21 February 2023

Family Law

<SATIRE>

So an abusive, unfaithful woman wants a divorce? And she expects to keep the kids, even after a determination of… parental fitness (no doubt by some biased "expert" with too much education to satisfy her).

So, Ms Greene: This will be even faster than a Haitian divorce (just short of six minutes). I'll gladly throw you into the street with nothing but the clothes you're wearing, and it's really easy.

I divorce you.

I divorce you.

أنا أطلقك

There. All done (less than one minute). Although I now feel an impulse to request the filing of a protective order, especially since you suggested arming your minions already. But remember: Divorce is personal. They're still my kids that I took an oath to defend (however much parenting I'm going to have to give them once I get them away from you).

Why are you still standing there? Get out of this House: I am feeling unwontedly merciful at the moment, but if you don't get moving I just might suggest imposing the Code of Hammurabi's consequences for unfaithful women. Can't get much more foundational and original than that!

</SATIRE>

n.b. Every bit of cultural and other insensitivity, and wrenching from context, was chosen with malice aforethought to mirror that… individual's attitude and rhetoric spewed toward anyone who disagrees with her. The operative word in determining the original public meaning of "Lost Cause" is the first one — a word apparently not in Greene's vocabulary, given her rhetoric on the 2020 election results.

I sort of wish it was that easy. But it's not. It's supposed to be hard… or we really do end up with theocracy. It's worth remembering that theocracy has seldom turned out all that well for those actually pushing for it — not even the one theocracy that most Americans can name and agree to dislike. (Naturally, only most… which is part of my point; and part of why theocracy is the real enemy of democracy, because "mere" authoritarianism has a tendency to lose to actual, nontheocratic democratic movements.)