Celebrating Weakness

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Since the September 11 attacks, America has been obsessed with strength. That is our response to everything—we have to be stronger, tougher. It has become a hashtag that accompanies each of the endless string of domestic terrorist attacks and ecological disasters that has followed September 11 while we still focus on foreign threats. We'll all be killed instead by the earth and each other.

Perhaps the answer isn't more strength, more toughness. Perhaps the answer is admitting we're at a loss, and that some radical changes are required, instead of standing strong in doing things the same way when quite obviously, that path is a failure. Perhaps we need to give up.

What do I mean when I say give up? America is in a sense the ultimate toxic masculine nation. There are clearly many countries where the overall conditions for women are much worse, and indeed America probably ranks near the top in women's rights. But those rights have been won by women who have had to fight in the traditional male realm to win those rights, a tribute to their courage and toughness. We are a nation without feminine values, without real empathy, without real compassion, without real togetherness, and without real justice.

The ultimate male institutions in this ultimately male society are law enforcement and the judiciary. Law enforcement officers are overwhelmingly male. Judges are overwhelmingly male. There are a few more female district attorneys than there are cops or judges, but still, I would guess that the majority are male, and the overwhelming majority of our Attorneys General have been male. The majority of our Supreme Court is male.  These institutions need to be completely deconstructed and replaced with new institutions for maintaining civic order, built on feminine values.

But yet, these ultimately male institutions are growing stronger and stronger, because women have turned to this male institution to try to revolve the long-standing problem of violence toward women, sexual and otherwise. And so these institutions have grasped that their pathway to avoiding scrutiny of their extensive nefarious, unjust activities is by focusing attention on sexual crimes and other crimes against women, in order to get women to support a renewed expansion of state power in this arena, just when we were all starting to accept that these institutions had failed. 

So now, women are all in favor of mass incarceration and violations of defendant's rights, and all manner of judicial and law enforcement abuses if the accused was accused of a crime against a woman. And cops, judges and DAs are licking their chops hungry for all the power this will give them. The sex crime is now the ultimate political and social weapon, because we no longer bother to actually try to sort out who's who and what's what.  And this is a gift for real predators, because they can hide behind all the innocent men who have been railroaded using this charge that it is effectively impossible to prove that you are innocent of.

But by doing this, women are not protecting themselves, they are handing men more power. Because when an allegation of sexual assault or violence against women becomes a charge that cannot be questioned, can never be dismissed as not only without merit, but possibly even malicious, then it is a short time until your father, your husband or your son is in the crosshairs because someone is mad at you. And the actual predators are rejoicing too, because they know, when society sends me to sit next to them, they know society has become blind. It's the back door to the Handmaid's Tale, and you girls can't see it.

If the law enforcers are almost all men, and they can easily dispose of any man who would oppose the oppression of women if they can bribe, coerce or force any woman to accuse him of something, where will you turn then? Can't you see what's happening? Al Franken, Eliot Spitzer, Anthony Weiner vs. Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh and Roy Moore.  The liberal Jewish men accused are falling, resigning or going to prison, while the White conservatives accused are going to the White House and the Supreme Court and you can't stop it. The right-wing is using sex charges to clear out liberals.  Because they rally around their own when accused, while liberals think that a person accused of a sex crime never deserves a defense or even due process.  I'm the canary in the coal mine and it might already be too late.

Over these last six years, I have submitted to the law. I was given a maximum prison sentence of six years based on the first arrest in my life, which was originally charged as a misdemeanor. For more than a year, I've sat in a circle with men who raped their daughters, molested their nieces, and inflicted ritual abuse on stepchildren while practicing Satanism. I sat with these men and allowed myself to be treated like one of them because I believe in redemption, even for crimes as terrible as those. I sat because I'm a citizen of this country, and even though I don't think my conviction was right on many levels, I followed the law.  I submitted because I believed someone would stand up and fight for me, and that eventually, justice would come.

I sat, as the fly-by-night pop-up therapy center where I was ordered to go shuffled through one clinician after another, most of whom clearly knew less about psychology or the world in general than I did. I suffered through the indignity of peeing in cups for people who haven't accomplished or contributed a fraction of what I have to this society, being ordered here and there, and submitting to the most invasive questions. I sat, with this huge electronic device tied to my ankle, clearly intended not to keep track of my movements, but to be a clear sign to society of my predicament. I sat, for a polygraph test that all serious scientists and our courts agree is an inaccurate and invalid test.  I sat, being punished for the crime I supposedly committed, while my sister, my landlord, a former parole officer, and even the police committed crimes against me and no one would do anything.

I did all this while the people that I thought were my friends from before prison are all gone. I did that even as I am estranged from all of my relatives. I did that as I've not heard a word from any of the women that I loved, who know my character.

I took pride in my strength, my ability to withstand this, and keep withstanding it. In jail and prison, so often I thought, “I can't make it through another day of this.”. Most days I felt this way, both while I was incarcerated and since my release. But the next day, I was still alive, so I thought, “Well, somehow I made it.”...But maybe I didn't.

What I've realized is that every day, a little piece of me has been dying. Every day. I've finally reached the point where I have accepted that I'm out of strength. I cannot do anything more by myself. I'm finished. In the wake of my kidnapping by the San Diego police a few weeks ago, in what I will forever regard as a criminal act, I just cannot go on submitting to a system in which I can no longer believe there is a single righteous actor. Someone would have done something about my predicament by now.

I see people who look happy, who look like good people, but they are not actually a part of my universe because they are not a part of my life. They are citizens of San Diego, and of California, so it is in their name, on their behalf, that all of these things are being done, and they are not protesting.  So this must be what they want.

I have no family, no friends, no allies, except perhaps people watching from a distance, who have miscalculated I think, how long it is safe to wait. If this is the price of admission to their club, I've paid all I can. I'm broke...and broken. I must not be good enough.

I can't go on working to make this system look legitimate. I'm finished participating in it. These people never lack for courage. They won't back down. The worst people are the most courageous. They fear nothing because they believe in nothing. They have gotten away with everything they have done so far, so they will expect to be able to get away with more. They will arrest me, and take me back to jail, and when I continue to refuse to comply after that, they will send me back to prison. Perhaps they'll do worse than that.

I don't care. Life under the circumstances that I've been pushed to is not worth continuing to go through their bullshit to save. I have nothing in my life worth saving, because I have no one in my life that I can trust, no one in my life that I can love, no one in my life that I can believe in. I see people far away that I think I could. But they are not here, and another day passes, and another, and they still are not here.  I've accepted these last six years as punishment for all my mistakes, those known and unknown to me.  I have paid enough.

I could say another day, another week, another month, another year, but I'm out of spiritual energy for it. Every day that I have to live like this, I lose my ability to be empathetic, I lose my ability to trust, I'm losing my ability to love. I have to quit now, or I'll become so angry at them, I'll become a monster. And I'd be the worst monster the world has ever seen. I won't permit myself to go down that road, even though I feel like some people are begging for that end.  I won't go on participating in this system, and I won't let it make me a monster.  I'd rather die behind the chemical shed.

I'm putting the world to a decision. I'm finished with parole. I'm finished with registration. I'm finished with forced therapy administered by unqualified people. If there is no one who will demand justice for me, there is no point in my fighting for it for myself. I can't win this fight alone. I can't believe there isn't even anyone GREEDY enough to recognize that they could win millions prosecuting lawsuits on my behalf.

If the verdict of this society is that my life should be thrown away if I won't bow down further, so be it. I have done all that I can do alone. I give up.


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