tangling the webs they so ineptly weave.
Sir Walter Scott’s caution seems to be coming to fruition: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive.”
Impropriety
Julius Schiller:
Saint Stephen (Cepheus)
Constellation IV from Coelum Stellatum Christianum
(1627)
"… Making America Great Again with his sudden and permanent absence."
I dedicate this Comeuppance Story to what might be considered the Patron Saint of Impropriety, Saint Stephen, who bad-mouthed his benefactors and was stoned to death for his trouble. Widely considered to be the first Christian Martyr, the Pharisees commanded him to be killed for committing what might seem the most dainty of infractions, one that sounds as though it would only be committed at high tea by someone improperly orienting their pinkie. Impropriety might be the most subtle of the more serious infractions. A single Impropriety rarely carries much downside, but repeated over time and across contexts, it pretty much guarantees some Comeuppance, and often, surprisingly unforgiving punishment. Stoning might be the least of the sentences meted out to those chronically exhibiting Impropriety, especially if they’re clergy.
When our incumbent declared his intention to run for the office which he never had any intention of upholding, he presented himself as operating outside the political orthodoxy.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/22/2026
Julius Schiller:
Noah's Ark
(1627)
This week’s Comeuppance installments track a sustained reckoning — not with a single dramatic event, but with the slow, grinding machinery of a system testing whether it can correct itself. From a Squall of overdue Comeuppances finally breaking to the bleak conclusion that our democracy may have always been a DINO— Democracy In Name Only. These six essays map the territory between hope and structural despair with the honesty the series has earned. The week ends not with resolution, but with a clearer view of what we’re actually dealing with.
Thank you for following along!
DINO
An Empty Suit by an Unknown French Tailor:
Benjamin Franklin's Suit
(circa 1778)
"…we're slaves to fortune…"
Our Founding Fathers were clearly clever people, but I question their practicality. You see, clever people father countries while practical people accomplish things like balancing budgets. One does not want a practical person founding their country; otherwise, one might end up with an utterly uninspiring entity. A country requires a certain mythology that few, if any, practical people seem capable of concocting. The People are never terribly impressed by the latest accounting tricks, even if they might personally benefit. No, The People demand a genuine hero’s mythology, and nothing less, to anchor their belief and allegiance: an inspiring story that might not fully adhere to any truth, but that nonetheless better serves its purpose. Nobody ever pledges their allegiance to anything practical. They demand something uplifting, if fictional.
Unfortunately, though, the uplifting only rarely intersects with the practical.
Treason!
F. O. C. Darley:
Bacon's rebellion, Virginia, 1676-1677:
Lydia, the wife of the rebel Edmund Cheeseman, faints as he is condemned for treason by the governor of Virginia, William Berkeley; a toothless old lady is restrained from attacking her. Coloured etching by A. Bobbet after F. Darley.
(1935–43)
"We'd all be better off removing him from office
for some medical reason than for Treason!."
Probably the very least likely Comeuppance our incumbent might eventually face would be charges of Treason!. Not due to lack of evidence, since the papers seem filled with ample evidence that such evidence exists, but because of something else, something infinitely more insidious than even Treason!. Treason!, according to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School, “consists only in levying war against the United States or adhering to its enemies by giving them aid and comfort.” It requires an overt act, not merely speech, and must be attested to by at least two witnesses to be successfully prosecuted. Our Constitution defines and prescribes its prosecution, which may occur either in a Federal District Court or in the Senate, presided over by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Conviction might result in a death penalty or a prison sentence of at least five years and a fine of at least $10,000, and the loss of the right to hold future public office. It’s serious business.
But the necessary conditions seem essentially unattainable, though probably not because our incumbent has been indemnified against criminal prosecution for any actual duty of office he might commit by the Chief Justice and his kangaroo Supreme Court.
Comedownance
Hughie Lee-Smith:
Futility
(1935–43)
"…an at least as effective
and perhaps even more appropriate Comedownance instead."
In 1968, during the famous Earthrise NASA mission, astronaut and apostle Jim Lovell declared how perfect Earth seemed compared to the void of space surrounding it. He later expanded on his experience by famously declaring, “You go to heaven when you’re born.” He explained that people look for a distant heaven, yet Earth already has the perfect gravity, water, atmosphere, and distance from the sun to sustain life, making Earth the literal paradise we are searching for. We humans seem to maintain a rather proud tradition of underestimating our surroundings and experiences. We seek Comeuppances while, perhaps, already in the middle of experiencing an unrecognized Titanic one. Who’s to say that this isn’t that? Never having experienced any corruption as extensive as that practiced by our incumbent, what form might his Comeuppance naturally take? Would we necessarily know it just because we witnessed it, or might it appear too stealthily for anybody to readily recognize its presence? Maybe the blesséd event has taken the form of a Comedownance this time, a different direction than anybody expected, yet at least every bit as effective as any alternative Comeuppance.
The evidence seems ample if subtle.
TheAche
Henry Richard Cook:
A man with an excruciating headache.
(1827)
"This might be what TheAche has been so insistently whispering to me."
I find myself becoming more familiar with TheAche than I ever imagined I might become. I am not, and I never have been, a particularly vengeful man. I do not easily think ill of anyone, though in our incumbent’s case, I have almost gleefully made exceptions. The long months, now degrading into even longer years of irresolution, have left me genuinely bereft. Those I once thought well of, I can no longer hold off on my judgments. I cannot ascribe to inattention what only wholehearted support can explain. The erosion of our sacred norms undermines more than mere policy; it utterly degrades polity itself, leaving not even a recognizable shell behind. No logic known to man or demon defined this path to ruin. Only studied inattention could possibly explain the degradation. Will it be complete before we finally depose this weasel and his retinue, or might a few shreds of decency still remain flapping in a severely wounded breeze? I ache for the Comeuppance part of this story to wade in with real vengeance.
I acknowledge and almost accept that nobody gets to dictate any moment of Comeuppance.
Advocacy
Harry T. Peters "America on Stone" Lithography Collection:
An Evil Tree or the Natural Heart
(c. 1830-40)
"Heaven or Edward Bernays, help us."
We seem to have become a society of partisans, endlessly arguing across an unfathomable abyss. The us-es and the thems, the for-s and against-s, discontents in frantic search of any cohering story, less E Pluribus Unum than Ex Uno Plura or, more likely, E Unum, Duobus, out of one, two, an eternal-seeming dichotomy. We have become the great either/or, the Janus-minded democracy, utterly dependent upon Advocacy, a popularly practiced form of blasphemy where everything’s considered fair, like in love and war. Any story promoting a favored policy seems automatically approved, regardless of its relative truthfulness. It’s judged by its ability to inspire and move hearts, minds, and butts—without any ifs, ands, or buts—not by adherence to any competing standard. Lies are always permitted, solely depending upon how effectively they sway. The ends always justify any means intended to advance the partisan position. Each advocate firmly believes that they, alone, enjoy God’s unconditional approval, and that they, alone or in close concert with cohorts, represent the higher righteousness regardless.
Advocacy does not debate.
Squall
Henry William Bunbury:
A Hail Storm
(1800-1820)
"The Squall has started, and the world shudders in heartfelt anticipation."
Historians will later argue over precisely which idiosyncratic action ultimately did in his administration that, by its own admission, never seriously considered administering anything. There were no shortages of idiotic actions; the very premise of his tenure seemed anchored in stupidity, and that’s not just me speaking. By a very wide margin, the majority opinion became that his election had been a grave mistake, for his actions had finally awakened us from the most tenacious trance to overtake the nation since secession, and it had been every bit as poisonous. But when inflation rose at a nearly unprecedented rate, and the reality of what had been touted as big and beautiful finally came into ugly operating focus, people felt compelled to reject whatever had once been his mandate. He quickly became the most unpopular incumbent ever, after he blundered his way into a forever war that would never end any war. Then his delusions rendered him intolerable.
A Squall of past-due Comeuppances suddenly emerged.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/15/2026
Warwick Reynolds:
EXPLOSIVOS NOBEL - GLASGOW
(UM 1900)
This week's Comeuppance installments turn the lens inward, discovering that the most persistent Comeuppances may not arrive from outside at all, but live embedded in the work, the dread, and the daily weather of an examined life. From self-generating reckonings to Sisyphean devotion, these six essays map territory the series has been circling since its first installment. The week ends with a quiet bookshop revelation and a confession that may be the most honest thing the series has yet produced.
Thank you for following along!
SisypheanComeuppances
Antonio Zanchi:
Sisyphus
(1660/1665)
"I doubt that my modest contributions to literature really deserve much more than a decidedly Sisyphean existence."
Comeuppance doesn’t only occur at conclusions. It often, perhaps most often, occurs as what I might consider to be a lifestyle. Any task unlikely ever to be completed might exemplify this Comeuppance type, for its very uncompleteability might reasonably be considered a Comeuppance. Consider Sisyphus, that mythical king who, having offended some God or other, was sentenced to push a rock to the top of a very steep hill, only to have it roll back to the bottom once he’d successfully reached the top. His work might have been its own Comeuppance. In Sisyphus’s instance, he had no choice but to labor away unfruitfully each and every, literally, god-damned day. Most of the rest of us don’t have nearly as good an excuse for the obviously useless efforts we pretty much insist on engaging in each day. Often, a hobby stands in for formal employment, providing the means by which we might meaningfully pursue what anyone else might reasonably mistake for uselessness.
We should judge the relative usefulness of any effort more carefully, for the usual completion criteria fail to capture some of the more subtle, if even more significant, contributions the dung beetles among us routinely pursue.
EverydayComeuppance
Hermann Krauße:
Alltag im Dorf [Everyday life in the village]
(c. 1930)
"…bringing absolutely no significant alternative meaning to the pre-existing plotline. "
A Comeuppance doesn’t require a great calamity to appear. Many, probably most, arrive with little fanfare, more stealthily than those proverbial little cat’s feet, unanticipated and apparently undeserved. These are the EverydayComeuppances, the micro-penances that visit everyone occasionally, eventually. They connote no necessary guilty anything: pleasure, indulgence, or otherwise. They arrive unbidden and probably undeserved, though they rightfully spark a spate of questioning inside their victims, who must, at least for decency’s sake, ask themselves a few troubling questions to at least attempt to confirm that this wasn’t karma visiting to balance some invisible scales, to make certain this Comeuppance wasn’t the direct result of some sin of either omission or commission. Shit does, indeed, sometimes just happen, and the presence of a victim does not now and never has necessarily pointed to any actual crime having been committed. The punishment’s no different in either case, but the guilt sure is.
My latest EverydayComeuppance visited me at approximately 1:34 this morning.
DreadReconning
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.
DuelingComeuppances
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.
Nobeled
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.
Self-Generating
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.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/08/2026
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!
ThePeople
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.
Stalker
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.
Paranoid
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?
Mercy
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.
Justice
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.
Trespass
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.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 10/01/2026
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!
TacitComeuppance
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.
JackSmith
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.
CountryClubCulture
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.
Escalating
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.
SelfSabotaging
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.
Irrelevancies
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.
Weekly Writing Summary For The Week Ending 09/24/2026
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!
MakeBelieve
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.
TheArc
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.
Good For A Goose
Comeuppance (41)
Decency (90)
Decency Unscrolling (1)
EndDays (92)
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FollowingChapters (93)
Grace (92)
Humor (2)
iAlogue (1)
Letters to the Editor (1)
NextWorld (91)
Personal (18)
Prosperity (94)
Steam Festival (4)
Unscrolling (89)
Vaporized (6)
Work (16)
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