I am writing this on Friday June 18. Yesterday Paul and I both became aware of a man who after years of being brutalized by the family court system, decided to share his pain and outrage with the world, with the intent of shining a bright light on ongoing corruption and the systematic destruction of human beings by a corrupt court system.
The man’s name was Thomas James Ball. He doused himself in gasoline then self immolated on the steps of a family courthouse in New Hampshire. Mr Ball chose to use his own agonizing death to focus public attention on the corruption of the family courts. He did this two days ago. And before just now, you have probably never heard of him.
The mainstream media has no interest in human suffering, when it belongs to a man.
How much personal agony, how many years of pain does a human have to endure before death by self immolation seems like a rational choice? And yes, I will stand on the word rational here. Mr Ball wrote a detailed account of his experience in the family court system, as well as a summary of his research, and his consequent deep understanding of the scope and depth of corruption driving the institution of the family courts. His letter is linked in the masthead of this site – and I strongly recommend you read it. Its long, but its not rambling – and anybody who calls it rambling is doing so to discredit and belittle this man, and to distract you from the very real pain produced in the lives of millions by a corrupt court system.
But everything Ive just written is preamble to the real point I want to make.
Mr Ball’s last words were originally published on the New Hampshire Sentinel Source website, and comments like the one I’m about to copy-paste were the norm on that site. This example was also re-posted by a failed example of a human on the copy of Thomas Ball’s letter on this site.
“Let’s remember folks, Tom Ball had 21 years in the military. He had a pension. So it is not just that he was without work since 2009. Again, he had a pension.
He did do some good work volunteering time helping homeless vets in Worcester… He should have stayed doing that, continuing to contribute to the world, instead of going out in a blaze of ….apparently in his mind… of glory…. His statement against feminists, social workers, bureaucracy…. No doubt problems there…. but to let his obsessions carry him away….
As a good soldier, he should have bucked up and dealt with it…. Endured …. pressed-on…. instead of what he did…
To me, he walked out on his responsibilities…. the money for his children’s healthcare…And much more.
Dare I say it…. He is, in my opinion, a deadbeat dad…..Sorry, but that is my view of him after reading his manifesto…..Sorry…. But he hurled himself into the afterlife to make a statement,…. When his children and others (the vets) still needed him.”
Let that sink in. For anybody in doubt about this comment, I’ll explain.
That commenter was telling a man whose agony was so great that burning himself to death with gasoline was a viable option – telling such a man to suck it up and continue to be a utility and a resource to the system which brutalized him to an extent that a death by fire seemed rational.
Tough luck on your life Mr Ball, we do not recognize that you experience pain. Just suck it up; man up and carry on providing for the people around you.
The absolute indifference to human suffering would be immediately recognized as psychopathic if the pain belonged to anyone else – but when it’s a man – our society just does not give a fuck.
The pain of a man is invisible.
And my friends – that is why there is such a thing as the men’s rights movement. It is why so many men are in deep and terrible pain – pain that when mentioned or complained of, men are told: shut up, don’t be a sissy, man up.
That indifference – is why many men and MRAs are deeply, implacably angry. Our society is presently on an insane course – because when confronted by any manifestation of this anger – the established response is to lock the man feeling it into a cage; to deny that it is legitimate, and refuse to address the source.
Does anybody think that can have any outcome except eventual disaster? Mr Ball – in his final essay provided an impassioned and rational imperative for burning courthouses and killing corrupt officials.
Are we going to pretend that he was a lone nut and that the agony which drove him to burn himself to death on the steps of a New Hampshire courthouse was not agony felt by hundreds of thousands of other men, also brutalized by a corrupt court system?
The comment – expressing indifference to this man’s pain, and telling him to suck it up and go back to being a good little appliance – that comment represents dozens of others expressing the same sentiment. In the case of Mr. Ball, he demonstrated the control and restraint in all his agony that his rage was spent inwards against himself in a gruesome death. This too reflects the deeply embedded culture of self sacrifice that men are conditioned to believe is the only viable mode of masculinity.
But its not. Male self actualization is a major element of the men’s rights movement, which may be one of the reason critics try so hard to shut us up. What if Mr. Ball had chosen to vent his agony outwards onto who he perceived as the source, the employees officers and physical premises of the family courts?
And to turn around and tell a man brutalized to the point of self immolation, to man up, suck it up? To any individual so indifferent to the pain of another human – expressing that callous indifference might seem funny. Cruelty substituting in place of humor.
The marginalization of men by the system of law is not getting better, it is getting worse – and the rage and agony of Mr. Ball was not unique.
And our society currently deals with this by locking such men up. Like that will make the problem smaller, or make it go away.
I wont tell you what to do, but I expect, what you’re going to do is go back to sleep.
Go ahead, sleep while you still can
