Victimhood and Victimization-the cutting edge of activism

Victimhood and Victimization – the cutting edge of activism

Let talk a little about the cutting edge of innovative activism in the USA today. Jim I do realize I put you in a very difficult position in these last few months across this board.
Jim said “PS: permission granted for you to post this private email, if you'd like to show the world your victimization. They might wonder why you've disappeared, if it comes to that :-“

Maybe we need to discuss the issues of my victim-hood now. What I’ve generally discovered is the people who highly dislike me, or highly admire me, these are the people usually characterize me in the most narrow terms. Well, it just ain’t me.

I grew up in a low incoming housing project. There was gangs, drugs, stealing, and that is just the beginning of the things that I participated in. I had a lot of experience with observing the results of receiving and inflicting aggressions, assaults, sabotage, betrayal…and all the rest of the gang behaviors. When I shower, I can take a look down on the side of stomach where there is a large deep life threatening knife stabbing scar.

I can tell you for a fact that most of my childhood buddies are dead, in jail, paraplegic because of gang violence, drug abuse, car crashes while DWI, or homeless. I was interrogated by the police many times –sometimes in their offices and sometimes in the back seat of their cars (beatings). Believe me I was never innocence while being interrogated in any of the forms.

I was also aware of how educated gentlemen of the establishment stole and corrupted the system. I knew people in high places kept my (mostly) name off of official documents and records, and at times I “worked” for them.

You guys can move around in your head engineering conceptual models, estimation and calculation of numbers –and I can move around the predictions and estimations of group dysfunctional dynamics -on myself, my friends, my enemies, the system and the suit coats –the detectives and newspaper people. They taught me if you are caught in an illegal act – even if coldly caught in the act with pictures –never admit that you ever done anything wrong. I have had more experience than you can imagine. I got away with much more that I disserved.

One day you wake up. Though, you never can erase the memories of your younger years. My memories of those days are almost as clear as a movie. I am haunted with my past – and I am ashamed of my behaviors. Memories of the hurt I’d seen, that I’d put in other people faces –is a jail I put myself in for the rest of my life. I also realized I was placed in a nightmare by my parents and the indifference of the culture around me. So you tell me what justice is?

Let me talk a little in my neighborhood language of years past about the methods and motives of my activities around Vermont Yankee in 1991. Let’s talk about who was assaulted and who was victimized. We will talk in symbols and images of the bureaucratic system here –not real people. It should be noted that I never reverted to actual violence throughout this period and I never will.

Have you ever watched wrestling on Tv –World Wrestling Federation (WF)? Mr. VY came walking in my turf one day. I came out from the bushes, came up quietly behind him, I blindsided him with my hardest sucker shot (punched) on the side of his head. The governor and state officials came into my neighborhood and I dropped her/them with a punch they didn’t see coming. In the ensuing mouths, they kept visiting my neighborhood and I kept dropping them with punches, which came out of nowhere. The punches were of course –the outside disclosures of internal secrets.

Then I intentionally disclosed that it was I who was assaulting you –and I kept walking up to them right in front of their faces and I continued to assault them. I said to them, you are either going to have to reform or you will have to victimize me in order to get me to stop. Do you understand, I defined their choices to two paths? I am telling you they were all dazed, bloody and bruised –and extremely fearful.

These candy asses choose to victimize me. Do you have any idea of the power with being anonymous, of creating a mystery, of acting counter to a business in the media, of transparent cultural sabotage and betrayal… and rule breaking and breaking everyones rules? Do you have any idea of the power you have in forcing them to in an underhanded manner –to turn you into a victim.

The hardest part for the whistleblower in a large institutional readjustment –is to anticipate the eventual blowback pressures of the bureaucracies, media, home and family- that will force you to cave in and prevent you from the completion of your task -in the end stage. In other words, you have got to anticipated that in they will force you to go begging for your career life and career dignity –and even your standing in your family and the community. In the end stage, you got to figure your career body is going to go begging for its last breath, wrecking any chance of institutional change. The question is –you got to set up the inertia in the opening and middle stages; such that when you eventually go begging for your final breath – the inertia, the hate, fear and anger of the system that you created that is aligned against you, will prevent them from throwing you in lifeboat. You want them to tie your up with a block of cement and throw you in the ocean. As Richard Nixon said when you end up hating your competitors, you self destruct. Like Jesus Christ said you need to love you enemies!

You drag everyone in to the drama –either in an attempt to destroy you, mostly the bureaucracy does it in an instinctual matter of survival, the media loves a mystery and people being anonymous –mostly the employees adores and loves anybody punching out management. The employees don’t care if it is justified. You end up drawing breathlessly everyone into the drama. What they don’t realize until it to late –you drag the establishment and bureaucrats extraordinarily into being knowledgeable and accountable to the dysfunctional culture. That’s what I’d done and I stepped around the whole god dammed system.

I am telling you –you have the power to interact with these institutional failures. People either hate your guts or admire you beyond belief at the end of it. Very few remain indifferent. You create a permanent image in their minds. Your name lives forever!

Jesus Christ I think did the same. Many of us framed him by his innocent victimization of the religious bureaucracy and legal system of those days. I don’t think that was true. Jesus “brutally assaulted” our limited humanity and the injustice of those days –and he cold bloodily forced the system to brutalize him. I think he tormented the men who were beating him with –you can’t hurt me, hit me harder. And the myths of Jesus life live in our minds today.

We need to look at the international disgrace concerning the Abu Ghraib prison around Baghdad Iraq with the sexual and physical abuse of the prisoners. You had young kids here involved in extraordinary events, which goes against everything they were taught here in the USA. You have to be very careful about the unconscious and conscious motives of these young kids who participated and took the pictures. In some ways, I think they staged those pictures. I am not saying that there was not cold bloody brutality going on at the prison.

This dammed thing between our ears. Sometimes we do brutal things for the shear thrill of doing it. Sometimes we model brutal behavior (illegal) in the hopes that the world will catch us –and thereby model to the world the dysfunctional systems we live under. It’s a scream for help. It’s extraordinarily potent and powerful. It has the power to change a course of an accident and change the direction of the world.

At some level they must have known those picture were going to get out to the media. Can you imagine the unconstrained power of the war machine about this, outside of accountability and laws? I know some of these Iraqis are killers and threats to American military service members? Can you imagine the torturer chamber we put our kids in, weighting the lesser evils and the bigger evils.

You see victimhood has to be interpreted very carefully. Is it retribution? Is it redemption? Is it passive? Is it brutally aggressive? Is it masochistic? Is it about a thrill?

I think the only pertinent question here –does it open up or close down the issues of your concern. Does it push the world away ---“or do you drag the world into your problem?

Therefore be careful, when you have a need to create a victim?

Thanks,

mike mulligan
Hinsdale, NH