A Parable

Once upon a time, there was a middle-aged couple who got married. She was kind of a selfish b*tch, and he was a supremacist, given to erratic fits of rage. Each had numerous children from earlier marriages.

As you might expect, the marriage did not last long. After the divorce, her standard of living improved, because she'd had a better job, and now she didn't have to support him anymore. He was enraged about that. The property was divided in two; she built a house on her half, as she saw fit. He never built a house, because he thought he should have gotten the whole property. He was enraged about that.

Every now and then, he would pack up all his children and go to her place and throw rocks. She wasn't often available for him (and his kids) to throw rocks at, so they usually threw at her children, who were playing in the yard. She didn't like that a bit.

So she made his life a living hell. Since he never built a house, all his mail came to her, and sometimes she would just hold onto it, rather than giving it to him. Since she had a job and he didn't, she would sometimes hold onto his child support for a long time. "Stop throwing rocks at me and my kids," she would admonish him, "and maybe we can treat each other like civilized adults."

One day, things came to a head. Literally: one of the rocks he threw hit one of her kids in the head. She'd had enough. She came out of the house with a baseball bat and set about him. She yelled at his kids to get out of the way, but the fact is that each of the kids held a bunch of rocks for their dad, and he kept running from kid to kid to get more rocks to throw. So as she swung at him, she'd sometimes hit a kid.

"Stop hitting my kids!" he screamed.
"Send your kids someplace safe," she countered, "and we'll finish this without them."
"I can't fight without my kids," he growled.
"Then give up."
"Never!"

So the battle raged...