Ceci on the Big Joe Beanbag Chair

As I am typing this, I am inundated with the wake of commentary regarding the Lindsey Clancy case. For those reading this in the future, the short version of this horrific tragedy is that Lindsey Clancy was a mother of three young children, including an infant three months old, who systematically strangled all three with a rubber exercise cord, one at a time. There’s no physical rebuttal that she committed this crime. What the case does revolve around seems to be solely about her state of mind when she did this. Was she aware? And though new facts may arise, it appears she was. But the argument is being made that she was having a psychotic break when she killed them, which she then followed by throwing herself off a second story platform, paralyzing herself from the waist down.

What I would like to talk about is a different perspective on how to view not just her situation, but mental illness in general. I would argue that she is a cold-blooded psychopathic killer. But there is a lot of extant noise in the news media that would not just condemn my viewpoint. There is, insanely enough, quite a large body of support for Lindsey Clancy, along with the justification that because she had postpartum depression, she should really be held innocent of this crime.

It is important to note that a fair number of people have put their money where their mouth is. Clancy, as of this writing, has raised north of $1M for her parents, ostensibly to fund their expenses during the trial. Volumes of online support have been generated for the position that somehow Lindsey was not in her right mind, and deserves pity instead of justice.

To be honest, I don’t really care about whatever justification may be generated about Clancy’s innocence. Clancy is a cold-blooded psychopath by any definition, and has forfeited her position and her own right to life in society. What is interesting (pathologically) involves the downstream position of society after what has turned into a very public event. The trial has been declared a mistrial, after apparently, one of the jurors refused to roll on the notion that Clancey was guilty. 10 out of 11 of the jurors apparently thought she was INNOCENT. The jury was composed of 9 women, and 3 men, and as much as we know, it was one man who refused to accept the explanation that she was not responsible for her actions.

Let that sink in.

The deeper problem with all this is the wild precedent that women cannot be held responsible for control of their thoughts if the belief is that they were in some version of a hormonal cycle. And they get to decide.

Believe it or not, this gets back to the issue of what is agency and happiness anyway? If we take the relational perspective of this blog into account, this boils down to the level of psychosocial development of the individual — and how society should view this, especially in edge cases. A better question than “is she a psychopath?” (she obviously was/is) is “what kind of societal constraint would have prevented the brutal murder of her three young children?” Would her hanging have a prophylactic effect towards other crazies killing their kids? It might give them pause.

Right now, the lionization of Clancy, and her probable walk from guilt, is sending a terrible message across society. It establishes that yet another form of insanity, or the claiming thereof, is a divine right given to women. And if society establishes that under most conditions, if a mother is found to have murdered her children, she gets off. This is NOT without mythic historic precedent. The legend of Medea, wife of Jason, hero of the Golden Fleece fame, has her in various permutations, murdering her children. And conditions like Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has all sorts of various “slow murdering” of children as a more contemporary example. With MSBP, mothers slowly poison their children to appear sick to medical service providers for attention. You can read more here.

The problem with normalizing such pathological neurodivergence is that it is a collapse strategy for a society, and as I’ve written about here, a profound tool of OTHER psychopaths looking to find ways to spread anarchy and chaos. And it literally makes no one happy — not even the individual bestowed with some absurd hall pass for insane behavior.

The biggest societal level demonstration of this is probably not Clancy strangling her children. But you don’t have to look far. The trans movement stands as the real icon. The argument for men and women presenting as the opposite sex is couched in terms like “showing up as my authentic self” will somehow make them happy. As long, of course, as the government pays for the self-mutilation necessary for that to occur.

But that ignores the fact that there is some balance related to Internally Generated Self Image and Externally Determined Self Image. The argument, in the case of transgendered individuals, is that their internally generated self image is not incoherent, and if somehow society just allowed them to let their freak flag fly (regardless of larger cost to others in society) they would FINALLY be happy.

But so many of these pathologies count on their taboo nature, even in order to bring orgiastic stimulation to the various disorders of autogynephilia. By society giving in to their disordered requests, the mentally ill are actually more miserable than if they were up in their distressed wive’s closet trying on panty hose. The idea that a crazy person, through virtue of their own insanity, could know what makes them happy is ludicrous. As well as the corollary that society should dispense with constraints that protect other members of society from their incoherence and insanity, because of some fundamental right an individual deserves in their pursuit of calming the cockroaches in their brain. Or hormones. Should women, because of postpartum depression, be relieved of the responsibility to keep their children alive, because they declare themselves a protected class, that needs to strangle infants for peace of mind? There is a sizable contingent of women who seem to think so. Just like there is a nonsignificant cohort of men who believe, in a delusional fashion, that their participation in rituals inside women’s restrooms, is a sacrosanct right.

What we end up with, when we decide to grant such agency to murderers and self-mutilators, is not a more fair and just society. We end up with a society where normalcy of even modest means is in retreat. And the only people in public spaces are crazy. A version of this plot line is going on regarding homeless people in large Blue cities in the US. To go to Portland is to traipse through homeless encampment after homeless encampment. And it might be fine if the homeless were the least bit societally productive. But sooner or later, some contingent of the society has to tote that bale. “Live and let live” might sound fine with doubled over fentanyl addicts. But it’s parasitic to the core.

I think we as a society need to wake up and realize these things. Every dog might have a tick or two on them in the springtime. But there are limits. And like it or not, our modern society is held together by mental coherence. And when you’re killing your own children without consequence, you’re pushing up against societal survival.