Jean Béraud:
Valmy and Léa
(c. 1885–95)

"…a Don't Be in the history of an enormously reassured Democracy."

While you and I might first focus on self-preservation, the dedicated self-saboteur seems Hell-bent on the opposite. Any interested observer might easily conclude that such behavior would have led to our self-saboteur’s early demise, yet there he stands at eighty, a veteran of ten thousand losing battles, still combative and more than ready to pick another losing fight. He could never quite afford to acknowledge loss, so he continues, preserved by good or bad fortune, still sabotaging his every action, yet somehow still engaging. After his crushing loss in the midterm elections, he commenced DoublingDown on his newly proven losing position, for that response must be the only reasonable course from his perspective. If you’re self-destructive, then self-destruction must be your self-preservative, for what else could preserve your identity than actively undermining every opportunity to recover or improve? It’s said that The Gods favor ignorant animals and little children. I suspect they must also hold a soft spot somewhere for self-saboteurs.

They behave in a counter-phobic fashion, seeming to employ upside-down logic. They can be extremely difficult to compete against if you insist upon employing conventional strategies. They seem to enjoy punishment, or so one might reasonably conclude, since they tend to double down on virtually every losing proposition, and sometimes—more times than most would consider reasonable—they somehow weasel out of that latest checkmate to continue playing. Oh, and as if to make their move just that much more galling, they seem to be enjoying the punishment that comes with these sorts of engagements. Even a dim-witted advisor would counsel turning the engagement level down a notch or two, but not our self-saboteur. He’s DoublingDown again before DoublingDown on that whole pile of previous DoublingDowns. He almost always manages to weasel out without suffering too severe a punishment. He stalls play this way.

He feigns fearlessness, though I suspect he trembles beneath that well-practiced stage face. He surprisingly often receives, if not forgiveness, then quarter. His Comeuppances often stop just short of inflicting something serious, and he continues virtually unpunished. He never acknowledges a loss. He might ultimately part with a few odd millions here or there, but these fines fall far short of even a minor flesh wound for him, for he has always had money to spare when absolutely forced to make amends. Otherwise, he’s tighter than a tick on steroids and thinks nothing of stiffing his suppliers, providers, and friends. It’s a genuine wonder that one of them has not yet done him in, for he wrongs without regard to any of the civil proprieties. He behaves as if the rules were written to exclude him. I doubt that he’s ever paid a parking ticket, and yet he has yet to be indicted for unpaid fines. He behaves as if the rules apply only to others, and yet somehow still manages to get away with his violations.

It might be that self-saboteurs successfully construct a sort of force field around themselves, something similar to an electromagnetic fence that successfully deflects or diminishes most of the assaults launched against them. They are forever getting away without ultimately destroying themselves despite their continued cavalier behavior. Their apparent carelessness seems elevated to super-power status. Their best defense might just be their dedicated indifference. Our incumbent’s offense focuses primarily against himself. Our incumbent cannot be said to be conventionally suicidal. He appears to be sufficiently separated from our shared perspectives that he might be incapable of experiencing the sensation of suicidal-quality guilt. He plays a sort of solitaire Cowboys and Indians, dying ten thousand times in an afternoon, but always at his own hand and always pretend. He plays the bad guy playing the good guy, then the good guy playing the bad, but always playing, never conventionally serious, eternally DoublingDown.

His Comeuppance will come as a surprise after a lifetime of always somehow squeaking by. It probably won’t be either fire or ice that ultimately gets him, but his own, for once, altogether too clever hand. It will seem like an inadvertent slip next to a high cliff, a shock to the systems that had so continuously failed to build an effective defense against his endlessly counter-intuitive self-sabotage. They will proclaim that he lost something without acknowledging that he had finally achieved precisely what he had been so diligently pursuing all along: a permanently losing hand. There will be no recovery, no posthumous forgiveness necessary or offered. He finally died as he lived: DoublingDown. What else could have killed him? Our incumbent’s legacy will embarrass history even to mention, though he will be remembered, not fondly, but as a cautionary character, a Don’t Be in the history of an enormously reassured Democracy.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz