I don’t blame my ex. I blame Earl [part 1]

Is your ex fucking crazy? Have you found yourself going nuts too? Got a divorced friend who used to be cool — now they twitch, rant about therapists, and post conspiracy theories about custody orders? Here’s the deal: it’s not your fault. It’s not even their fault.

You know whose fault it is?

EARL’s.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren… 1953–1969.

Bear with me. Don’t close the browser.

Earl made divorced parents go batshit for the past 50 years. Here’s how:

Colonial period — 1839

Back in colonial America — and for nearly two centuries after — courts awarded custody based on one basic idea: who could provide for the child. That usually meant the father. It was an English Common Law principle called “Patria Potestas” — meaning the father’s power. It wasn’t some grand conspiracy — it was about survival. Was it fair? No. Dad technically held the right to decide. But here’s the thing — most people aren’t assholes. So dad, mom, and the community typically worked it out so mom was in the kids’ lives too. They handled it without lawyers. Like grown-ups.

Then, in 1836, there was a guy named George Chapple Norton. George was a member of Parliament — and a complete asshole. He’d get drunk and beat his wife Caroline, so she left him. He retaliated by cutting her off from their three kids, taking her money, and spreading nasty rumors.

And you know what? Women got pissed.

1839–1970

So Parliament invented the Tender Years Doctrine — and it swept England and the US. Now women were in charge. Was it fair? No. Mom got the deciding vote. But remember — most aren’t assholes. Mom now had the right to decide. But mom, dad, and the community worked it out so dad could be involved too. Again no lawyers. Again like grown-ups.

Earl

Now let’s give Earl a little credit. He didn’t write the 14th Amendment, but he made sure its promise of equal protection finally reached real people — rich and poor, Black and white, urban and rural. That’s a profound gift. He dragged equal protection out of the back closet and put it center stage. And equal protection got rid of ‘separate but equal’ in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling.

But equal protection totally screwed up divorce.

Here’s how:

When one parent technically had the final say — dad in the old system, mom under Tender Years — they could work it out like adults. No courts. No forms. Just figuring it out.

But around 1970, everything had to be equal. Mom and Dad both got votes.

You see the problem?

Now you need a tiebreaker. Parents were thrown into a paralyzing trap — a game-theoretic deadlock with no way to resolve basic decisions.

And that tiebreaker? That’s who actually runs the family. That’s the real parent.

Guess who got that third vote? — THE STATE. Equal protection created ‘equal with no rights’ in divorce custody decisions.

Earl accidentally triggered the single largest transfer of liberty from the people to the state in modern history, without anyone even realizing it.

Now let’s face it: State governments don’t want this power. They don’t have the resources to mediate every passive-aggressive Instagram post. A sitting judge doesn’t care. But Earl accidentally spayed and neutered 80 million adults in the past 50 years, and someone needed to become their nannies.

Enter the ‘Shadow Judiciary’

The state made it impossible for adults to make basic decisions anymore, so a whole new industry grew like a weed to supply it.

• Lawyers leaned into conflict. They advised clients to disagree more. Not less. They advised clients not to speak at all without them. The more you fight, the longer the billable hours run.

• Parenting Coordinators, Guardians ad Litem stepped in to resolve the conflict — saying they wanted to get problems straightened out, but in reality becoming permanent third parents. Paid, credentialed, and shielded.

• Therapists showed up to help — but the damage was already done. The system had drained families of cash, trust, and sanity. Parents who used to be normal started unraveling — broke, paranoid, and sleep-deprived. So they went to therapy. And if a parent said, “This whole thing feels rigged,” the therapist didn’t say, “You’re right.” They said, “You sound unstable. Let’s talk about your control issues.” See how that works?

• But therapists don’t operate under rules of evidence or due process. If a parent makes a private allegation in a session, the therapist keeps it confidential — but still internalizes it. The accused never hears the charge, never gets a chance to respond, and never knows why they’re suddenly treated as unsafe. It’s guilt by invisible whisper.

• All Three form a closed-loop system — substituting their judgment for yours, blocking simple decisions, pathologizing your behavior, and convincing you (or your ex) that the real problem is you. Over time, they’re right — because the system drives you insane.

• And now, there’s a new layer: professionals who teach parents how to play the game to try to win sole custody — you know — like that asshole George Chapple Norton. Only weaponized. For a fee, they’ll ghostwrite emotional emails, script therapeutic language, and prep courtroom narratives. Coaches, lawyers, and therapists line up to help you “express concern” in just the right way. Your ex probably isn’t writing that long email about your emotional volatility — their parenting coach is. And your reply? Might be ghostwritten too. What the therapist reads isn’t a cry for help. It’s professional theater. Meanwhile, the system rewards not honesty but performance. Not parenting, but sabotage. In this ecosystem, your best move is not to be a better parent — it’s to make your ex look worse. Because that’s what moves the needle. Sabotage beats effort. Every time.

And the worst part? You don’t get to be in charge of your own child anymore. These people do.

“Best interest of the child”

So how do they decide?

They’ll tell you it’s simple: they’re just doing what’s in the best interest of the child. That’s their mantra. Their shield. Their moral permission slip. They’re not taking control — they’re protecting kids from parental conflict. That’s the story.

But here’s the problem: this standard has been used for over 50 years — and not one of them has ever bothered to define what the phrase means. Not in legislation. Not in case law. Not in policy.

It’s the most powerful standard in family law — and it has no definition.

And if a word has no definition? Then it can mean anything. And if it can mean anything, then the person with power gets to decide what it means — today, in this moment — and you, the parent, are wrong. Why? Because they said so. Because they know what’s best. It’s Orwell with a smile and a soft pretentious look.

The Risk-Averse State Can’t Parent

Let’s be clear: parenting is hard. It’s supposed to be. Raising a human being means taking thousands of risks across twenty years — choosing when to push, when to protect, when to let go. There’s no formula. But the person best suited to guide a child’s development is the one who loves them, knows them, and is willing to take those risks for their growth. That person is the parent.

But these state-empowered professionals? They like to act like they’re the ones raising your kids. They take credit. They write the reports. They make the calls. But they can’t actually do the job. Why? Because they’re terrified of risk. Their incentives aren’t to help your child grow — their incentives are to avoid blame.

They don’t want the kid to try and fail. They want the kid to stay safe, quiet, emotionally validated — but never tested, never stretched, never challenged. Because challenge involves risk. And risk could come back to bite them. So they default to safety. Always.

And when they override a parent’s judgment — not because of abuse, but because of institutional fear — they’re not protecting the child. They’re stunting them.

They paralyze the parent. They flatten the child. They rob both of the ability to build strength. And then they call it care.

But it’s not care. It’s cowardice with credentials.

And if we don’t stop it soon, we won’t have a functioning generation left to raise the next one.

Why do divorced kids have lots of Nintendos?

Because the parents have been stripped of rights.

We didn’t just give those rights to the state. We gave them to the kids.

Here’s what happens:

The therapists elevate the child’s opinion — often treating it as equal to or greater than the parent’s. They ask leading questions. They validate preferences as moral truths. And over time, the child realizes they have power. They have a vote.

And the parents? They realize it too.

So now, instead of parenting, they’re campaigning. Pleading. Bribing. A Nintendo here, a later curfew there. Hoping to stay the favorite.

And some therapists actually encourage this dynamic. They say they’re listening to the child’s voice. But what they’re really doing is turning the home into a soft coup — where the child gets to overrule the adult. The result? The parent has no authority. The therapist holds the pen. And the child holds the leverage.

This isn’t about bad parenting. It’s about bad systems. We taught kids to vote. We taught professionals to enforce it. And we taught parents to beg for what used to be theirs by default. Parental rights weren’t lost by neglect. They were handed over — with a form, a smile, and a $400/hr invoice.

The Psychiatric Disorders Earl Caused

Since the 1970s, something strange happened.

As the system Earl created trapped families in chronic conflict, therapists started identifying a whole new crop of disorders. Not because people changed — but because the system did.

Let’s run through a few:

• Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) — Coined in the 1980s, this describes when one parent manipulates a child into rejecting the other. It didn’t appear in a vacuum. It appeared in a system that rewards parent-erasure.

• Adultification — Popularized in the 2000s, it’s when kids are forced into adult emotional roles. But if you strip parents of authority and give kids power, that’s the only outcome.

• Parentification — Closely related, it’s when children become caretakers or emotional regulators for parents — a byproduct of unresolved parental chaos.

• Narcissistic Abuse/Neglect Allegations — These exploded in the 2010s as custody tactics. Accusations that sound clinical, but often boil down to emotional theater.

All of these are real. But they’re not just clinical phenomena. They’re system-generated pathologies — outcomes of an architecture that removed authority, incentivized sabotage, and replaced clarity with curated chaos.

So now we’re diagnosing parents and children with disorders that the system caused.

It’s not your fault. It’s not even your kid’s fault.

The Solution: Equal Rights, Not Just Equal Votes

Here’s the twist: Earl wasn’t entirely wrong.

Equality between parents is a good thing. The problem isn’t that both parents got a vote. The problem is that neither got a right.

The solution isn’t to go back to Patria Potestas or the Tender Years Doctrine. It’s to go forward — and give both parents constitutionally protected rights.

That way they won’t fight like caged animals and need to claw their own eyes out anymore. The wacky Facebook posts will end. Both MRA and Feminist threads will go unread — because the people in them will be busy at the park with their kids. Those people don’t like going nuts. It’s not their fault — Earl made them that way.

Each parent should have the right to raise their children with authority. A right to nurture and protect the attachment they built. A right to make decisions within their home without begging for permission from a therapist, a lawyer, a judge, a co parent, or even the child.

We need to recognize that a fit parent — mother or father — is the sovereign in their own home. Not a co-client in therapy. Not a petitioner in court. Not a beggar in front of a professional tribunal.

Two parents. Two homes. Two castles.

Each one should be king or queen of their own household — free to parent with clarity, care, and boundaries.

The Supreme Court broke this system when it redefined equality without protecting liberty. But it also holds the power to fix it — by affirming that parental rights don’t vanish at divorce. They endure. They constrain the state. They create a zone of family liberty that no checklist or whisper campaign can override.

That’s the fix. Not more therapy. Not more process. Not more experts.

Just rights. Defined. Protected. Enforced.

And I admit… this post was a joke. But the policy implications are not. For a policy deep dive, see this:

The ‘Blame Earl’ protocol- Not just a joke [part 2]

And if you want to skip ahead to summary results, check out Part 3 in the series here:

An interview with 2 AI models and Earl Warren [part 3]

I’ll have more to share soon on what a real post-divorce system of rights should look like — one where both parents are protected, children are shielded from being weaponized, and state power is restrained. The Court caused this mess. And the Court needs to fix it.