Pyrrhic Victory (n.)
- A triumph won at such devastating cost to the victor that it is tantamount to defeat.
- By extension: a situation in which short-term gains are pursued in a manner that annihilates the very foundation from which those gains are drawn.
Applied sense:
To turn one’s own country into a bonfire for profit — extracting wealth by consuming the social, cultural, and material fabric that sustains it — such that the source of value itself is extinguished. The “victory” lies only in the counting of money that can no longer circulate within the ruins it has created.
