Borderline.

If this world is wearing thin 

And you're thinking of escape
I'll go anywhere with you
Just wrap me up in chains
But if you try to go alone
Don't think I'll understand

Stay with me, stay with me

In the silence of your room
In the darkness of your dreams
You must only think of me
There can be no in between
When your pride is on the floor
I'll make you beg for more

Stay with me, stay with me

You'd better hope and pray
That you make it safe
Back to your own world
You'd better hope and pray
That you'll wake one day in your own world
'Cause when you sleep at night
They don't hear your cries in your own world
Only time will tell if you can break the spell
Back in your own world...

~Shakespeare's Sister, Stay

As I have mentioned a few times, I'm divorced. My ex-wife had borderline personality disorder. Now, nothing against her, this was a medical diagnosis and there are reasons why she was that way. I don't have anything against her. I'm just stating a fact. But, long story short, I was probably the only one who didn't know this relationship wasn't going to work out well.

Here's the thing, in certain ways, crazy people make good partners, Not to put too fine of a point on it, but the sex can be incredible. They bond quickly and love very deeply and intensely, so if an instant relationship is what you're looking for...as I was at the time...all this works out great. It just takes a lot out of you in the end.

When I first got with my ex, I was coming off of an almost 3-year relationship with a really awesome girlfriend named Rose, who just didn't seem to like sex very much...but we clicked very intensely in a lot of ways and had a lot of mutual interests and a warm bond of shared Christian faith and for a long time that was enough. Of course, it eventually flamed out mostly thanks to a couple of epic fights (mostly because I was young, stupid and sexually frustrated) and we eventually agreed to be friends (and she ended up with one of my dogs who'd bonded with her, but that was alright, too, and a story for another time.) There's a reason this happened, which I didn't find out for about a year. But let's just say by chance recently I found out Rose and her wife are happily married, and her and I would not have worked out in any case, for that very reason.

We met online, my ex lived in Traverse City at the time (a few hours away for me) and one day I drove over there and we hung out, and hooked up on the first date. Of course, on the second I found out that she was Pentecostal and her church was, shall we say, nuts. But hey, I was getting booty so we agreed to disagree on that. My ex's life status (as described by Yahoo Personals) was perpetually "In transition" and in the couple of weeks between the first date and the second, she moved a lot closer to where I lived. Her family lived not too far from me, so naturally, that made getting together easier. Things escalated fairly quickly and within a couple months we were engaged, within a couple more we'd moved in together...and a month or so later, we got married.

Pretty much everybody didn't like my ex. My Mom didn't like her, my ex-girlfriend (who along with Ron, my best friend for a number of years, drove up from Battle Creek to be in the wedding) instantly and apparently instinctively hated my ex and loudly and very publicly told her off and threw a drink in her face at the wedding reception. It came within inches of being a fight before me and some of my old Air Force buddies broke it up. Needless to say, Rose and I didn't talk much for awhile...and that's where it started...the weirdness. People with personality disorders often end up trying to isolate their partners from family and friends and they'll start betraying and screwing over and trying to get whatever they can out of everybody and line their pockets as soon as they can get away with it.

Of course, my ex didn't like to work, she liked to spend money and she never quite managed to pull her own weight in terms of the household stuff and whatnot. She burned through a lot of jobs, and nothing much ever seemed to get done. After awhile, I was just plain exhausted and our relationship fell apart. From getting together to splitting up we made it about eight months, actually getting divorced would take another year. There were some interesting flare-ups along the way, and a lot of weird religious fuckery, and it took my ex and I several more years to break the habit of fucking each other. I was forced to allow Rose her "I told you so" gloating, and for another year or so before she moved down south for a job, we'd hang out occasionally, and she became sort of a relationship adviser.

...And I've since figured out that I attract crazy bitches somehow. Like, every woman that approaches me turns out to be a nut. So, because I have a steady job an pets that need to be taken care of, and I'm officially old enough that such things don't matter that much to me I've pretty much given up on dating.

What does any of this have to do with anything?

Not much, really, but I can't help but feel at times like our national political situation is uncomfortably too much like my marriage and divorce. Donald Trump, like my ex-wife, has a personality disorder and his conduct and apparent Narcissistic Personality Disorder often remind me of her Borderline personality disorder.

Trump just last weekend threw the NFL under the bus, for ratings if his own comments at some Washington D.C. dinner are to be believed. He seems to think it's some kind of pro-wrestling or reality show feud...though one with potentially very real consequences if some of the stuff cluttering up my Facebook feed is to be taken at face value. See, that's the thing...the President is supposed to deal with real life and his every action and reaction is likely going to affect things in very real ways as this situation demonstrates.

As a Facebook acquaintance of mine, Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station, put it: Trump wants to throw in with the Billionaires but in the end his ego needs the cheers of the people with the Make America Great Again hats and the shacks more than his wallet needs the billionaires money. So, in the end he will side with his mob. I see recent events as evidence of that.

The Trump Supporters think he cares about them, and think that he'll give them what they want...which I'm not really sure what that is, an easy life, ethnic cleansing, a giant wall in the middle of the desert, it varies from person to person and who knows anyway? I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure out the motivations of illogical and unreasonable people.

But everything Trump touches dies, he betrays and lies to everybody, and this has effected the Republican party in some pretty pathological ways as all these failed health care repeal bills demonstrate. The Republican Party has become a cult...the cult of a man who could damned well already be suffering from dementia. Go ahead, think about that for a second, I'll wait.

The difference between the two parties and their most recent leadership is that someday, 30 or 40 years from now, Barack Obama will die, and people will be sad and there will probably be a lot said about it on the news but the Democratic Party will go on after all the memorials and such are concluded...

There will still be a Democratic Party, though who can say what its exact shape will be then?

...And someday, possibly soon, Donald Trump will be swept from power in a blizzard of votes and legal motions and charges and hearings that'll be as final as any Third World dictator's death in a hail of bullets, or bad health and dementia will claim him and he'll die or (best case) his term will expire amid ignominy and scandal and all the legal stuff may continue but will gradually fade from public spectacle...

And the Cult of Trump will take the Republican Party down with it, either by dong something stupid or attempting to start some sort of a civil war or (far more likely) it'll all go up in an explosion of recriminations and scandal as the whole house of cards finally collapses.

What will replace it, I have no idea. I only know that something will. I quite suspect that in the end, we'll end up with a socialist party that's somehow against identity politics and something something Bernie Sanders hand-waving excuses a lot of former Republicans will have suddenly stopped having a problem with socialism because that's where their "lack of identity politics" AKA the new racial dog-whistle is tolerated. I read a detailed article last night about how a lot of these Alternative For Deutschland far-right people in Germany used to be East German Communists or West German Far-leftists who were loyal to Moscow...and since Moscow is far-right and Nationalist, so are they now.
The racists will go where they're tolerated because it's not the political party they believe in, it's the racism.

I know a surprisingly large number of Republicans who at least considered voting for Bernie as an option. I know several conservatives (one, to her credit, who is very against racism) who wrote in Bernie anyway. So yes, I see it as a possibility that the opposite of what's going on in Germany could happen here.

One thing I can tell you for sure, is that the betrayal and divorce (and the lining of pockets at their expense) will be an ugly one. Hell, there are already people who've burned their #MAGA hats.

It would not be surprise me, just like my ex screaming at me on the sidewalk out in front of the court house, if before this is over Trump stands there on stage and curses out his own supporters and rhetorically casts them into the Outer Darkness like a cult leader denying his fake "Salvation" to his own faithful over some imagined slight.

But when people inspire either intense love or intense hate, and there are suggestions of dementia, mental illness and/or drug addiction? Well, it's probably just going to be a big damned mess anyway.

Because that's how these things work, and the Trump Supporters are about the only ones who don't see that this isn't going to work out well in the end.

I wish them better luck than I had. Nobody deserves that shit, not even my ex-wife. Having your entire world-view ripped to shreds by the circumstances and betrayal and cheating is hell for the most well-grounded of people, and a lot of Trump Supporters ain't that.

I don't wish what they're going to go through on anybody, because I've been there.

But I won't have any sympathy either, they chose to inflict this craziness on all of us.

Let them suffer the consequences, although certainly, in the end we all will.