Of course this starts with my marital status: I am divorced. My ex-wife and I have two children. She has remarried. I am currently engaged to a divorcée with two children of her own. So, I will live with another man’s children while yet another man lives with mine.
I was raised Catholic. But the Catholic church will not acknowledge my divorce and second marriage. So, I have divorced my church as well. My fiancé was raised Baptist. But when she married her first husband, who is Jewish, she had to convert to Judaism for the sake of her then-future children. Today, her children are Jewish and she has now divorced two faiths.
My father worked for one company for his entire career. I have worked for five already. I divorced three of these, one divorced me, and one simply collapsed. Today, I am self-employed.
Ten years ago, I divorced my political party. Previously, I had been loyal to it since I became old enough to vote. But, like most Americans, I am a political moderate, fiscally conservative, socially liberal. What party represents me?
I grew up in Massachusetts and lived there after college. Admittedly, the cost of living there was always high. But eventually, I divorced my home state. The cost of living, taxes, and unions drove me to start my own business in another state.
This year, I divorced my newspaper. What passes for journalism these days is embarrassing. And besides, I can get more news from a greater variety of sources online, generally for free. And if any one of them goes astray, I will divorce them as well.
After buying American-made automobiles my entire life, I have just divorced Detroit. My new car is also made in America, but it carries a foreign nameplate and any profit made by the manufacturer benefits a foreign stock market. But then again, our own stock market divorced me in 2008.
I also recently divorced Microsoft. After paying Mr. Gates and crew for 25 years for a deficient product, I just bought a Macintosh. I feel better already.
And as divorce goes, I am not even average. Many Americans have become totally divorced from the world around them. Sure, we have all quit taking the newspaper. But many of us have replaced it, not with other news outlets, but rather, with Comedy Central. Oprah has become the new Walter Cronkite. And Americans are more interested in Britney and Paris and football and basketball, than in the real issues of the day. In short, they have divorced reality.
Even well read Americans seem to have divorced themselves from the ability to think about what they read. If Thomas Friedman writes it and the New York Times prints it, well then, it must be true. In their desire to avoid the perception of being judgmental, our post-modern intellectual classes have decided to divorce themselves from good judgment.
I am an American, and, like you, I am divorced.
So as not to be confused with James Frey, this essay is observational, not autobiographical.
