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. We each retain the ability to create our perfect Comeuppance. We just must lust after any odd unachievable to watch our perfect Comeuppance manifest. The cause probably isn’t merely lust itself, for many lusts eventually get resolved, whether dropped or ultimately satisfied. It’s the unreasonable lusts, the ones that fully consume us without ever offering any likelihood of resolving into consummation. Then, a decent grudge might grow where innocent attraction formerly flourished. Taken to extremes, such passions can destroy the luster or transform them into an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Our incumbent seems to harbor a host of unrequited lusts, as if he’d never developed the self-discipline to properly manage such thoughts. He routinely wages war against invisible enemies. He mounts strong defenses against imagined slights. He fancies himself an astute judge of character and beauty, so much so that he used to run beauty pageants for children normally considered too young even to be considered conventionally beautiful. Unsurprisingly, he ultimately turned out to be a pedophile.

His lust after the Nobel Peace Prize seems of that same quality, a pedophilic obsession, inappropriate on its surface, and worse the deeper anyone might dare to delve into the urge. I cringe at the thought of how deep his delusion goes. Here’s a man who routinely orders the assassination of innocent fishermen so he can advance a fiction that drug smugglers are overrunning us, insisting that he’s earned the reputation of a peacemaker worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. He’s clearly no Obama. He’s even more clearly no Gandhi. He starts a war, then declares it won, then announces that he’s just stopped another war, adding to his running total of wars he’s ended. His accounting doesn’t just seem demented, and it’s relentless. It’s as if he believes that if he repeats his fabrications enough, and with enough vehemence, they will magically become God’s honest truth. One essence of Comeuppance comes from just this swirl of self-delusion. Perhaps if the Nobel Committee could bestow an award for the most delusional leader, he might qualify?

I feel our incumbent’s frustration, for I, too, maintain a list of acknowledgments I have been denied. It was largely because my lusts went unrequited that I became the man I am today, and I hold few regrets, for my successes and my failures forced me to acknowledge what I really needed and what I had merely imagined I needed. My maturing ability to distinguish wants from needs fueled my real superpower in ways that easy acknowledgment and gilded awards likely never could have. It’s a gift our incumbent receives: a cold shoulder from the Nobel Nominating Committee. It acknowledges that his eyes might be much larger than his stomach, and that wisdom lurks just beyond such experiences, but only if they can be acknowledged. Of course, our incumbent cannot afford to acknowledge even this relatively simple truth. His entire sense of self has been calibrated to just this sort of unrequitable fiction, which might be the essence of his brand of toxic narcissism. He has become the sum of his unrequited lusts, but he can’t seem to acknowledge this fact, even to himself.

Few of us could ever muster the fortitude to rail so publicly on something so obvious. I suspect that even our resident malignant narcissist understands that he engages in a genuine fool’s mission. He wouldn’t be the first to make a fool out of himself pursuing lusts. He won’t be the last. It might matter more how we respond to his endless song and dance. A majority of the voting public, nearly two years ago, apparently hadn’t yet caught up to the underlying story: he was not only lying to the public, but, more importantly, to himself. Those so skilled at lying to themselves rarely, if ever, get nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, which focuses on a few of the harsher realities in this world. The Nobel Committee doesn’t have the time to nominate fanaticists like our incumbent. His Comeuppance, satisfyingly self-inflicted, remains entirely at his own hand. His seeming inability to see this might be the cherry on top of a truly sloppy sundae. Those never nominated also receive a prize.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz