Personalities

by Bill White 

I have previously described prison as something of an insane asylum, particularly the unit I am in, which seems to be used by the Bureau of Prisons as a kind of dumping ground for the mentally ill. But along with straight insanity—defined as the belief in things that are obviously not true, the perception of sensations that are not there, and the inability to control behaviors that makes no sense—one also encounters bizarre personalities. In general, these are the same range of personalities that one encounters anywhere else, but in prison one tends to encounter these personalities in concentration.

For instance, I can think of one man I’ve encountered who was not a bad fellow, but, who was almost completely unable to determine when someone else was lying to or manipulating him.  Or rather perhaps because he lacked the normal sense of when someone was lying to him, he often generally suspected those who weren’t, while embracing those who were. The root cause was what they call narcissism, being so wrapped up in one’s self that one becomes unable to determine the motives of others.

As with many odd personalities, just speaking to the fellow, he is nice enough.  But after knowing him a bit and looking into various communications and papers that he had, I found some very strange things. 

For instance, in writing he often marked documents with what one might call tactical notes, notes about the methods he was using in the document to try to manipulate the other person

When writing to others, the man would often exclaim things that a normal person would not say to another, discussing, despite knowing that his communications were monitored, the need to do certain things to get around the prison administration. (Despite knowing that communications are monitored one often finds prison inmates doing this, sending out plain instructions to another to do various things to circumvent security, unable to conceive of the hostile person reading or listening to their words.)

 After looking into things a bit, it was clear that many of the people that this person was communicating with, instructing, commanding, and manipulating were just playing him for a fool, saying what he wanted to hear in order to get what they wanted, mostly money, though I suspect in other situations also information, compliant behavior, and so forth.

This obliviousness to other people is frequent in prison. It’s ironic, I think, that various psychologists have poked guesses at my own personality, labeling it narcissist, when in fact, I’m often the opposite, too aware of the motives of other people. I’m very aware of the effect that I can have on other people. I just don’t care. I think it’s better to tell people the truth, even when they find it unpleasant, than to coddle them.  Even when what I say at the moment has a negative consequence for me, to use the silly words of the psychological profession.

Look at my various federal trials. I would have been much better off taking a plea bargain if my primary goal had been to obtain my release from prison as soon as possible. In both of the past two cases I could see that for various reasons I was not going to win at trial, and anyone who thought that I went at trial believing that an attorney who refused to look at the discovery was going to win my acquittal is themselves suffering from a great failure of empathic understanding. 

In both cases, I consciously chose to go to trial knowing that I would most likely lose and receive substantial prison sentences, because I also knew that I did not commit the crimes, and that with perseverance I would be able to overturn the sentences. 

Also, I had no real need not to be in prison for the several years that followed.  I was physically ill and knew that something was very wrong with me—I now know it to have been an RES-related brain injury—and I knew that I was being stalked by someone who I then presumed and now know to have been the federal government. Until these issues could be sorted out I really couldn’t function outside of prison, as I believe that I told the judge at my second sentencing. As it is, having failed to flee the country, being arrested as I was probably kept me from being killed by the FBI in May-June 2012, if the things that have been said about this are correct. 

[For those who may think this "paranoid," two words for you--Lavoy Finnicum. - HAC] 

So, while I listened to stupid judges ramble on about how I must have thought I could somehow beat the system because no one would have gone to trial in the situation I was in, to the contrary I was confident that even though I was going to lose at the time, in the long run, by telling the truth, I would be able to figure out what happened. And insofar as the broad outlines are concerned and many of the details, I have. Now, having figured that out, getting justice is another matter. But I am confident that that will be obtained in the end as well. 

[One theory on the Bill White case is that he is being punished for refusing repeated plea bargain offers and forcing the dictatorship to fabricate evidence and compelling federal law enforcement officers to perjure themelves in ways which may at some point come back to bite them. This is probably why Bill's repeated appeals citing specific exculpatory evidence are being ignored and why he is being denied counsel. - HAC] 

Another personality that I encounter here is the loathsome individual that I mentioned the other day. I don’t tolerate SHU conditions well. While there earlier this week, I had to listen to this fool shouting at me because I told the truth, which is that the other fellow attacked me. 

In convict land, in theory, one doesn’t “tell” like that on another.  However, what I can see and the fruitcakes on this unit apparently cannot, is that the other fellow is what is called a “bug” or a “goofy,” a person who is insane and for whom no real rules apply.

This little loathsome fellow is, as one might expect, a chronic liar. He is a little rat of a man; he is apparently almost fifty, though I would guess his age at his twenties if I didn’t know that he’d been in prison almost 25 years. The fellow is a “threat guy”: I often joke that he is the person that the federal government thinks I am. LOL.

I first met him years ago. When I did, he told me that he was a contract killer for the Mafia. Then he told me that he is a Gangsta Disciple. Then he told me a few other stories about stabbing people, seducing BOP staffers, punching officials in the face and so on, all fantasy. When I first encountered him here, he told me that he burned a judge’s house down. All of this is nonsense.

In reality, the guy is a pathetic little turd who spends his life writing threatening letters to judges because he feels weak, wants to harm them, and doesn’t have the courage to attack them physically. The other day, when he pushed me a little too much with his mouth, I pointed this out to him. In fact, right after he made some silly comment about stabbing me, I noted that he had never stabbed anyone in his life. I pointed out that, when he told his psychologist that he had punched a captain in the face, she had started laughing at him (though this was not her fault; she saw me laughing and lost her composure). I told him that no one believes anything he says, and that everyone who meets him knows that he’s just some sad weak pathetic guy who makes up stories to try to cover up how sad and weak he is.

Then, I pointed out that he’d spent the past twenty five years going from prison to prison getting his ass kicked, checking in to the SHU, and then doing nasty things from behind the safety of a steel door, all to the point that literally no prison in the Bureau of Prisons would take him. Leaving him stuck, as he is now, in the SHU here at Marion CMU. In fact, I pointed out that his ass got kicked here by someone who, if he didn’t have some sort of brain injury of his own, would be the nicest inmate in the Bureau of Prisons, so that he can’t even walk around this relatively peaceful place.

When I did this, I got something that I didn’t think I would from it; I got the guy to sit down and shut up. 

I don’t think that you can say what I did was cruel or unkind, as I simply told this man some true things that he needed to know, as his failure to face them is the source of a lot of his life problems.

Maybe he had terrible things done to him as a child to make him so foul, or maybe he was just born defective. I don’t know.

It’s not really my concern. I’m sure that there’s a reason he’s so foul; all things have reasons. And while what I said probably did not do any good, it is a human obligation to tell people the truth, always with the hope that showing them the truth will allow them to face that truth and overcome it. I try very hard to do this with my own life, and I always wish that more people would be truthful to me. Sometimes I don’t like it, but I always prefer to hear that I am making a mistake, or that I’ve made a mistake, particularly when there is a constructive solution to it. 

I know that telling someone what is wrong with them is rude and often counterproductive, particularly in the short term, to human relations. I do know how to keep my mouth shut, and I try not to tell people that I meet casually things that they are not equipped to hear. When I do, I tend to be called an asshole, or get something like “who are you to talk?” I get less of that as I get older. 

But, in the case of the loathsome fellow, you could make a point.  After all, if I committed the crimes for which I am in prison, I’m not only no better than he is, I actually have to be like he is. If you’re the kind of person who trusts in the judgment of a federal court, I not only have no reason to talk, but I should be hanging my head in shame and reflecting on what a turd I am, I guess—though my reasons for doing so would have no more to do with my alleged victims than I think that this guy should be upset because he hurt some judge’s feelings. If I committed the crimes, then I am a very different person than I know myself to be—in fact, I’m that guy -- and if that were true, I wouldn’t do as he does, and just cut my wrists to get a trip out of the prison to the hospital now and then.

Fortunately, I know that I’m not that guy. In my case, I know that guy or his female equivalent is the one whom the FBI used to give her phony eyewitness identification testimony. What I know is that throughout my interactions with the FBI, the Bureau of Prisons and the like, they have consistently aligned themselves with “that guy” in various guises to fabricate a personality around me which they have then gone on to prosecute and publicly trumpet in order to feed their failed social system the lies that they need to sustain it.

As I’ve remarked before, sitting in prison, particularly one like this, is an opportunity for reflection. Through the pathologies that one sees in others, I am constantly reminded of what not to be. I am constantly reminded of those things that dishonesty, desire, and attachment to the things of the world continually tempt men to become. Unable to live in reality, they descend into fantasy. Unable to see what is, they act based upon what isn’t. Ultimately they end up here, spouting some crazy theory about how this isn’t prison, they didn’t do anything wrong because they were just trying to get themselves off of the stock market, and, they’ve really been locked into a post office box.