Snitches get stitches. Is there a better way?
I'm going to take a very controversial position. Perhaps, one day, I will rue taking this position, but I doubt that I will. Recently, I read this article about the snitch known as "Anna." The story is told from her point of view and we all know that anyone willing to be a snitch is, by definition, dishonest, as snitching entails deception, false representation, treachery, betrayal, and outright lying. Since we know this, we must discount most of what she has to say. Eric McDavid has his own story and I would believe him long before I would believe "Anna."
Nevertheless, "Anna" is in hiding. She fears for her safety. Many, perhaps including myself, have had made comments like "snitches get stitches" in reference to snitches. She may have a well founded fear of retribution.
Recently, I made a discovery that someone I had met (Bridget) in a political organization (CISPES) and fallen in love with, 17 years ago, was a snitch. I did not know she was a snitch until many years later. It is a long story and in that story she stalked me anonymously and did many nasty things. The fact that she was a snitch was confirmed when I discovered that she works for the Defense Intelligence Agency. Apparently, being a snitch and harassing people is what she does for a living. She has been at this trade for at least 18 years. Like "Anna", she lives in fear too (see this link, this one, and this link). (I found posts by her online showing that she lives in fear, for all I know, of me).
The article about "Anna" hints that after finishing her schooling, "Anna" may join the FBI. No doubt, if she does join the FBI, she will become a snitch just like Bridget. This brought two problems before me. One is this: how do we stop "Anna" and people like her from becoming U.S. Government sponsored dirtbags? The other is: how to we show people like Bridget that there is an alternative to the evil work they do?
It occurred to me that being a government snitch is much like being a prostitute. You fuck people for a living and it destroys your reputation. However, unlike prostitution, the people you fuck want you dead. A person in such a position is likely to have one and only one option: continuing being a snitch. This is especially true if the person has little more to offer the world. "Anna" doesn't seem to have much talent at anything. The article indicates to me that she lacks empathy, is an Islamophobic racist, has no sense of ethics, and is fueled by hate and ignorance. How much more so will she be filled with hate when she realizes, as she does now, that everyone seeking to make this a better world thinks she deserves a good beating or worse?
My snitch never succeeded in framing me for anything. She did succeed in stalking me for years, interfering with my employment, and for a time, driving me underground. She tried to spur people on to harm me. In effect, she tried to make me live the life she is living, a life or paranoia and subterranean existence. It is as if she used me as a punching bag to express the resentment she feels towards all of us who hate snitches. It was her way of getting back at all activists for the fear she lives under.
Now, I've felt a great deal of empathy for Eric McDavid because, like him, I fell in love with my snitch. I did not love Bridget for her political position. I did not love her for her looks (which are not much to write about it). I loved her for the sense of her being I felt when she was near me. I profoundly loved her. I never stopped loving her, though I've moved in. Now that I know what she is all about, I do not like her anymore. I think she is a scumbag. However, I know that deep inside that hideous monster there is someone I love. When a mother sees her son go to his execution for having murdered an innocent person, she weeps. She knows that inside of what seems like a monster is a human being. In the same way I decide not to take revenge upon my snitch. If I am one that she fears, I wish her to know that she has nothing to fear from me. I forgive her. I forgive her because she is human and because I realize that only someone deeply defective could behave as she has done. I feel pity for her. I seek no apology and I seek no closure.
However, what I do wish from her is that she looks within herself and sees herself for what she has become. I hope she comes to realize that it is people like her that have enabled all of the evils that humanity has suffered throughout our history. People like her enabled Hitler to murder millions. People like her enable the Khmer Rouge to liquidate about 1/3 of Cambodia's population. People like her enabled the government of the former East Germany to terrorize its population. People like her have stepped on the spirits and/or lives of people like Galileo, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Mary Dyer, Anne Hutchinson, Emma Goldman, Henry David Thoreau, Malcolm X, Leon Trotsky, Salvador Allende, and countless others. My snitch justified her activities under her alias as "protecting her way of life." Yet, every way of life eventually gives way to a better way of life. Unfortunately, there stands in the way of that newer and better way of life snitches like Bridget and "Anna."
Yet, when we take a punitive and threatening position in relation to their misdeed, we leave these twisted people with little option to do anything else with their lives. We reinforce their mistaken belief that we are the bag guys. We make them feel transform the police into their saviors. The gap between us and them grows and, in the end, the vicious antipathy between us and them grows. I won't have it.
I'm taking a controversial position. I forgive my snitch and harasser. I wish her enlightenment. I hope my words prompt her to rethink her path in life. I do not hate her. I no longer like her, but I still love her for the human being she is. I hope she now sleeps better at night.
Good night, Bridget. Live well.
