He’s got a problem.
And the “he” I’m referring to is Bradley Manning, and the problems he has go further than the obvious.
For those who need a refresher, Manning is a former Army intelligence analyst, who leaked the largest cache of classified documents in U.S. history to WikiLeaks, a site named by U.S. intelligence as just nonstate-actors in service to the Kremlin.
Along with aiding our nation’s enemies, Pfc. Bradley Manning was found guilty of violating the Espionage Act, after copying and disseminating classified military field reports, State Department cables, and assessments of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In other words, Pfc. Manning was a traitor.
Of course, the far left loved him for it.
That didn’t keep a military judge back in August 2013 from sentencing him to 35 years in prison.
He deserved every day, but because he had the ingenious plan of claiming gender dysphoria while in prison, it ramped up the traitor-love of the left to astronomical heights, and the social justice president, Barack Obama, commuted Manning’s sentence on the last day of his presidency.
It was a slap in the face of every service member whose life was threatened by Manning’s treacherous actions.
Manning attempted to capitalize on the lefty love and publicity surrounding his case by launching a bid for the Senate in Maryland.
It has not worked out the way he’d hoped, and his campaign has struggled to gain traction.
On Sunday, the troubled whistleblower took to social media with what appeared to be a suicide threat.
He tweeted out an image of himself standing on a ledge, with the words, “I’m sorry.”
http://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1000956172231430145
The image was only up about ten minutes, before it was taken down.
It was sent shortly after a separate tweet that said: “I’m not really cut out for this world.” The tweets did not make clear where the photo was taken, and Manning’s friends declined to say.
That’s not stable.
The communications director for Manning’s Senate bid, Kelly Wright, said on Monday that he needed “space to heal.”
He also needs a therapist more than a Senate campaign, but Wright failed to address that.
Wright also went on to talk about how tough Manning has had it.
“I have seen firsthand and up close the violence inflicted on her by years of imprisonment, solitary confinement and torture,” Wright said. “This is made worse by the impossibly high expectations our society sets for public figures, especially on social media.”
Manning, who twice tried to kill herself while in a U.S. military lockup, recently told attendees at a Berlin tech conference that she felt a “kind of cult of personality” foisted upon her that she found really intimidating” and “overwhelming.”
Here’s the thing: If you don’t want high expectations that come from widespread attention, stop with the desperate attention grabs. If you don’t want to catch it rough in prison, don’t break the law.
Betraying your nation, forcing taxpayers to pay for your plastic surgery and asking them to call you by a different name, having activists work to have your punishment for betraying your nation cut short, then spending all your time on social media, tweetstorming, inserting yourself into high profile issues, and even starting a run for political office – all of this tends to draw scrutiny. What’s more, social media tends to bring out the worst in people. You wade in at your own peril.
Manning thought he’d be seen as a conquering hero and a leftwing social icon. He thought it was enough that he’d be handed a Senate seat. What a shock that he wasn’t the celebrity draw he had envisioned for himself.
When you are mentally unwell, being confronted with reality is often jarring.
Still, Manning’s defenders would have us believe his problems come from being imprisoned.
In a recent interview with the AP at her Maryland apartment, Manning was emotionally raw, her eyes welling up at times when discussing her motivations. When asked about her lengthy stints in solitary confinement, Manning said she occasionally wakes up panicked that she’s back in the cage in Kuwait where she was first jailed, or incarcerated at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where a U.N. official concluded she’d been subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.”
She said she had to work hard to overcome anxiety and told AP that it was “becoming increasingly clear” to her “just how deep the wounds are” from her years behind bars.
Take note of the fact that I do not refer to Manning as “her” or “she.” There will be no female pronouns used to refer to someone whose biology is male.
Catering to unrealistic fantasies and manifestations of mental illness is not healthy. Have compassion enough for this person to be honest about who he is. Coddling him, allowing him to believe that not only were his crimes not that bad, but that he’s also a woman and super-popular outside of the social experimentation bubble has harmed his mental state.
It would appear that even after Barack Obama rewarded his treachery, that little liberal bubble is the real prison for Manning. He’s unprepared to handle real life.
For his sake, I hope he gets some real friends around him, and not just clingers and hangers-on, pushing him to put himself out of his element.
Even if this latest “suicide attempt” was for attention, people that actually do care about Bradley, the person, instead of “Chelsea,” the social justice punchline need to press in close now, and help him out.
And if you’re considering suicide, there are resources available and people to talk to.
Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.