National Divorce is a Silly Idea
Sorry in advance for the more serious tone of this article (I’m not ONLY a clown…mostly yes, but not ONLY). Anyway, I hope you all like the new branding of the site and thank you for your continued support.
Edward Hopper was famous for his paintings that depicted loneliness. Often, the images envisioned people sharing a physical space while being emotionally distant from each other, as is exemplified by his most celebrated work, Nighthawks. While a great painter, Hopper was not someone you would want as your wingman at a bar.
I fear that the United States is now living in one national Edward Hopper painting where the factions inhabiting the country are fractured like the characters depicted in Hopper’s works.
The concept of “national divorce” had been simmering in the background of the culture for some time, and while not feasible to implement, has reached the mainstream recently.
The notion of national divorce is that, as the federal government has become more all-consuming in our lives (despite the 10th Amendment), conservative and liberal states should peacefully decide that we can no longer survive as one country and divide off into two separate sovereign nations.
While superficially, the idea may seem reasonable, it is vastly oversimplified and nearly impossible to implement for reasons such as geography (ideologically aligned states don’t share a contiguous landmass), inter-state ideological splits (within conservative states, there are liberal pockets, and vice-versa), and defining what a “conservative” and a “liberal” state is (contrary to popular belief, some states do still swing between the parties). So the concept is simply not workable.
However, I don’t think I am breaking any news when I say that a severe ideological divide has been occurring, and events over the past few days have made me as pessimistic as ever about the possibility of bridging them. In some ways, we have already undergone a national divorce that hasn’t yet been instituted into law.
The first event is the horrific school shooting in Nashville that killed six people, including three nine-year-old children. There aren’t enough adjectives to describe the horror of children being massacred (if you don’t agree, please feel free to unsubscribe); however, in some reporting, the media response has been like watching the TV show Dexter, where the audience is supposed to either sympathize with or cheer for the psychopath.
Here is a tweet from a now-deleted article courtesy of The Mirror UK; unfortunately for The Mirror, the internet is forever.
In an interview with the murderer’s (I won’t use her name) former art instructor, The Mirror includes details like her art was “whimsical” and “childlike” and that she was “small and quiet,” and, in maybe the most remarkable example of lack of self-awareness in history, that the instructor said she “…could have seen (the murderer) doing children’s books for a living.”
What the fuck is this? A hagiography of JK Rowling? A description of an adolescent AA Milne?
Here you have a New York Times reporter blaming The Daily Wire because they have led the charge against child sex changes in Tennessee, where they are headquartered. In summation, what did you expect to happen with all these transphobes running around:
In another article, an NBC headline reads, “Fear pervades Tennessee's trans community amid focus on Nashville shooter's gender identity.” Look at the lede:
Shortly after news broke Monday of a fatal shooting at a private Christian Nashville elementary school, police said the suspect was transgender. This detail, according to trans people in the state, has poured fuel on an already combustive environment that has led many of them to fear for their safety.
That’s their take on this event… the trans community is scared for their safety. It’s the trans community and their imaginary fear that needs our condolences, and not the parents whose kids were gunned down.
How about this:
Bill Campbell, the headmaster of The Covenant School from 2004 to 2008, said Hale attended the school as a child in 2005 and 2006 and identified as female during that time. As an adult, though, it appears Hale may not have identified as female. Hale’s LinkedIn page, which has since been removed, states that Hale used “he” and “him” pronouns. And a friend of Hale’s, Averianna Patton, who said Hale messaged her shortly before the shooting, said Hale signed the message “Audrey (Aiden),” using Hale’s given name along with a traditionally male name.
Pardon my French, but WHO GIVES A FUCK?!?!?! How is this person’s gender, pronouns, favorite movie, or love of candlelight dinners of any importance?
So far this year, Tennessee lawmakers passed two bills targeting LGBTQ people: A first-of-its-kind law that will criminalize some drag performances takes effect Saturday, and another that will ban gender-affirming care for the state’s minors becomes effective July 1.
If I was a cynical person, I might read into this paragraph that NBC is attempting to justify the shooting rather than explaining the reasons for the trans community’s “fear.” Mind you, the horrific drag performance law NBC maligns simply makes it a crime for drag shows to be performed where children can observe them.
How is this something to be terrified of? Should people who identify as smokers be cowering in a corner because people must be 18 to buy cigarettes? Should we be worried about prostitutes offing themselves because you have to be at least the age of majority to have sex?
Not to be outdone, corporate America had to throw its hat in the ring for the shittiest response. For that entry, let’s turn to Amazon:
One day after a transgender-identified shooter murdered three children and three staff at a Christian school in Nashville, Amazon leadership told employees it stands with the transgender community. It appears the initial message is, at least in part, a response to the mass murder, implying the trans community has been victimized, not the Christians who were murdered.
Candi Castleberry, Amazon’s Vice President of Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, posted on an internal page a message titled, “Amazon remains in solidarity with our LGBTQIA+ employees, customers, and communities.” She addressed the note to “LGBTQIA+ employees and allies” and expressed her “support and solidarity during this period of apprehension and uncertainty.”
Color me shocked that it was the DEI imbecile that sent out the note. Imagine if, after that piece-of-shit Dylann Roof murdered the black church-goers in South Carolina, a company sent out a letter to its employees informing them that they stand in solidarity with the white men of the company. It would have been out of business within twenty minutes.
As sick as the media’s coverage and Amazon’s response has been, our President’s response to the shootings has been the most putrid.
His press conference after the shooting is the stuff of QAnon. If I didn’t know it was real, I would sware it was a deep fake. It is incomprehensible that any human being, let alone the President, would react like this. Fast forward the video to about 6:50 seconds when he takes the stage.
He starts by joking that he is “Dr. Jill Biden’s husband,” that he likes chocolate chip ice cream, and (as the Biden’s do) creepily compliments some kids in the audience. Finally, two and half minutes into his appearance, he finds the time to comment on the shooting. Can’t say I’m surprised; we know Joey loves his ice cream.
The following day, when asked by a reporter if Christians were targeted in the shooting, Biden expresses, “I have no idea,” and in a follow-up, “Josh Hawley believes they were, what do you say to that,” to which Biden responds, “well I probably don’t then,” and gives this shit-eating grin.
Again, imagine this was a white Christian going into a school to murder black children. Do you think Biden, or nearly any Democrat for that matter, would hesitate for one nanosecond to determine it was racially motivated? And do you think they would crack a joke about it in front of dozens of reporters?
Look, we shouldn’t expect much from any President, but the bare minimum is that they should take the murder of children seriously. I guess that is too much to ask from Liberals in the US today.
It appears that Woke ideology applies not only to job hiring, political positions, acting roles, and college admissions but also to school shootings. As long it’s a member of the “oppressed” class murdering the children of the “oppressor” class, the politicos will, at a bare minimum, defend and justify the sociopath’s actions, if not attempt to make a pure mockery out of the event.
For my friends, everything, for my enemies, the law
The other less serious but more consequential event for the country’s long-term health is the indictment of former President Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Apparently, Democrats think the idea noted above, from former authoritarian Peruvian President, Oscar R. Benavides, was terrific.
As I’ve written many times, my feelings about Trump are mixed, and I would prefer he not be the GOP nominee in 2024, so it drives me nuts that the Democrats are so off the rails that I have to defend him constantly. And yet, here we are again.
While the indictment has not been unsealed yet, it’s believed he will be indicted for paying off a porn star he banged (Stormy Daniels) and accounted for it improperly so his wife wouldn’t find out. That would mean a former President and the likely presidential nominee for a political party will be indicted for a paperwork crime for which the statute of limitations has already elapsed.
On top of everything else, it’s not like Bragg is sitting around his cubicle playing brick breaker all day when violent crime has exploded in New York City over the past two years, and his office’s conviction rate has collapsed.
If this is the standard now, then why shouldn’t every conservative DA and Attorney General in the country hunt down crimes for the opposing party’s political candidates that have a connection to their state? Why couldn’t Jason Miyares, the AG in Virginia, investigate, well, everyone? What about the investigations into the Biden family? Why should state prosecutors wait for the feds? Just do it yourselves. The precedent this sets is incomprehensibly bad.
Here is George Washington University constitutional law professor Johnathan Turley talking about how pathetic the case is:
In fact, the case is so poor that Alan Dershowitz claims Alvin Bragg risks disbarment, depending on how he proceeds.
This is a pure political hit job, through and through. For all the Democrat’s pearl-clutching that Democracy is under threat, the bottom line is that throwing political opponents in jail for silliness like this happens in banana republics, not in well-functioning societies.
There are dozens of other examples that prove we are living in a quasi-divorced society with a bifurcated set of laws and expectations, such as:
The same day that Matt Taibbi testified before congress concerning the Twitter Files and the government’s abuse of power in censoring citizens’ first amendment rights, the IRS happened to show up at his house.
Do you think the IRS showed up at, say, Alexander Vindman’s house after his Trump testimony? Something tells me we would have heard about that.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed US Marshall to not arrest protestors outside of Supreme Court Justice’s houses “unless absolutely necessary” and that it would be “counter-productive” for the Marshals to make arrests on cases that the DOJ “will not charge and prosecute.”
Not a big deal, really. Aside from being against federal law to protest outside of a judge’s house, it’s not like one of the justices was almost assassinated by a protestor or anything. Let’s see if the same standard applies if protestors show up outside Sonya Sotomeyor’s house (on second thought… let’s not try that).
Sticking with Garland, since the Dobbs decision leak, over 130 Churches and Pro-Life Organizations have been either vandalized or destroyed, including at least two of which were attacked with Molotov Cocktails. There are many questions about how much effort has been put into searching for the people who perpetrated these crimes, and I was only able to find news on one arrest.
Do you know what they have put effort into? Arresting peaceful pro-life counselors outside of abortion clinics. Even though local prosecutors declined to prosecute him, Mark Houck was arrested by federal marshalls who dispatched two dozen armed agents to his house, pointing guns at him, his wife, and his seven children. His “crime” was defending his 12-year-old son when an abortion “escort” pushed him to the ground. He was quickly acquitted of the crime.
None of this makes me happy to write, but I don’t know how we return from where we are as a unified country. Something needs to improve quickly because the clock is ticking, and Hopper is still painting (metaphorically).
Until next time.
_Comstock
Your writing has just taken a quantum leap to the next level. This article should be a seminal moment for your career. You hit every nail directly on the head. None of these things is funny. But they are true. Unfortunately, left leaning liberals will not read it, and even if they do, won't recognize the harm their ideological war is doing to our once great country. To quote DJT, "So sad".
Excellent essay, and I understand why you went with a more serious tone in this piece, rather than the fun and whimsical satire you usually do. Satire is getting hard these days, when reality is already pushing the outer limits of absurdity. It's like we're living in a Monty Python sketch, only nobody's laughing, and it looks like things are only going to get crazier until we reach some kind of breaking point. I mean, the idea that a man can really "be" a woman just because he says he is, that was a premise for an absurd sketch in "Life of Brian;" and the idea that doctors may caution parents against assigning a gender identity to a newborn baby was, again, a ridiculous gag in "Meaning of Life." Yet here we are. Reality is now more absurd than Monty Python. And if you blink or laugh or treat it like the ridiculous farce that it is, you risk getting fired from your job and blacklisted by potential employers. God only knows where all this will end up. Buckle up, because this train has gone totally off the rails!