Megan Mulls It Over

+JMJ

Note: In this post, as I have done consistently throughout the course of this blog, I will use pronouns in a way that affirms biological and ontological realities, even though this means violating standards of political correctness. Throw shade if you must, but at least hear me out.

Perhaps some of you have heard that a certain unicorn-loving eunuch is back in the slammer. For those who are new to this blog and wondering who I am talking about, let me back up a little. My blog’s Background section reveals that the two biggest motivators for my starting it were: a) my disdain for Sacha Baron Cohen’s brand of humor; and b) my belief that President Obama’s emasculation of Chelsea Manning was “Orwellian and Mengeleian.” I start off the sentence introducing these catalysts with, “Although my blog will not revolve around these,…”

Which turned out to be only 50% accurate.

Because this blog kinda turned into The Chelsea Manning Show. And judging from the number of posts that, according to my tag count, have at least a mention of him, this post is Episode No. 13.

But don’t let that flippant introductory sentence fool you. I was sad to hear that Manning was being sent back to prison. I was also, and still am, concerned about what impact this would have on his mental state.

And I am really tired of bullshit from the U.S. government.

Both of Manning’s incarcerations have been surrounded by secrecy, and I think that both reveal how far the government will go to stifle dissent and conceal information from the public. My first thought when I heard about Manning’s latest trip to jail was that Obama’s “Yes we can!” has been revealed to be the answer to the question, “After the government has taken your fertility and seven years of your life, can it still demand more?”

This article from Gizmodo includes some interesting information about shady elements of the grand jury process. I learned that witnesses are not allowed to have their own attorneys present while testifying in front of the grand jury. And the jurors themselves are not subject to the same type of screening process that jurors for a trial are.

One thing that I am still trying to wrap my head around is the role of immunity in this whole mess. I have seen multiple articles saying that Manning was offered immunity in exchange for his testimony, something I was not aware of when I first heard about his involvement in this case. And I will admit that when I first heard that he had been offered immunity, I wondered why he didn’t just testify. Because I think up until that point I had been thinking that his refusal to testify was based on his assumption that the prosecution would find a way to use his testimony to send him back to prison.

But then within a few minutes of thinking, “It sucks that they’re badgering you again, but they’re offering immunity, so why don’t you spill it and be on your way?” my thoughts turned to, “What are the odds that the Patriot Act doesn’t include some sort of ‘national security’ loophole for immunity offers?”

The Gizmodo article doesn’t seem to dispute the scope of the immunity offer, however, but instead focuses on how it operates as a detour around the Fifth Amendment’s protections against self-incrimination. I do see the value of remaining silent on principle, as a way of thumbing one’s nose at a corrupt entity or process. But I do wish that the author had cast a little more doubt on the sincerity of the government’s promises of immunity.

In contrast to Manning’s last incarceration, there have so far, as far as I know, been no allegations of mistreatment, abuse, or torture. And it appears that Manning is being allowed regular contact with his legal team, which is certainly an improvement over last time, when he spent 60 days in a cage-in-a-tent in Kuwait with no opportunity to contact an attorney.

Refresh my memory, dear readers. Who was president during the cage-in-a-tent era?

And yet the fact that His Royal Wokeness was in charge during all but a few months of Manning’s first incarceration hasn’t stopped the media from trying to pin all of Manning’s government probs on Trump. And in a truly revolting turn of events, the very group that is (purportedly) collecting donations for Manning’s legal defense seems to be just as worried about protecting Obama’s reputation as they are about freeing Manning. This group, which calls itself “Chelsea Resists”, has taken over what used to be Manning’s Senate campaign website.

That link will take you to a page on the site that shows a “solidarity statement” from the group. Surprisingly they manage to talk for four whole sentences before mentioning the Orange Man. They fire the first shot with, “Donald Trump and his administration have publicly declared their disdain for Chelsea, and for President Obama’s decision to commute her sentence.” Right away they are setting up a dichotomy between Trump and Obama regarding Manning. We are expected to believe that Trump hates Manning, but Obama loves him. And the way that we can tell that Obama loves him is that he commuted his sentence.

And obviously we are supposed to forget that it was Obama who was president during all but the last few months of Manning’s first incarceration. And it was Obama who dismissed the concerns of those who questioned the way that Manning was being treated while incarcerated.

And not only did he dismiss the concerns, he did so by appealing to the trustworthiness of the Pentagon, saying, “…I have actually asked the Pentagon whether or not the procedures that have been taken in terms of his confinement are appropriate and are meeting our basic standards. They assure me that they are.”

Translation: “The suits who commandeer the human killing machines whom Manning blew the whistle on have assured me that they are not hurting him.”

But that’s not the worst part of the “solidarity statement.” That part comes two sentences later where the group describes the subpoena being resisted by Manning as “a punitive effort to reverse Obama’s legacy, exposing Chelsea to legal hardship and possible imprisonment.”

Notice how Obama’s legacy is mentioned before Manning’s wellbeing?

And Obama is mentioned in close proximity to the word “punitive.” Almost like he is the one who is being punished here. Poor Obama. This must be a really trying time for him.

And that business about “legal hardship and possible imprisonment” is basically telling us that Obama would never have exposed Manning to such hardships. It is very disappointing to see this drivel from people who are supposed to be Manning’s biggest advocates.

And I am very disgusted to see that apparently Obama’s legacy was helped more by his commutation of Manning’s sentence than it was harmed by his overseeing Manning’s torture.

I have come to expect such Obama worship from mainstream leftist groups. But Manning does not hang out with mainstream leftist groups. So I am very sad to see that Obama Infatuation Syndrome has reached all the way to his particular corner of the Left. (But of course it’s very possible that his corner is still safe and that this group is actually being run by a group of mainstream leftists masquerading as revolutionaries. Womp womp womp.)

But this is not a clear-cut story of a heroic underdog resisting a corrupt government-military conspiracy. If only it were that simple. Those of us who have never been incarcerated often underestimate how much former prisoners struggle after returning to the outside world. Like so many other former prisoners, Manning has talked about how adjusting to life on the outside was difficult because of the lack of structure. So I’m not saying that he wanted to go back to jail, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that he is feeling a sense of security there that he doesn’t feel at home.

Especially since they’re letting him bunk with the women.

I learned this for a fact from this article in The New York Times, but I had suspected it from the beginning because: 1) The DC area is so woke that they would never have considered sending him to a men’s prison, because he’s not a man, right? and 2) I don’t think he would have been as calm as he was in this video if he were facing the possibility of going back to a men’s prison.

And if he was freaking out at the time that video was shot, he must have stuffed it down. You know, like women typically do.

Another complicating factor in this story is Manning’s willingness to engage in online emotional blackmail. Since his release from prison, he has had at least two Web-based falling outs (both with leftists btw) in which he blames the other party for making him want to kill himself.

So apparently the right-wing meanies who say that they wish he had gotten The Needle or that he would jump off a bridge are off the hook. In their place are fellow leftists who publicly expressed disagreement with political views that Manning had publicly expressed.

The first of these instances occurred in late May of last year when Manning sent out a couple of tweets that indicated he was on the verge of suicide. This article from Heavy.com describes the suicidal tweets and the events leading up to them. The first of the tweets said, “im sorry – I tried – im sorry I let you all down – im not really cut out for this world – i tried adapting to this world out here but I failed you – I couldn’t do this anymore – I can take people I don’t know hating me but not my own friends – I tried and im sorry about my failure,” and the second was a picture of what appeared to be him standing on the ledge of a building with the caption “im sorry.” So the default reaction of every decent person to hearing that someone feels suicidal should be compassion and concern for that person. However, as mentioned above, the thing that Manning was describing as one of his own friends hating him was a political disagreement.

The offending friend was Dawn Ennis, who is also trans. Via tweets of his own, Ennis had criticized Manning for tweets he had issued about the futility of voting. Ennis quite fairly pointed out the irony of a political candidate basically saying that “voting won’t change anything.” Up until writing this post, I was only aware of Ennis’ tweet that had referred to Manning’s criticism of the American electoral system as “lunacy.”

Then I learned from the Heavy article that Ennis had also tweeted that he thought Manning had “meant to write, ‘voting FOR ME won’t change anything.’ Just stop. Yet another #trans woman self-destructs following her public transition.” So that one sounded a little harsher than the first one I knew about, but I think it’s important to keep in mind that Ennis was not criticizing Manning in his capacity as a suicidal trans person who had been tortured while imprisoned for whistleblowing. He was criticizing him in his capacity as a candidate for public office. When you are running for public office, you should expect and even welcome criticisms of your political statements, particularly ones that are made in public.

Soon after the suicidal tweets surfaced, Ennis took to Twitter to beg Manning not to end his life, saying, “I’ve been where you are right now. Don’t do it…Your life is precious.” And, according to the article, he “then sent multiple tweets out, asking Manning to get help and sending her a link to a suicide prevention chatline.” Clearly Ennis does not hate Manning. And I really hope that Manning apologized to him for blaming him, particularly since Ennis himself has, as revealed in his own tweet to Manning, struggled with suicidal thoughts.

Seriously, how hypocritical is it to say to someone who was previously suicidal, “You awful person! You make me want to kill myself!”? Because couldn’t such accusations inspire suicidal thoughts in the “offender”?

And last month Manning leveled a series of tweets in response to a “trans woman” on Twitter named Cassie. Cassie’s offending tweet was in response to Manning’s sharing of an article about how AI technology hasn’t kept pace with the intricacies of The Acronym. Manning had introduced the article with, “the pitfalls and dangers to nonbinary people when technology tries to categorize us into a gender binary…” Cassie, very fairly in my opinion, characterized Manning’s comments as overlooking the real problem, which is ubiquitous government surveillance.

And Manning unloaded, saying, among other things, “tweets from trans people like this have often led me to have near instant anxiety attacks and bouts of extreme depression…years of trauma make this feel like my whole world is ending.”

So I now realize that the “like this” was probably intended to go with “tweets” rather than “trans people.” Nevertheless that “years of trauma” business is really grating on me. It is not fair for Manning to lump Cassie’s comment in with his dysfunctional family life, his period of teenage homelessness on the streets of Chicago, and his time in the military and prison.

And someone seriously needs to tell this guy, “You survived all that. I think you can survive a political spat on Twitter. Here, have a hug.”

I will admit that it was refreshing to hear Manning express the sort of emotional vulnerability that is present in the tweets responding to Cassie, particularly in a place as cruel as social media. But I really hate that he threw in such a vicious personal attack, against another trans person no less. And like when he accused Ennis of making him want to kill himself, seemingly with no regard for how such accusations would make Ennis feel (who, let me remind you, has also struggled with suicidal thoughts), there is a mind-boggling amount of hypocrisy on display here. In the fourth tweet in the series Manning gives props to Twitter user Morgan Page, stating that Page is suggesting “that trans people talk to other trans people rather than attacking each other immediately for every single perceived slight and transgression.”

Umm…isn’t attacking immediately for every single perceived slight and transgression” kinda what you’re doing?

And, as mentioned previously, one of the most frustrating things about these Twitter crises is that Manning’s not even calling out actual bullying. And it’s certainly not because there is none to be found on his social media pages. As I have said before, if you want to see the very worst of humanity, all you have to do is read the comments on just about any of Manning’s posts.

But yet Manning is not openly despairing over statements like, “I hope you die, you sick freak!” Rather, he is focusing on things like, “I thought you sounded kinda in the tank for Big Brother yesterday.”

At the end of the day, this whole mess reiterates to me the importance of distinguishing between causes and the people who are promoting those causes. Because if you want everyone who is promoting a noble cause to be as noble as his cause all the time, you are going to end up woefully disillusioned.

And making this even worse is that Manning is not explicitly promoting the cause that his leaking would have brought to the forefront for much longer if Americans weren’t so easily swayed by propaganda.

We’ve seen him throw shade on the police state and the surveillance state. But when’s the last time he’s said anything critical about the U.S. military?

You know, the military that was running amok in many of the materials that he leaked? Although, to be fair, I think it’s likely that Manning’s silence on this issue is due more to legal constraints than indifference. Do we even have a Constitution anymore?

Lots of Americans will criticize American foreign policy, particularly when their party is not in the White House or a majority of the legislature. But very few will dare to criticize the men and women who actually carry out that foreign policy. “But Megan! It’s not fair to blame our brave men and women! It’s not their fault if politicians are voting for war!” I agree that there is not enough accountability for politicians voting badly. (And also that the blame for this is shared by the people who keep electing them. Myself included.)

But the problem with the “Never criticize a soldier” mentality is that it’s the kind of thinking that’s present in military dictatorships, where “I was following orders” is an excuse for anything and everything (if you are called upon to offer an excuse at all). “But Megan! American soldiers have been prosecuted for war crimes!” Fair enough, but it’s only a war crime if you get caught. And even then, if it’s just a few people who got killed, who cares?

I think Ron Paul said it best. In this video about the American media’s reaction to the Jamal Khashoggi murder versus its lack of reaction to drone killings, he describes one of the attitudes underlying current U.S. foreign policy as, “If you wanna spread American greatness and goodness, some people have to die.” (6:12-6:17)

So I will continue to watch this drama unfold. And no matter how much disdain I have for the mind tricks that Manning likes to play on his friends, I can’t let that distract my attention away from the ways in which the U.S. government-military apparatus misleads the American public and destroys the lives of non-Americans, all in the name of “protecting freedom.”

And I really, really hope that this round of resistance won’t cost Chelsea as much as the first round did.

Verso l’alto,
Megan