Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Goodbye Blue Sky




Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter,
When the promise of a brave new world
Unfurled beneath a clear blue sky?
Did you see the frightened ones?
Did you hear the falling bombs?
The flames are all long gone,
But the pain lingers on...

- R. Waters


When I started composing yesterday's post, I dug out Nancy Levant's book from out of storage to transcribe the excerpts I used. It's been over 6 years since I last read The Cultural Devastation of American Women: The Strange and Frightening Decline of the American Female (and Her Dreadful Timing), but after finishing up that post, I found myself continuing to read past the first chapter. 

My first read of this book was an eye opening experience, to say the least. Much of what Levant discussed regarding modern American women's pursuit of status and validation in careerism and consumerism were things I had not really thought about previously. Obviously, on the re-read, I'm well versed in it all after spending the past 6 years of near daily reading and writing in the MAndrosphere on all the related topics she covers. In my opinion, this book stands as one of the best indictments of the state of Women and the state of marriage and our culture written in the last decade.

I've just finished reading Chapter 17, The Divorced Child, and it compelled me to put the book down and blog on this particular topic. In it, she writes about her experiences with providing daycare for children of divorce, and she comes to the realization that a divorcing family with children is really nothing more than a war. A World War.

Divorce is nothing more or less than war in microcosm. But the war is the country, religion, economic base, and social universe of the child. The war causes the destruction of everything the child knows in his or her culture. It is the child's world war, for the world of the child, and everything in it, dies. And the victim of the war is the divorced child.

By virtue of the battlefield, the child will pick a side to stay alive and sane. One parent or the other becomes suspect and eventually, the bad guy. Someone will transform from loving mother or father into the guilty destroyer. Who that person is depends on the wrathful strength of one or the other parent. Who will win the communication battle to convince the child of the other's terrorism? Ultimately, the child will choose which parent to divorce, and in effect, will halve himself, his psyche and soul.

All people, including children, want to be on the winning side. So they divorce one parent and become akin to the other. They pull back from one and become vulnerable to the other's impending lifestyle to come. The child actually becomes a conquered nation. And as the conquered entity in a war, the child grows with resentments, fears, angers and an inability to trust. The child becomes internally sad as all conquered peoples are in the losing of their histories and cultures, and the affects of loss and culture last for generations.

Divorce is war. Total war. A war on children, a war on family, a war on culture and a war on nations. So I guess it's fitting that the Neo-Con/So-Con icon and venerated cold warrior, Ronald Reagan, dropped the H-bomb of his-fault no-fault divorce on the nation in 1969. Children everywhere have since been relegated to refugee and survivor status of a war-torn, conquered and subjugated nation. 

As Reagan's son noted: "Divorce is where two adults take everything that matters to a child---the child's home, family, security, and sense of being loved and protected--and they smash it all up, leave it in ruins on the floor, then walk out and leave the child to clean up the mess."  

Except, as the author of the page previously linked to points out - "The only problem with his definition is that it is usually ONE ADULT that does it. "

No-Fault divorce is by and large a war started by escalating relations, perhaps hostile negotiations, and minor skirmishes. Eventually one side or the other employs the Pearl Harbor equivalent of a sneak attack and then it's "bombs away," wreaking havoc and laying waste to all the lives of the children caught in the crossfire.

And in today's Brave New World Order, it's typically the Mother who launches the sneak attack and leaves the battlefield of her children and husbands lives a smoking ruin. And the main impetus for launching such a devastating ambush to commence marital martial  hostilities?

As Levant notes in the beginning of Chapter 17 - The Divorced Child:

In fact, the number one reason for divorce in America today is "incompatibility."

Incompatibility is a very long word. Let's shorten it to it's actual meaning in divorce court - boredom. More marriages in the United States end in boredom than for any other reason. It is the number one cause of divorce according to statistics, citing that 60% of all divorces in America end due to "incompatibility."

Since Levant wrote that back in 2006, we've come up with new and more accurate description of what she describes as ":incompatibility."


"I love you but I'm not IN LOVE with you."

"I'm not hhhhhhHHHAAAAAAAPPPPPPYYYYyyyyyyy!"

Thanks to the brief appearance of the now defunct and deleted wordpress blog, Frivolous Divorce, we in the MAndrosphere (either Dalrock himself, or one of the comment thread regulars,) have coined a new phrase for the Incompatibility-cited "no-fault" divorce: Frivorce.

Interesting to note the original blog of an anonymous woman who regretted frivorcing her husband and blowing up her family, described it as a murder.

You are about to commit something like a murder. Not a murder, but something like a murder. It will include death (the death of your family), grieving victims (your spouse and children, and eventually you), shame (hopefully you will be very ashamed one day), humiliation (your children will be embarrassed by your behavior and your spouse will be humiliated by the rejection), financial devastation (for everyone), and the intrusion of the State into the personal details of your life.

I think Levant's war metaphor fits better...but then again, what is warfare but murder organized and inflicted on a mass scale? Divorce war is a scorched earth affair, and the only really winning side, is the financiers who supply the weapons and artillery to the participants and stand back and count their profits while the only world the children have ever known, gets annihilated on the battlefield.

It also gives us a more apropos term for someone like the former Mrs. Leif Erikson: WARMONGER. And the worst victims of war, ANY war, is always THE CHILDREN.

Levant, herself a divorced single mother, recognizes the devastation this covert war on American families, wreaks on it's victims (and her own children):


Divorced children are fundamentally sad people. They remind me of every Native American I've ever met. There is a deep sadness in their eyes and souls that is visible and profound, that on e cannot help but to soulfully cringe knowing what has happened - knowing the genration layers of themselves that have been stripped and stolen away.

But parents don't consider this in their boredoms. They don't care enough about their children and what it means to destroy, in total, their entire world. I live with this every day as my children bear the trademark sadness in their eyes. Now I know it's permanent.

I know of that which she speaks. Seeing that same look in my young cousin's eyes when their mother frivorced my Uncle and blew up their world, is what first drove me to look for answers on teh Interwebz about the family court system and Divorce war being waged on the children of this nation.

My cousins are all young adults now. I still see them at family get-togethers, and the permanent and painful scars of the personal world war they endured, are still readily visible in their haunted eyes and mournful demeanors. Fundamentally, they are not happy people. I still mourn them and their possible futures that got blown up by their mother. I vividly remember the joyful, giddy and playful children who were perpetually laughing and smiling and always looking to play rough house with their older cousin, when they lived at peace in an intact family. War is hell is not just some meaningless cliche.

Levant closes the chapter with a stark choice for all the potential warmonger parents out there, perhaps considering their own possible ambush and commencement of hostilities....

And think about this: we now divorce far more easily and readily due to boredom than unfaithfulness or even battery. Upwards of 50% of American children, today, have had their worlds torn in half because one or both of their parents were incompatible, bored, and ready for something or someone new. Think about it - choosing pain inflicted upon your children over boredom. I suggest you need a better reason than this.

 When it comes to the type of Wife and Mother who would wage such destructive war and devastate their children's lives for fun and profit, I guess it's safe to say, reason's got nothing to do with it.

16 comments:

a good ROI said...

Sorry this is off topic, but I wanted to forward on a specific post to a family member, you had made in the last year about when you were a teenager and went pig / hog hunting with some of your friends from school. I have done some searching and haven't been able to find it and would love to send it on as well as save it for my own re-reading.


Your last two posts were excellent! Keep up the awesome work.

Anonymous said...

Indeed divorce is war. If we work backward from this mentality and that most people hold divorce to be somewhere between a very real possibility and a probable outcome, we can see how the competitive posture to "win" takes form well upstream from marriage.

Which is why dating, or what is left of it has been reduced to a battlefield of adversarial driven sexual relations between men and women seeking hand, attempting to control the frame, and thus the outcome according to their individual needs.

The notion of relationships as a giving point, an exchange for mutual benefit loses much footing when the outcomes are so daunting, when marriage itself seems to be merely some kind of treaty in the SMP war in which a portion of the competition/conflict is coordinated and managed, for transitory mutual needs.

But like the cold-war, these things can be fleeting and the origins of those conflicts remain, the ideological, and self-serving interests - are too often zero-sum. It is very much a tenuous situation, far from actual disarmament, far from being a true alignment of lives.

So men are looking at marriage as they would any other agreement in which there is inherent, systemic competition and a nuclear put option.

earl said...

Boredom is due to the lack of any mental and/or spirtual development. What would you expect from people who have to rely on smartphones, tv, drugs, anyonomus sexual encouters, and celeb mags to give them excitement. Which also in turn gives them unrealistic expectations.

I would say that the unrestrained hypergamy...while giving women access to all the excitement they could ever want, makes them all the more bored.

Unknown said...

My parents divorced when I was 21, so it did not bother me. However, my father told me more than once it was not my fault, which mystified me, because I knew it wasn't. Why he felt compelled to tell me that I do not know. However, after about three months apart they got back together and stayed together until they died. They never remarried, though.

Anonymous said...

I do not have children. But after looking at the innocence of Erikson's kids those smiling eyes are are about to die by this divorce. No more blue skies. My parents divorced when I was six.

RandomStrangerDude said...

My mom's leaving my dad for the dude she lost her cherry to, after 40+years of marriage.

The snake had his own marriage go south and dug her up and she's bailing.

She's pretending to be mystified by the reactions of my family. She's just.... dead to me. I know intellectually exactly what's going down and I cannot find a lick of sympathy for her.

I have actually asked God to curse any happiness she finds on this earth.

How the Hell does this happen?

cuckoo cuckoo said...

my father told me more than once it was not my fault, which mystified me, because I knew it wasn't. Why he felt compelled to tell me that I do not know.

Maybe he found out you weren't his kid.

Anonymous said...

Keoni:
The Marxists have always preached that marriage is 'obsolete' and that 'free love' should be the norm. They also preach that children are the property of the State.

So it's not surprising that those who favor the Supremacy of the State also favor the breakdown of the family. To whom will future generations owe their allegiance? Not the family: that's gone. Not to a religion: that's passé. But the State, who's there cradle-to-grave? That's a group you can rely on!

Cranberry said...

A friend of a friend is divorcing her husband. My friend is trying to be helpful, by watching the kids before/after school and shuttling them to activities, while the parents get their settlement sorted out. I hear the details in conversation, often:

1) The Mom found out the Dad was unfaithful. He admitted it, cut off the affair, and recommitted to the family, but Too Late!

2) The Mom never had a job and doesn't expect to have to work (she filed, not him)

3) They are sharing custody, but since dad works even harder now, he doesn't have as much time to do shuttling back and forth. Mom agreed she'd do it even on her non-custody days, but then turns around and says Dad is shunting kids off on her so she needs more alimony/CS to make up for having to be mom more than 50% of the time

4) The Mom is letting her Hidden Whore run free. She makes passes at married men (including my friend's husband) at school and sports events, goes out drinking like a college sorority girl, dresses tacky, and will tell anyone who will listen just how horrible her ex is and how happy she is now that she's "free."

5) I've met one of her kids. That dead-eyed look is so real in the little girl's eyes. I feel real pain for her, for that look, for the chaos that is her life. The sad part is, she has a very high probability of ending up just like her mother in another 15-20 years.

My friend (actually my SIL) is a kind person but she thrives on drama, and I think she needs to get out of the middle of this situation, but she won't let the kids suffer because their mom is a loser. But as has been noted, divorce is a catching disease. I don't think SIL would divorce her husband, nor he her, but the seed that gets planted can't be good, and it means a lot more weeding and maintenance needs to be done in the Marriage Garden, making life a little bit harder all around.

AverageMarriedDad said...

Great posts the last few days. I read Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Wallerstein, Lewis and Blakeslee last year and it was an eye opener. A number of things that stayed with me. 1) They said that divorce is basically the end of childhood, or childhood innocence. 2) The kids may see tension in the marriage, sometimes even physical abuse, but in some ways it doesn't register to them. Because of that, in most ways staying together and making it work is better for the kids than a divorce if the parents are still engaged in child rearing. 3) Usually the quality of life goes down for the kids after divorce due to the economy of scale with two incomes/one home, versus two incomes/two homes (assumes both parents work). Also, if wife was a SAHM, she usually has to get a job, which is lower income.

My wife is a child of divorce, and certainly still carries the scars. She was brainwashed as a teen that her dad was a bad guy by her mom. He was disciplined and Red Pill thinking, think Eastwood in Grand Torino, but he is one of the best examples of being a man that I know. It took her a long time to reestablish a quality relationship with him as an adult.

My wife drives me bananas some times, and I'm sure I do her, but we've had these discussions about what marriage means to child rearing, and what being in a marriage means to each of us. Our expectations are clear and we try to meet those for each other the best we can, since we both recognize the importance of making it work. Hopefully this attitude stays the course.

earl said...

"4) The Mom is letting her Hidden Whore run free."

Hell hath no fury...

Anonymous said...

Very good post. Your writing has been excellent over the last few postings.

Double Minded Man said...

Keoni,

Off topic for this post, but I was wondering how you all are dealing with concerns about radiation from Fukushima? Do people out there pay attention to radiation levels? Do you supplement with iodine? Is the food supply (fish) a concern?

Keoni Galt said...

A Good ROI, the title of that post you're looking for is "Beyond the Breaking Point."

DMM - Nothing official in Hawaii's media or Government officials have said virtually nothing.

I've read so many conflicting reports, I don't know what to think...but I think I will be going to the store soon and looking into getting some potassium iodine...

Keoni Galt said...

...perhaps I need to quit my regular eating of about a pound of raw fish per week too...

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