The past week has been...interesting.
In the "big news" is obviously the conviction in criminal court of a former U.S. president.
Why this is "news" is kind of peculiar, because this particular jamoke has always been and is the most obviously incompetent, corrupt, and criminal individual to ever disgrace American presidential politics, and when you consider that includes people like Warren Harding, James Buchanan, and Franklin Pierce that's a pretty high fucking bar.
Convicting this scumbag of several of his many visible crimes was, as it should have been, as hard as hitting water when falling out of a boat.
No, what's "news" - in the sense of "revealing" - has been the reactions of the Republican Party.
In a sane world this would give the Party of (Cash, Guns, Jesus, and Whiteness) Personal Responsibility the perfect option; dump the dick.
You want a loudmouthed nitwit for President?
Margie Greene is right there!
The GQP could use this as a lockdown "It's not you, it's me!" moment and pivot towards some other loudmouthed but less facially corrupt nitwit. Gaetz, Lee, Tuberville, Boebert...I mean, goddamn, the party's chock full of 'em.
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They didn't. They won't, because it's obvious that they can't.
Because, apparently, Trump scratches some sort of weird precognitive itch in Republicans. It always seems to me to be a sort of reflex rather than a thought-out decision. Tubby is the Perfect Own-The-Libs Storm, and that seems to be what gets the bulk of these people going.
Mind you, the overall GOP pyramid hasn't changed.
As they did in the pre-Q Era of the Eighties through the early Teens, the plutocrats at the top are using all this wingnut id to get the New Gilded Age they crave. They give a shit about trans women and abortion; (or, if they do, not enough to interfere with their pursuit of) low taxes and deregulation are their goals.
They're using these shiny objects to harvest the morons' votes.
And right now all the morons want is Moar Trump. So they'll get it.
And if they can turn that into Electoral votes in November so will we.
Good and hard.
So there's that.
While at home...
The divorce machinery grinds forward.
We've engaged a mediator, and part of that process means collecting every scrap of information on our financial lives. Mojo is doing the heavy lifting there as she has throughout our marriage.
And what's increasingly apparent is that we're...not rich.
Right now we're getting by.
But I'm pulling in retirement - Army retirement and Social Security - and contract work here and there. She's got her paycheck which is less than that...
Given how hard she works, and all she does for little Astor Elementary?
That's a shame and a hissing to you, Portland Public Schools.
As a unit we're doing okay.
As individuals?
Things get kinda scary.
So scary that the other night Mojo was up until midnight, sitting alone on the darkened deck, her mind so filled with fear and worry that she couldn't sleep.
It tore me. I'm not where she is; she's still my dear, still my best friend. It's murder seeing her like that.
So I made an offer. A very odd one by modern marriage standards.
Let's put a pin in divorce, I said.
Not call it off. I get it, you're done with me. But...let's give it time. Let's live together, friends, "roommates", business partners, for four years. Until the kids are through college and our expenses drop to the baseline.
Then? We go our ways.
The thing that had occurred to me as I watched her agony was that this was what millions of people did for thousands of years. They needed to stay solvent. They were rich and wanted to be richer, or poor and didn't want to be poorer. Or merchants and wanted business, or nobles and wanted land.
So they made a deal to work and live together.
This was the deal on offer. A deal that would give us breathing space and time. Time for her to find a better-paying job. Time to grow our investment wealth, time and space to better figure out how to find our ways as single people, instead of the current rush to be separate.
Unlike a lot of those people, we aren't strangers.
We were friends, and so far still are.
I think we could make that work.
I also don't think she'll take it.
But I had to make the offer. She IS my friend, my dearest friend, and regardless of everything else, I owe her every effort to help her to the best life she can.
I already miss her.
And, sadly, I'm afraid both that that will not change, and that, soon, it irrevocably will.
