For Whom The Bell Tolls

The first time I saw Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, a 1996 documentary about the West Memphis Three was maybe during the Chicago Film Festival and definitely at the Music Box, arthouse and independent movie theater. The West Memphis Three (WM3) were teenager— Jesse Misskelley, Jason Baldwin, and Damien Echols, charged with the 1993 murders of three 8 year-old boys, Steven Branch, Christopher Byers, and James Moore, in West Memphis, Arkansas. The state’s case was based on a confession from 16 year-old Misskelley, questioned for over twelve hours by the police. The interrogation was held without counsel or an adult present for Misskelley, who has an intellectual disability. Only the last 46 minutes were taped. He confessed, along with incriminating 17 year-old Baldwin and 18 year-old Nichols. All three were convicted, Misskelley and Baldwin sentenced to life and Nichols to death as the ringleader. They were outcasts in the Bible Belt, they wore all black and liked heavy metal. Their families were poor.

No physical evidence tied the accused to the murders. The police decided the murders were committed as a Satanic ritual, and the investigation stopped there. Misskelley, Baldwin, and especially Nichols stood out in the town as misfits. The case gained a lot of national attention, along with a lot of support for the defendants from musicians, including Pearl Jam and Metallica.

In Paradise Lost, a mother of one of the victims is interviewed by the local news about her son, she’s holding his Cub Scouts kerchief and puts it on her head. It sits there, perched, obviously too small. She is in so much pain, of course, her son was just murdered, I imagine she is self-medicating. She doesn’t fulfill what central casting offers us for the role of victim’s mother. Movies and TV give us respectable and sympathetic victims’s families, people who satisfy a mythology of upright victim while the accused fulfill their roles, capable of monstrous acts.

Damien Nichols, Jessie Misskelley and Jason Baldwin. Eventually they were all released in 2011 using the Alford Plea, time served.

But Paradise Lost is a documentary, the people are who they are, substantial time is spent with everyone’s families. This mother¹, she’s a bit hollow, torn through with grief and filling herself with something to avoid it. Her teeth are a little fucked up. She’s a little fucked up. She has a heavy Southern accent.

The Music Box is an old theater on the North side of Chicago. That night the theater was sold out. The audience in the Music Box, not everyone, but enough to notice, laughed at this scene. Laughed at the murdered boy’s mother. This predominantly white audience of people who go to independent movie theaters, laughing at her during this scene. It pissed me off.

I’ve never shaken this memory, it won’t leave me. This story, witnessing people’s lives and pain, didn’t bridge the difference between the sold out movie theater and the victims, the families, the accused. Difference was illuminated, shone bright, and revealed as fodder for the bourgeoisie. I’ve held onto this memory, and as I was writing about it, it dawned on me, that this scorn, reminds me of the Democratic Party.

I know that’s a vague notion, that something reminds me of the Democratic Party. I’m talking about Thee Democratic Party, the one that lost and just throw their hands up in the air right now. There’s something sheltered and entitled to the Democrats that lacks definition, like literally lacks concrete definition of what and who they are for. They are better at defining themselves in absence, who they are not. Over the years it’s a party that seems to be defined in opposition to, that they are not Republican, because they’re better than that. Actually, I think that is Better Than That. And that comes with entitlement and contempt for many. And contempt for many has become a talking point.

In the middle of January, an opinion piece from the Guardian made the social media rounds upon publishing, shared, and reposted for a solid week, based on the title. “I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down-I just didn’t expect them to be such losers.” It’s about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and their subsequent proximity to Trump, the presidency and power. I’ve read the piece twice, the word ‘cringe’ is used more than I’ve ever read before, not just in any piece of writing, but in every piece of writing, collectively. Maybe in the world. The author, Rebecca Shaw, finds these men repugnant, and lame.

I worked hard to keep these kinds of men out of my personal life, to keep them away from me, out of my goddamn sight. Now they are in my face daily, not only influencing the world for the world but making me nauseous at how uncool and pathetic they are, on top of their other sins. It’s too much, I can’t take it, there needs to be a change.

The New York Times published an opinion piece from Hillary Clinton this past week entitled “How Much Dumber Will This Get?”, regarding the infamous Signal group chat about bombing Yemen that unknowingly included the Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. Clinton used her personal email server for official public communication while she was the Secretary of State, between 2009 and 2013, I see the appeal of having her write about the Signal Group Chat Leak.²

Since 2015, the general Democratic consensus about Trump and Trump supporters is that they are stupid. I wish. But I don’t think stupid gets in the White House twice. I don’t think stupid is capable of creating an existence immune from prosecution, ostensibly for life. I thought maybe after a few months of life with this litany of abuses, executive orders, utter cruelty and harm being dealt like cards, this death by a thousand cuts³ we are living, I thought that the dismissive language about this political situation would cease and Democrats would get to the real work. The work isn’t holding themselves up, but showing people that they are capable of fighting for the people they pretend to care about but only court every two to four years. Clinton refers to her years as Secretary of State:

I argued for smart power, integrating the hard power of our military with the soft power of our diplomacy, development assistance , economic might and cultural influence. None of those tools can do the job alone. Together, they make America a superpower. The Trump approach is dumb power.

Last I checked people still died under dumb power.

Clinton discusses the intricacies of diplomacy, and points to how everything happening right now is an affront to it and makes this country less safe. She mourns a world that doesn’t exist right now, one where America wins “hearts and minds that otherwise might go to terrorists or rivals like China.” I can’t tell if this opinion piece is supposed to win any hearts and minds of Trump supporters or give Clinton a chance to excavate her career while she tells us how bad everything is.

Stop telling us what you did, over a dozen years ago. Tell us what you’re doing now. Not because I don’t value the past, but because no one sees a future from the Democratic Party. Fuck, I don’t think they do either. The past we should be looking at is local organizing and unionizing efforts. It’s not a terrible piece, but I can’t get past the word ‘dumber’ in the title. This is a clickbait world. When you use the word ‘dumb’ repeatedly in your Times opinion piece, it does nothing except make you and a handful of people still wearing The Future is Female t-shirts feel good. If you weep that ‘uncool’ men, rather than the supposed cool ones, are ruining the world, I’m here to tell you this correct gross generalization that all men are ruining the world, especially the white cis ones.

Repeatedly calling something or someone dumb is dismissive. That’s dangerous. We can’t afford to be dismissive, we’ve been living in the consequences of this approach for almost a decade. There’s certainly nothing to be arrogant about here. Arrogance thinks it is untouchable. This smug snark is for insular cocktail parties, not mainstream press, giving more ammunition for Republicans.

We let ourselves off the hook when we call things dumb and uncool, nothing can be done about it, so what’s the point? That’s the point of view of someone who has resources, and resources generally indicate protection. Maybe we can’t do anything about US embassies closing, but a thousand cuts requires a thousand fixes. Feeding and clothing people, learning the difference between ICE and judicial warrants, working to get a new mayor in office. Housing people. Standing up for people being harmed by the government, whether they are being denied gender-affirming health care or access to abortions, or they are being bombed in Gaza, held in detention in Louisiana or disappeared altogether. Our government shines at abuse, there’s lots to do. Show up. People remember when you stand up for them, when you care about them. Transversely, people who are regularly overlooked, they don’t forget, no matter how dumb you think they are.

1. I haven’t seen Paradise Lost in a long time, hence my lack of detail regarding which boy was her son and her name. The rest I cannot forget.

2. Signal Group Chat Leak is the official name, I think, of this clusterfuck, and my prediction is if it doesn’t get a catchier name, this scandal won’t have legs. Feel free to leave ideas in the comments section. Group Leak?

3. This use of this phrase is inspired by ACT UP’s 38th anniversary protest this past Saturday, March 29th: Death By A Thousand Musk Cuts.