One of the current trending intrigues asks how a mother, Lindsay Clancy, should be handled. She has admitted to the murder of her three children. Despite the usual cavalcade of conspiracy theorists and online detectives insisting she may be a patsy, or set up. The human and systemic need to find culpability fuels the torches towards blame targets. Is she responsible for her own actions? This has become one aspect of modern Western life. The disavowing of personal responsibility. We can no longer claim that demons or evil spirits are responsible, that inner voice is a mental health condition, or the influence of drugs, legal or otherwise, or an input, perhaps social media, podcasts, a movie, songs, video games, a book, whatever is needed to be blamed and banned. Or, regulated. And, inevitably politics in some form rears it’s ugly head, a view is defined by an ideological inclination. Nuance and complex understandings can not exist, it must be reduced to binaries. The children, the innocent, remain dead. They deserved better, and should not be mere props to theatre and agendas.
It has become a catch cry for most things now, especially when it comes to control. To think about the children, all children, any children, your children, imaginary children and very real victims who may have suffered or become caught up in a thing. That thing is whatever needs to be banned, controlled or restricted. The all children, because of a child, is now a reason to punish and repress all people. The children, are now a means to an end. A power grab. They may be an imaginary abstraction, as well as very real children who suffered. The thing to be banned, and the circumstances reduced to a single issue. If not for this thing, then no bad could have happened. End of story. The child is a martyr for the wider issue, the need for control. For the greater good. The safety of all life, or something.
It does not take much investigation to witness through our digital key hole very real children starving to death, or ripped to pieces. Dying, instantly or slowly. They are brown, dirty and foreign so not exactly innocent or really children to the voyeurs who lurk from screens inside privilege. These children live in an alien land, where their parents god, or language or more appropriately the government that rules over them, is pariah. Those children can not be innocent. They are not victims. They are meat to be minced and beaten to death. They have no agency or barely matter, not even as statistics. Unless off course, the killers are not allies, or familiars. Then, children can be used as a means to kill more children, but their kids, other children who do not belong to ‘us’ or allies. The innocent, barely props. They are debris. Bits of their little bodies as significant as masonry blasted into powder. Recently, 140 Iranian school girls can be brutally bombed to death, burned alive, many online cheered their painful deaths beneath the banner of jingoistic and national pride.
To call the murder of innocent children a crime, or murder. To see it as an evil and reprehensible act is a complex position to hold now. Depending on the children killed, it can deem one as being anti-semetic, hateful, or even terrorist. A genocide can occur in plain sight but the context of power and gatekeeper media determine how the dead should be viewed, the blame and responsibility for the innocent lives taken placed everywhere and at times no where. They remain dead and suffering, the tears of grieving parents almost dry because in time, there will be none left. No children, no parents, no water to weep, just dead. And, it turns out this is fine, legitimate because the killers will colonise the land, develop it and this is progress. In some parts of the world, the powerful have decided this.
The tragedy of a parent murdering their child, is ancient. If not for the angel in Abraham’s head and a ram to be killed instead, the Abraham of the Abrahamic religions could have murdered his own son, Isaac. This is taught as a test. And when that test fails, it’s murder. Unless a god wills the killing. When a nation, or people has god’s will on their side, or believe as much. The extermination of an entire people and their children is vindicated by the will of the creator. This will exists in the mind in many, just not one lonely person. One person makes it murder, crazy. Thousands of people make it a political religion, a nation. Not murder. Legal. And, before and since Abraham, too many parents have killed their kids. Often, they were understood to be horrible people.
Constance Fisher was an American mother, she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She had a history a mental disturbances and in 1954 she drowned three of her children. The jury found her not guilty on the grounds of insanity. She was committed to a psychiatric hospital and in 1959, she was released, “cured”. She later re-married and had three more children. In 1966, she drowned her second lot of three children. Her claim was that she had received divine instructions to save her children from evil. Indeed, the lord works in mysterious ways and the expertise of psychiatric experts is constantly uncertain. She was re-commited and in 1973, she serendipitously died in an accidental drowning.
In, 2007 Canadian professional wrestler Chris Benoit murdered his wife Nancy and their seven-year-old son, Daniel. Benoit hung himself after. It was a high profile murder suicide. A need to explain and find blame for his actions have ranged from, brain damage due to his wrestling career, steroid usage, and drinking. Any one or all of those factors. His brain was found to show signs of severe damage which may have led to his unstable mental health. There was no history of voices from demons, angels or any god, but Benoit had physically abused his wife in the past. The murder was likely a pre-meditated act, rather than ‘roid rage’ which is often attributed to male athletes who use performance enhancers and have suffered head injuries.
The US government investigated the WWE, Benoit’s doctor and anyone else that could be blamed, fined and held responsible. That same year, that very US government had directly killed hundreds of children close to Daniel Benoit’s age in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Their deaths wiped aside as merely collateral damage. And, many US servicemen returned home only to be themselves involved in murder-suicides, perhaps linked to the injuries and trauma sustained, both moral and physical during their deployment in the military. The WWE has yet to investigate the US government for it’s responsibilities in those murders.
At this time, one member of the jury has held out in the Lindsay Clancy trial. The lone juror, apparently a man has further twisted the conversation online as another battlefield between ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘toxic femininity’. With governments ‘cracking’ down on manosphere or other forms of masculine fixated content, the misandry and ‘defend women no matter what’ mob have been able to cheer and celebrate the dead children, some even discussing their own urges to kill children. The modern predilection for binaries and preformative content, and policy, has contorted a singular case into a broader example of male vs female discourse, or, conservative vs ‘woke’, among many other discourses. It has also opened up the reality that modern mental health domination, and diagnosis of all things, and all people, allows for a general belief that illness, or conditions removes any personal responsibilities.
And, with some irony, while children have and are used as the reason for all forms of modern tyranny, it begs the question, ‘won’t somebody think of the children.’ They are innocent, and are not props or means to validate ideologies or use as a validation to introduce censorship, surveillance and prohibitions. A mother murdered her children. She is not the effigy of all women, not all mothers. Chris Benoit is not all men, not all fathers. Or, all pro-wrestlers for that matter, he is not all drinker, he is not all steroid users, or even brain damage users. He represented Chris Benoit. The case should not be a battlefield between the sexes, or as proof that mental health should by default trump accountability.
There has been a push to convince people to have more kids. To mate, breed. The population is shrinking and even while some people are not cut out to be parents, the above extreme cases as examples. Not to mention the countless abusive parents or those who have abandoned their children. There are also those who regret being a parent, as I discovered in an investigation some years ago by entering closed Facebook groups called “I hate my kids” or. “I wish I never had children”. Some in those groups had been forced into having children. They may secretly resent or go online, under a false name, and complain and share their turmoil with strangers. They may feel guilt or numb. Those I spoke with had no violent intentions towards their children, but, some claimed to self harm or take drugs to escape a life they never wanted. The kids a prize, gift for one parent, but a burden to another. Regardless, they were innocent babies born regardless.
“I think about killing myself often…” one mother in the group wrote.
As for the depression and anxiety aspect to post-birth or any other elements in life. Depression, Trauma, Anxiety are words that have become over used, and saturate every aspect of online conversation and life itself. The terms have become noise. Those who do have very real symptoms or conditions, are lost among those who brandish those terms with little regard, or who use such feelings and experiences as an identity and badge. In doing so, make it harder to know who needs help, and to be taken seriously. And those deeply suffering may do so in silence, or with little regard for themselves because their pain and turmoil is drowned beneath a culture that now makes life into trauma, anxiety and any other diagnosis.
Many have drawn their conclusions as to whether Clancy is responsible or not. The mental health age and it’s many cure all’s and absolute known unknowns is just beginning. Tragedies such as this will become more prolific. Unfortunately, parents killing their kids, and kids killing their parents is ancient, and contemporary. Nick Reiner and Sean Sellers killed their parents, whether it was mental health, satanism or otherwise doesn’t change the outcome. Neither does it for any other killers, those of infamous note and less fame. Clancy’s kids are innocent. The kids in Gaza, or elsewhere are innocent. Benoit’s son was innocent, Constance Fisher’s kids were innocent. It seems to take outsiders to determine the value of their deaths, and validate their tragedies according to political, ideological or professional need. Issac would have been innocent too. How we define mental illness, political necessity, or religious faith seem to vary according to power and the greatest numbers.
Regardless… the innocent suffer. It’s for you to decide whether to mourn or exploit their deaths.
