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.