Another Victory for Neoliberal Mentality

Finally, people have a great excuse to justify midlife-crisis divorces. Trump made them do it!

The linked post sounds funny, especially since the author is so utterly clueless. But at the end it gets scary:

Now that I’m in the new apartment, although it is much smaller than the house we shared and I don’t see my kids quite as much, I have felt my anger, annoyance, and shame dissipate. And that’s better for everybody. I am happier now that I no longer share a bed and a life with someone whose beliefs are so contrary to mine.

This horrible person doesn’t even care that she sees her own three kids a lot less as long as she can self-actualize by marching with stupid anti-Trump slogans:

When I stepped into the streets with my sign and started chanting, I knew that I could live with myself a little bit better. Because now when I continue the resistance, I’m no longer going home to the opposition. And that feels great.

There is not a shadow of concern in this evil freak’s mind how her children will feel when they read this screed and discover that mommy prefers to chant in the streets to going home to them.

And this is exactly what I keep saying about the neoliberal mentality. Nothing can stand in the way of a person’s whim. It’s ok to shit all over a husband of 25 years and 3 kids if it currently pleases you to do so. These people truly scare me.


35 thoughts on “Another Victory for Neoliberal Mentality”

  1. “Another Victory for Neoliberal Mentality”

    OT: (sung to the tune of ‘where have all the flowers gone’)*
    Where have all the articles gone… Long time passing
    Where have all the articles gone? Long time ago
    Ukrainians have picked them every one
    When will they ever learn…. When will they eeeeever learn?

    The last week or so articles have often been conspicuous by their absence (I only notice this now because usually it’s not an issue at all). Is this tiredness? A new autocorrect? Something else?

    *a famous old protest/pseudo folk song


    1. I’m having a peach of a week, my friend. From the latest adventures, I lost my car key at Sam’s Club and I don’t have a spare. Yesterday I walked into a display at another store and collapsed it. Articles are just one of the casualties of me losing my mind.


  2. On topic “midlife-crisis divorces”

    Of course she’s hated him for years but didn’t want to take responsibility for leaving him and Trump makes a perfect scapegoat.
    I feel sorry for him to realize she probably never much cared for him and has had one eye on the exit for over 20 years….
    If she’s not seeing the kids as often it’s probably because they chose him.


  3. Oh, kids were born in 90s and are in 20s now. Lots of people get divorced after the kids are grown. It doesn’t sound as though the couple had much in common or much of a marriage – they didn’t seem to know each other well and seem to have been more interested in having the other person fit a role. Husband doesn’t sound more interested in her than she does in him, just more complacent (or her ideas matter less to him than his to her, another distinct possibility).


    1. She says herself she isn’t seeing the kids as much any more. I’m guessing they aren’t taking mom’s new life extremely well.

      The funny thing is that it’s clear from the text that the poor guy was the one carrying the financial burden for the whole large family. But now that she saw an opportunity to make a living from being a Trump whisperer, he can stuff it.


      1. She’s the one who’s moved out. But people get married very unconsciously. A friend of mine did it after realizing she had lost the love of her life. So she married someone she got along with. But there wasn’t enough there, and from what I saw the one who didn’t try hard enough was him. It takes two. And I know quite a few who got married because it was time, because they wanted kids, because they wanted that social identity, and a lot who even think those are reasonable reasons – the way she thinks a reasonable reason to have kids (she says this in her book) is to mold someone like yourself.


  4. I actually think leaving him was the best thing to do for the kids.

    She was desperately unhappy and felt nothing but contempt for her husband by the end. Exposing the kids to such an atmosphere inflicts toxic stress on them every day. I’m speaking as someone who was one of those kids. I grew up constantly feeling the sacrifice my mother was making for me. My main associations with having children are “why would I do that to myself?” Children kill marriages, and once you’re responsible for one, you can forget about having any joy.

    Clarissa, you’ve just written about Klara reflecting your negative emotions the other day. Just think about what having a desperately unhappy mother constantly feeling like she was sacrificing herself would be like.


    1. It’s a choice to be desperately unhappy over inane things like these. She didn’t have to make such a choice. She could have chosen to create a different atmosphere in her marriage. Unless there is physical abuse, addiction, or something serious like this, it’s absolutely a choice what kind of a marriage one is having.

      And a desperately unhappy mother who is constantly sacrificing herself is simply a master manipulator whose unhappiness is her weapon. I’m very very sorry you were trapped in a situation like this. It’s really horrible.


      1. I don’t know. What if you’ve just turned out to be poorly suited — ? Trying and trying to create a different atmosphere, try this, try that, leads to that unhappiness and self-sacrifice, no?


        1. Usually people clock on to being poorly suited before being married for a quarter century and having three kids.

          This reminds me of a post I read on FB. A woman says, “my husband calls me a fat useless piece of garbage, doesn’t give me any money, does nothing around the house, and it’s been like this from day 1. I’m currently pregnant with our fourth child… What should I do?”


          1. People evolve throughout their lives. They do not stop evolving after getting married (a bit more extreme position is that marriage makes people evolve weather they like it or not). So anyone’s ability to predict a poor match is somewhat limited in reality.
            I do not have a particular affinity for this woman, but when exactly certain things start being “a whim” or “neoliberal”, or whatnot? At what point stopping working on one’s marriage and trying to somehow unilaterally “change the atmosphere” is not a whim but the saner choice among several? Etc. One can indeed unilaterally change the relationship system, but that does not mean that the change will turn out as intended or to one’s liking. There is usually another person involved in marriage. “Everything that happens to you is your own fault” is as far from the reality as “everything that happens to you is dumb luck or lack thereof”…

            Liked by 1 person

            1. Actually, I find that most people don’t evolve much at all after early adulthood. The way she narrates the story of her divorce demostrates great immaturity and lack of self-awareness. Such people are unlikely to evolve much. “He’s an evildoer and I’m a sainted martyr” is not how mature people describe their divorce. In this narrative, she’s the one who kept working on the relationship but I don’t buy it for a second because the tone of the narrative belies this idea.

              As for a match, I can see how this concept is important for the sexual part of the relationship. It’s either there or it is isn’t and there’s nothing you can do to change it. But for the rest? My husband is Russian. He thinks borscht is soup. He’s silent and completely uninterested in politics. He’s never watched Tucker and has no idea who Elizabeth Warren or AOC are. He hasn’t read any fiction in years. And the kind of stuff he reads I find very obnoxious. He doesn’t speak a word of Spanish and isn’t planning to learn. He doesn’t like traveling and has no desire to visit Europe or even Montreal. He’s not religious. We’ll never have a church wedding, which I’d really like. He doesn’t understand why one might want to be in touch with one’s relatives or have any friends. He watches hundreds of videos by people who are into steroids and weight-lifting. He doesn’t even have a smartphone! Do you know how many times I heard from friends, “what are you guys doing together, you are so different?” But so what? Marriage is not about any of this crap. And it’s definitely not about inane stuff like voting the same way.


              1. Yes but there’s got to be a meeting of minds or souls on some things. I’d balk at a Trump voter who was that out of misogyny, at someone who thought all those Saudi Arabian mutilations were OK, all sorts of stuff.


              2. I do not want to sound as if I have any doubts about your marriage, so I will just join Z in saying that there must be enough commonalities or compatibilities for you two to be together, or it would not be working. And the following is a purely theoretical example – so suppose someone has been apolitical for a fairly long time. But, maybe just because of the midlife crisis – which is often about looking for new meanings to life, sometimes in the wrong places – one became not just a regular Republican (there are a lot of nice people there), but also joined MRA, NRA and the vigilantes patrolling the US-Mexican border. Expressing his views whenever some related topic comes up. Starting addressing family’s feminist friends as Mrs [husband’s name][last name] only half-jokingly. Etc…


              3. I’m the one with the midlife crisis, so I can relate. My husband can’t tell The Nation from The National Review and Maddow from Hannity, so he wouldn’t notice. But everybody I know here, friends, colleagues, even the janitor and the pedicurist, are deep into the “Trump is Hitler, the Russia collusion is real, AOC is our God and Maddow is her prophet.” Should they all dump me because I don’t feel the same? Let’s say I decide to vote Trump in 2020. Would people be justified in dumping me over that? I believe they would be raving maniacs to do that, just like I’d be a lunatic to stop being friends with somebody who votes for AOC whom I feel about exactly like the Trump whisperers feel about Trump.

                This is a real concern for me because I don’t go around publicizing my political trajectory. It’s a painful issue so I don’t mention it much. But should I be concerned that people will start dumping me for it if they find out? Is it a normal thing to do to get rid of people you care about and who’ve been in your life for a while?


              4. In the case of friends and acquaintances everything does not have to be so binary. One does not have to completely dump anyone. But I guess it is normal to somewhat increase the distance / reduce the interaction frequency if someone is too annoying a Trumpist or a SJW… How to apply this to marital partners – I honestly do not know, and cannot tell from my own experience. I just suspect that in theory something like that can act as the last straw…


      2. Thank you for your sympathy. My mom definitely tried to manipulate and guilt-trip me, but it wasn’t as black and white as that. She was also genuinely unhappy and traumatized. I was born in Kiev, Ukraine, so the trauma started with giving birth to me, unmedicated, without the C-section she should have had because she was in labor right after November 7th and the doctors were out on holiday. You can fill in the rest of the details about what life was like for her in the former USSR.

        As for happiness being a choice, where do you draw the line? How easy would it be for you to choose to be happy without intellectual stimulation, for example? I’m a ball of issues myself and have tried talk therapy in the past, so I’m not trying to put you down, but don’t we usually talk to analysts because we find ourselves unable to feel the way we’d like to feel?

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Oh, you are from Ukraine! I’m so happy to have you here! You are most welcome on this blog.

          I’m from a typical Soviet family, meaning extremely dysfunctional, so an analyst is a must. 🙂


  5. “How the 2016 election moved up my divorce by another x years” just isn’t as clickbaity.
    You’re just not going to “see the kids as often” if one of them is 21 and the other is 19 and the last one is 16. It’s a classic “we put up with each other for the sake of the kids” marriage.

    We got married in May 1994, adopted a dog, and had our first child in October 1996. He was followed by another son, and then a daughter. I guess our compatibility started to fray a little after we started a family. We had differences of opinion about raising our kids, but who doesn’t? He came from a more traditional, Catholic family who expected me to quit my full-time newspaper job when I had my first baby. That bugged me. I did resign, but that was because I had a tiny premature baby at home and couldn’t bear to leave him in day care and be gone all day working. So I started a freelance editing business and worked from home, which I continued to do over the years while I raised three kids….
    Our differences—and the strain they caused—began to pile up over the years. I am the daughter of a women’s libber who was an activist in the 1960s and ’70s, and I was influenced by her. Eric seemed to disparage feminism. He made several sexist comments to me during our marriage, such as the fact that he thought he should be the head of our household. He once told me that he didn’t need me as a friend, because he had enough friends. It felt like he was relegating me to a more sexual, subservient role….. Around this time, he also started to get more religious and explore new churches. I was not a churchgoer, and we didn’t get married in a church…

    My cousin’s husband is more conservative than she is politically but I don’t question that he respects her. My first cousin once removed wife was agnostic when they met and now she’s a minister. But he respects her. I don’t see this couple respecting each other at all.

    Also, take a look at this book she wrote. She’s not going to say, “our fertility struggles put a strain on our marriage” in writing a thematic essay about divorcing a Trump supporter.


        1. Note, though, that her (ex) husband actively participated in this process. So what does that make him?

          She has at least one son, I wonder how he feels about that book…
          She has two sons. I don’t know their family or sibling dynamic.

          Freelance rates are a joke. She’s doing something else to get by.

          Did you see your friend’s brief essay on being a freelance writer?


          1. He didn’t write a book about it and make it public. People have the weirdest hangups. But publicizing them this way without thinking how it will affect the children to know their parents see them as consumer goods is cruel and ridiculous.

            As for freelance writing, creative jobs are all about playing a very long game betting on your capacity to make a name for yourself sometime in the future. This is the game I’m playing, so I’m aware of how excruciatingly slow and painstaking the process is. This week in particular I’m aware of this. 😦 But that’s how the game is. You always need to remember that, as in any game, luck is a big component. So don’t bet what you can’t afford to lose.


        2. “He keeps thanking his lucky star that she didn’t have him aborted!”

          This comment was an attempt at dark humor on my part, not a serious appraisal of the family situation 🙂

          But who knows, maybe this unhinged mother did seriously consider aborting her sons as part of her gender-selection planning.


  6. The other day in the comments everyone was saying normalizing pedophilia is the “logical” next step in neoliberal mentality, so far as sexual mores go, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Cosmopolitan has a disturbing number of articles glorifying incest. I will link some examples below.


    1. ” Cosmopolitan has a disturbing number of articles glorifying incest”

      These things go in stages, I’m surprised and disgusted by how few people were freaked out by a little boy in drag dancing for money in a bar.

      I think regularization of incest is definitely in the pipeline…. barring societal collapse and a return to sexual repression which I’m not ruling out.


      1. People who know about the drag kids mostly are disgusted/horrified, I’ve been able to learn from reaching out. Yet all non-conservative media coverage is overwhelmingly positive.


  7. Believe it or not, all families or couples discuss politics. When I was a child in the 1950’s, I never knew (or cared) what my parents thought about politics. By the time I was a teenager in the early 1960’s, I’d figured out from the overheard small talk that my lower middle-classed, middle-aged parents had voted Democratic until the end of World War II, and then had consistently voted Republican for president starting with Thomas Dewey in 1948.

    I never cared about politics at all until the late Sixties when I was in medical school, and was so disgusted by the hateful anti-American activities of privileged Yippies like Abbie Hoffman and the college rioters at Columbia University (who claimed that they were opposed to the Vietnam War, but whose words betrayed a visceral hatred for the country that had basically wiped their asses all their lives, and given them every opportunity that their affluent families had enjoyed) that I became a staunch Republican, and have stayed one ever since.

    But I never discussed a single word about politics to any of my many girlfriends along the way to old age (or religion, either) — or to most my platonic friends either. That’s not what girlfriends and friendships are for. I know what I believe, and I have no need to convince a single other person on this planet that I’m right.


    1. Okay. I know it’s bad form to correct typos that should be obvious. But my first sentence above should read, “Believe it it not, NOT all families or couples discuss politics.” Sorry!


    2. I’m a political junkie, as everybody here must have noticed. But my husband has zero interest in politics. And we are perfectly happy together. Gosh, if I cared about ridiculous little things like that, I would be having a very different kind of life.



        Political junkie-apolitical pairings can work. It’s couples where at least one member say “politics are my reason for being and reflect my core values” AND they both have very different politics that have problems.

        For example, I don’t get Matalin-Carville, except that maybe they compartmentalize their work to a degree I wouldn’t be able to?

        He didn’t write a book about it and make it public
        As if publishing the book is the main injury. Those siblings know who is the favorite of each parent, who is the overlooked one, etc.

        But for the rest?
        Everything you mentioned doesn’t seem like a deal breaker for you. [N’s parents sound like…something else.] And you had some interest in common otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten together.


  8. My parents were hit an miss in terms of political congruence. She was a bit more democrat (but with a very tough streak and a strong dislike for the shiftless) and he was more a republican with a massive soft streak (becoming a kind of substitute father figure for a bunch of oddballs that gravitated to him).
    They agreed some and disagreed some but it never was a cause of problems (oooh they had plenty of those but not from political disagreements).


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