Stefan Molyneux discusses the Lindsay Clancy case and uses it to examine repeated conflict between a mother and her young son. He describes a Facebook post in which Clancy expressed frustration that her toddler resisted nearly every routine, framing this as an ongoing battle of wills rather than ordinary parenting difficulty.
A major theme is the claim that young boys instinctively resist female authority when it is imposed without respect. He argues that sons who are crushed into obedience by a dominant mother may become weak, submissive, and less attractive to “high-quality” women later in life, while fathers should intervene to prevent that dynamic.
He then draws on his own childhood, describing severe violence from his mother and saying that a terrifying early assault taught him that compliance was necessary for survival. He presents this as a form of “inoculation,” arguing that extreme violence can force submission in a child, though he emphasizes the moral horror of such behavior.
From there, he shifts to the role of the father, arguing that Patrick Clancy should have decisively protected his son from the conflict. In his view, a weak or conciliatory father can enable an abusive mother, leaving the child without a real ally.
The final part focuses on status, shame, and the consequences of a child becoming independent or going no-contact. He argues that abusive parents depend on control and public appearances, and that a child’s independence threatens that image. He ends by linking the boy’s death to a moment of visible independence, suggesting that this may have provoked the mother’s rage.
0:00:00 - Clancy Case Background
0:01:57 - Boys Resist Mom
0:04:51 - My Childhood Violence
0:08:29 - Threats and Compliance
0:16:14 - Why Kids Submit
0:21:11 - A Father’s Failure
0:25:24 - Protecting Sons
0:30:14 - Toddler Battles Fail
0:33:19 - Abuse, Status, and Control
0:44:08 - No Contact Fallout
0:54:12 - Independence Sparks Rage
0:58:00 - The Final Milestone
[0:00:00] So the etymology of the Lindsay Clancy case is fascinating, of course. And I don't know her. The trial is still ongoing. There is a Facebook post that she made, apparently, to a difficult kids, tough time parenting group or whatever it was called, where she was talking about her boy, her second born. Her firstborn was a girl, and her secondborn, of course, was a boy. And when he was 18 or 19 months, then what happened was she posted, and I won't read the whole thing, just the general gist is like, what am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do when my second child just resists and fights everything that I do? Resists and fights everything that I do. He fights getting up in the morning. He fights at breakfast. He fights at lunch. He fights to go down for a nap. He fights at bedtime. He fights at bath time. He just opposes everything. What am I supposed to do? And she said, I've already had a kid. This isn't my first rodeo. What am I supposed to do when he just resists everything that I want and fights everything that I want?
[0:01:20] I mean, partly it's a boy thing, of course, that boys resist female authority. Are you ready? Do you understand? Boys resist female authority. We have to. We have to. Women, not all, but dysfunctional mothers, want to impose their wills upon their children. And the girls may comply, the boys will fight tooth and nail. And I've mentioned this before, but it's been a while, so I'll just keep this brief.
[0:01:58] So, of course, the reason that boys resist maternal authority as they get older, although this is like 19 months or 18 months, so it's pretty young, but the reason that boys resist maternal authority is that if maternal authority wins and the children win, the sons, the boys, end up kowtowing to females, end up broken, end up dominated by the female, then they cannot have a chance to be any kind of alphas and thus attract more females, like the higher quality females.
[0:02:38] A mother who attempts to subjugate her son is trying to turn him into a beta. It's trying to turn him into a simp. It's trying to turn him into someone who cannot attract a quality female.
[0:02:53] Quality females will test for strength, right? Quality females will test for strength because quality females need to know, that you can be a strong leader for the family in the areas you're leading in.
[0:03:09] Strong, competent females want to know that you will raise strong sons and strong females, high-quality females, want to test a man to make sure he can exercise authority because she wants an alpha. And alphas need to be a little kick-ass dominant from time to time. I'm not talking mean or abusive or anything like that, but just like, no, this is not how it's going to be. It's going to be this way. And women can do this from time to time as well. So blah, blah, blah. It's not like some pyramid patriarchy structure, but, you know, the man who is comfortable putting his foot down when his values are compromised is an attractive man. So, women, high-quality women, will want a man who can assert his authority. And bad mothers who are trying to break the balls of their sons, so to speak, and make them spineless and make them obedient, are producing sons that quality women do not want.
[0:04:10] And when I was 12, 13, 14, 15, those couple of years, I was engaged, as was my brother, in a fairly hellacious battle against my mother. Because she wished to exercise authority over us when we did not respect her. And it wasn't like we didn't respect her because she was a female. I mean, I respect my wife enormously, and she's a female, of course, and my daughter. And it is that we didn't respect her and therefore we would be goddamned, if we would do what she wanted us to do because we understood it was just the brute exercise of petty willpower and dominance on the part of our mother with no respect behind it.
[0:04:52] I've mentioned this before on the show, but a sort of vivid memory and a continual story of my childhood and teenage years was my mother absolutely embittered with rage and, Once when we were over at my uncle's house, this was my father's sister's husband, of course.
[0:05:12] And the man, who had been an airline pilot and, you know, was a very sort of competent and accomplished man, the uncle said to my brother, Name, you've, you left the toothpaste cap off the tube. And my dad, sorry, my brother ran up the stairs and put the toothpaste cap on the tube. And this embittered my mother enormously because she couldn't get us to do anything. And it's, look, I understand it's very frustrating for women whose sons don't respect them to have sons roll their eyes at them and mock them and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's very frustrating. I understand that. You want your kids to do stuff. They're rolling their eyes. they're not respecting you. I mean, the only thing that you can really do is try to gain their respect, but that seems to be, ooh, I don't know, a bridge too far for most of these types of shrill and insecure and dominant and aggressive and bullying kind of women. So men, boys, fight their mother's dominance. It's an instinctual thing, which is, I do not want.
[0:06:21] To be subjugated to a bossy, irrational woman, because if I am subjugated to a bossy and irrational woman, then I cannot get a high-quality female, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life being bossed around by women. So if your mother is telling you what to do, and you don't respect her as a male, I mean, you have to just fight it tooth and nail. You just have to fight it tooth and nail, or you're going to end up as a baiter with a bossy wife pushed around in front of your kids, and you're going to transmit that to your sons. And nature, of course, wants to program us to be at the top. Nature wants to program us to be at the top. Nature has made us, as has made all apes, bald and hairy, a striving species. A striving species. And because of that, any behavior that dominates and crushes a boy's spirit, particularly from a female. Because if his dad is a bully, well, he doesn't have to marry a man, right, if he's straight. So it's not quite as bad, although he's probably going to be pushed around in the workplace. It's not quite the same as having to sleep with someone who bullies and bosses you.
[0:07:39] But if as a boy, you're pushed and bossed around by your mother, then you cannot get a quality woman. You're only going to end up with a woman in your life who's going to boss and bully you around for the rest of your life. And so, obviously, I don't know what was happening between Lindsay Clancy's son and Lindsay over the course of that. I mean, there's an evidence that they were engaged in a deep battle of wills, that she could not conceive of how to lower the temperature of, how do you reduce conflict? If you are in a battle of wills with your son as a mother, how do you reduce that conflict? How do you cool that battle?
[0:08:28] Well, if you're a bossy nag that the boy doesn't respect, then he's going to fight you tooth and nail. Now, the only real way that you can deal with that is through violence, right? So if you have a resistant son, the only way that you can deal with that is through violence. Of course, I know this from personal experience, that my mother was bitching and hitting and yelling and screaming at me when I was three or so. And then I decided to pack up some biscuits and bread in a pillow sack and try and flee the house. And then my mother caught me and beat my head against this steel door. And I went limp because I realized that I couldn't fight, I couldn't survive, that I was risking grievous bodily damage, brain damage, or death to continue to resist. And so I submitted, at least until I was in my early teens, at which point I began to fight back considerably.
[0:09:33] So you can get a child to subjugate himself to your will if you're willing to use extreme violence. But, I mean, at least until the end, obviously, Lindsay Clancy did not appear to be willing to use extreme violence. Plus, extreme violence is illegal if it's caught, right? Bruises and all that kind of stuff. I mean, certainly my mother's attack upon me that night in 1969.
[0:10:08] Was absolutely criminal. I mean, to beat a child's head against a metal door to the point where he half faints and he goes limp, that is attempted murder, right? So that is attempted murder. Like, you know, shaking babies can kill them and beating kids' heads against a metal door can cause them great brain damage or kill them. So it was grievous bodily assault. I would put it in the category of attempted murder. Now, of course, if your mother is willing to kill you, which my mother certainly was willing to do, and risked that, right? And risked that. I mean, risk that beating my head that badly against a metal door would be extremely dangerous.
[0:10:59] And if I had been brain dead or if I had been brain damaged or if I had died, then she would have gone to prison for a long time because, well, that would be murder, right? And even if she had given me some sort of brain damage or some sort of concussion where she had to take me to the hospital, then that would have been tough for her, right? Because, of course, I mean, it was still pretty early on in detecting child abuse, but the doctors, of course, would have asked, how did this come about? And it's pretty tough to say he fell out of bed.
[0:11:35] So she would have to say he ran into a door or, you know, she'd have to say, but then why is it the back of his head? You know, that kind of stuff, right? And then my mother, you know, my mother's craziness was not hard to see, I mean, at all. And so she may have been charged with assault against a minor or something like that. And, you know, it's pretty bad if you give someone a concussion, particularly if they're a little kid and their brain is still growing. And I don't know, is the skull? I know the skull is soft when you're born. I think by three, it's pretty okay. Although I've seen those kids with their little helmets because their brains are soft. So for sure, it was attempted murder or attempted grievous bodily harm. I mean, again, I'm not a lawyer. What do I know, right? But if you beat someone's head against concrete, let's say, until, you know, they half lose consciousness and go limp, is that not attempted murder or whatever, grievous bodily harm, whatever that would be, right? Certainly, it certainly is a risk of murder. It is a risk of death to beat a child's head against a metal door. So if the mother is willing, or father, of course, is willing to commit that level of violence, then the child will comply.
[0:12:57] And I do know that when my brother and I got older, that, my mother was shrill and shrieky and screamed and yelled, and she would throw things but not at us anymore, right? She's very cunning. She wasn't crazy that way, right? But of course, of course, right? She did not try to physically attack us because, she was 100 pounds dripping wet and we were getting bigger, right? So that doesn't work anymore, obviously, right?
[0:13:31] So Lindsay Clancy, I would imagine, was not willing to use potentially lethal force, at least before the end, and then it wasn't potentially, it was directionally, like actually lethal force, of course. So Lindsay Clancy was, it seems to me, would be unlikely to use lethal force. And strange though it is to say, and it may be odd and upsetting, and I'm sorry if that is, but remember, it's been, you know, 56, almost 57 years since this happened, so I can be excused for a little bit of dispassionate distance, I hope. But my mother almost killing me was like an inoculation against her actually killing me, which is a good thing. I mean, if you like me, it's a good thing. I guess if you don't like me, maybe it's not so good. But my mother almost killing me or attempting to kill me, and I'm not saying that she was literally trying to kill me, but that would have been the result of that level of blind rage. So my mother attacking me in a way that I would characterize, and I think legally would be characterized as attempted murder.
[0:14:44] My mother attacking me in that way, very fortunately, allowed me to comply with my mother to the point where she did not attack me in as dangerous a way ever again. And I'm sure she would have liked to when I got bigger and older, but she was unable to because I was bigger and older and she couldn't attack me in the same way. I could just pick her up and throw her across the room. I was, I mean, I started working out pretty early on in life and was very fit and athletic and active and all of that. I mean, for obvious reasons, I started working out, of course, early on in life because I needed the muscles. I needed the strength. And so for me, sorry, I don't mean to make this about me, but for me, my mother attacking me in this kind of way was really good for me. Again, it was very much along the lines of an inoculation because my mother, by half killing me or putting me at risk of grievous bodily injury, brain damage, or death, my mother caused a compliance in me that prevented her from having to attack me in that violent a fashion, in that potentially deadly a fashion until I was old enough that she couldn't.
[0:16:15] So it was a big safety valve that probably saved my life. Like that attack, if I hadn't gone limp, I mean, I'm absolutely certain of this. I'm absolutely certain of this because I remember it so vividly. And I know a little bit about these kinds of things. I'm absolutely certain that if I had not gotten limp, I would not have lived.
[0:16:36] I would not have lived. Now, what I mean by that is I may not have died, but I would have been brain damaged. And so me going limp allowed her to dominate me until I got, to be 12 or so and hit puberty and got big enough that she was no longer that kind of physical threat against me. So, she got compliance out of me when I was a kid, because if you're living with someone who will fucking end you, well, and they're much bigger than you, and they have all the authority and power and independence and adulthood and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If you're living, like, it's like you're in prison, and you're with a murderer who will kill you in your sleep. I mean, you can attend to do what he says, with the difference being, of course, you have money, more options as a prisoner than you do as a child. And of course, hopefully it's the case that you would have done bad things to get into jail, where, of course, that's not the case with a child. You're just born, right?
[0:17:49] So in understanding what might lead someone like lindsey clancy to do what she did women who absolutely have to brutally dominate their sons, in this case, sons, will attack them and be on the road to killing them and again by killing it could be the direct end of life it could be brain damage, which is bad, and you're just not yourself again, or you're not the same again. You've lost, you know, cognitive faculties or had brain damage to the point where you lose executive function and become impulsive and like all this kind of stuff, like, you know, the stories of the people, you know, this kid dove into a pool and hit his head and he came up and, you know, it was never the same and really impulsive. So they end you, right? Whether you physically die, you're just not yourself anymore when somebody is that violent towards you. So that is a safety valve, right? So, and listen, this is nothing about morality. It's all evil. I get all of that, right? But just talking about the sort of cause and effect and the sequence.
[0:18:51] And so a woman like my mother, who absolutely has to dominate and cannot admit fault, then she will dominate you with a violent, brutal attack when you're young that is a direct death threat to your identity. And again, I'm not saying I didn't know much about, if anything, about brain damage other than nobody wants to hit their head as a kid. But you have this sort of deep instinct that if I don't submit, I'm fucking dead, right? And that is, I mean, it's kind of a powerful incentive, right? I mean, that's what the police do, right? If they want to take you in, they will escalate force until you comply or die. So I went limp, and then I survived for another, I don't know, what, 10, 9, 10 years. And then I was somewhat or mostly in the clear. I had a friend who defied his grandmother when he was eight or nine, and his grandmother belted him across the head while he was napping on the couch with a metal tea tray.
[0:20:05] Think it was flat, not edge. So not horribly dangerous, of course, but obviously pretty bad. And the elderly grandmother said to him, you might be faster than me when you're moving, but you have to sleep sometime, which is, you know, a pretty real threat, right? And that's why one of the first things I did when I worked in a hardware store, was buy a lock for my bedroom door, right? Because the lock from the inside, I had to have a lock for my bedroom door because, if I defied my mother too much, she couldn't overpower me when I was awake, but I got to sleep sometime. So one of the first things I did when I worked at a hardware store, making my princely $2.50 an hour in the Dom Mills Mall was I got a lock for my bedroom door so I could sleep in relative peace. I remember it was a funny little, it didn't even have like the regular serrations of a key. It was like, had ridges all the way around. It was a funny little lock.
[0:21:11] So with somebody like Lindsay Clancy, she is incredibly frustrated that her selfish, brutal will is being defied by her son. And listen, I think that the stuff that is talked about with regards to her husband, Patrick, you know, that he, some people are claiming he's responsible and blah, blah, blah for the murderers. I don't, I don't like that's just not true. That's just not true. That's not true. However, however.
[0:21:39] He was the father in a family where the mother was brutally and aggressively, and continuously striving to dominate and subjugate his son, to which the father should say to the mother, abso-fucking-lutely not. What is it Kevin Samuel used to say? Put your dick up.
[0:22:07] Now, abso-fucking-lutely not. No, absolutely not. You will not fight with him in this way. You will not dominate him in this way. You will not strive to subjugate him in this way. Find another way. Find another path. Other than fighting with him, yelling at him, screaming at him, perhaps calling him names. She didn't have, I don't think, I'm just guessing, right? I don't know. But Lindsay Clancy, it doesn't sound like she had the inoculation of being able to dominate him and threaten him with death to the point where she gets subjugation. And so what happened? I mean, what happened in the Clancy household was exactly what I and everyone who's gone through these kinds of murderous assaults fears, which is that if you keep fighting with mommy, she's going to fucking kill you, right? If you keep fighting with mommy, she's going to fucking kill you. Now, that is not a small consideration in these kinds of households. Now, please understand, I'm not trying to pick on moms here.
[0:23:15] I include, you know, all murderous parents in this, or grandparents or aunts or uncles. It certainly can be the case with fathers as well. And I remember doing a role play with someone once about the father and the father was like, well, I'll just kill you then. The narcissistic, brutal, dominant, sociopathic personality structure cannot be crossed, will not admit fault, will never surrender, and must always dominate. It's a win-lose situation. It's a win-lose negotiation. They will not back down. They will not surrender. They will not admit fault. They will do none of those things at all. And, you know, it's like you come at the king, you better win. So without the inoculation of attempted murder, you don't get the compliance from the kid. And therefore, the kid can be royally fucked.
[0:24:19] The attempted murder is saying, look, kid, I'll just kill you. I will fucking end you if you don't obey me. And so the kid obeys, and then the threat diminishes until later when the kid is safe, right? Now, obviously, I don't know Patrick Clancy, so this is all just things that I've seen from him in the trial and also things that I kind of know for a fact, which is that if by the age of 18 or 19 months, your wife is involved with an epic battle of endless dominance with your toddler boy and you are not, moving heaven and earth to fix that, to prevent that, to stop that, to diminish that, I would argue you have fundamentally failed in your duty as a father, both to your son, your daughter, and your wife, and that is going to have dire consequences.
[0:25:23] In other words, why did the little boy not have a bedrock ally in his father? Where was Patrick when these horrendous, soul-crushing, dominance battles were going on between his wife and his son.
[0:25:47] You cannot allow, as a father, your wife to dominate your son. You cannot fucking allow that. And I say this, of course, as a man whose father absolutely allowed my mother to dominate their children. Now, my father, of course, was gone. My parents divorced when I was a baby, so I don't remember him ever being around. But, you know, he moved, he went to the other side of the world, he played around with his fucking rocks in Africa, found some gold, traveled around, made jokes, and left his children with an extremely violent woman. I told them all about this later. I told them all about this. Ah, the old mother does appear to have some criminal tendencies. Really? Really? Attempted child murderer? Could it be the case that she has some criminal tendencies? Helpful, dad! And then he never mentioned it again, which I can kind of understand.
[0:26:51] Obviously, my mother definitely had criminal tendencies. My therapist once said that my mother had an unlived life as a murderer. She wanted to, she just couldn't figure out how. And my father, of course, had his own mental health challenges and was constantly circling, the drain of crippling depression and all that kind of stuff. So in the Clancy household, the mother is in a grim battle with her son. And again, I'm just reading tea leaves here, right? I don't have any certain knowledge, but I kind of do. I mean, instinctively, I do. Empirically, I don't have certain knowledge. So she didn't in her Facebook post, Lindsay Clancy did not say, hey, I'm in this battle with my son, and his dad keeps telling me to back off and it's really frustrating and his dad keeps taking him out of my hands and his dad keeps taking my son's side and blah, blah, blah, right? None of that. She talks about this like Patrick's not even in the house. Now, this doesn't mean, this doesn't mean that Patrick didn't stand up for his son. I don't No, I just, it seems unlikely. You know, if you have a mother who's battling with your son, and you're a father, right? If you have a mother who's battling with your son, you have to stop her. You have to stop her.
[0:28:27] And Patrick, again, it's hard to see what someone is like for real when they're on the stand in a murder trial or a triple murder trial, right? So I'm not going to say that I have any particular insights into Patrick Clancy, because I have seen some of the evidence that he has been questioned on and provided in a murder trial. It's not exactly the most natural of setting, so I get all of that. However, that having been said, it is the case that he strikes me as an extraordinarily, mild-mannered and conciliatory fellow. He doesn't seem to be passionate. He doesn't seem to be substantial. He seems to me to be a very mild-mannered, over-reasonable kind of person. And just as female aggression chooses a weak father, a weak father exacerbates female aggression.
[0:29:36] It doesn't strike me, which is not a proof, obviously, it's just my opinion. Patrick does not strike me as someone who would do anything and everything to protect his children. And I'm not talking about the murder, I'm talking about, obviously, but I'm talking about before. That if your mother, if your wife is constantly yelling at and battling and screaming with and exasperated with your son, then you need to tell her to back the fuck off and cool the fuck down. He's 19 months old. He's 19 months old.
[0:30:15] You do not get into battles of wills with toddlers. Because unless you're willing to use violence, and I damn well hope you're not, you will lose. Toddlers lack any kind of real developed executive function, they cannot restrain their passions, and they are all in on what they want. You find a way to negotiate. You find a way to, I mean, my daughter, very strong-willed, very much wanted what she wanted, very much, very passionate about things. And that's the nature of being a toddler. You're very passionate.
[0:30:52] And of course, we never called her names. We never raised our voices. And we found ways to work with that passion and to reduce her frustration through win-win situations, trying to find something that wins for both of us. You know, hey, I want you to be happy. I want to be happy too. What can we do? You don't want me to be happy and you to be unhappy. You don't want you to be happy and me to be unhappy. Let's try and find some way. Let's just bring out the whiteboard. Let's just draw some pictures about things we could do. I don't know what the answer is to make things better, right?
[0:31:30] I know you don't want to go to the doctors. I know you don't want to go to the dentist. I don't like going to the doctors or the dentists either. I really sympathize. But we also got to keep you healthy. And I'm really sorry about that. I don't want you to be unhappy. I also don't want you to be sick. So what can we do? I know you don't want to go to the doctor. I don't want to go to the doctor. I know you don't want to go. I don't want to go to the dentist. What can we do? What can we do? Help me figure it out. Right? And we'd come up with something like we'd go to the doctor and then we'd do something fun or whatever it is. We would figure out, right? Figure out something.
[0:32:06] Or, you know, hey, remember the dentist? There's that little treasure chest with toys. You know, we'll see if we can get you two instead of one to take, right? We'll just talk about it. And I then charmed the doctor, the dentist, into giving a little extra. You know, just find something. Find some way, right? But you know, just get in the car, kid. Stop fighting. Stop resisting. We've got to go to the doctor. I told you about. Like, that's just terrible. It sounds like, and again, this is just a theory, obviously, right? It's just a theory. It sounds like in the Clancy household, the mother, Lindsay, desperately wanted to dominate her son. The son was fighting against her because she was not willing to use extreme violence until the end, of course. And the father was not decisively intervening to mediate this conflict. I mean, he probably was in his mild-mannered way saying, you know, hey, you know, let's cool it down a bit. You know, don't take it so personally. You know, he's just a kid. You know, there's stuff that does not work. You can't mild-mannered a bully into turning into a non-bully.
[0:33:20] So they were kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place in a way. And like please understand I'm not recommending any violence against children I'm not justifying any violence against children I'm simply called talking about cause and effect as it stood, as it may have stood in the household. I don't know for sure. But in this kind of situation, you have a mother who will not use violence or is not allowed to use violence or fears the consequences of using violence. You have a son who won't comply, who won't subjugate, who won't kill his will for the sake of his aggressive, dangerous, and bullying mother. You have a father who is not strenuously and decisively intervening to protect his son from the dominant, devouring, soul-crushing mother. And so what happens? She has to dominate him. She can't threaten him with extreme violence until he complies, and then he's safe until the teenage years, in which case he's safe because he's bigger. So what happens? She has to dominate him. And the more she dominates, this is a funny thing about bullying people, especially when those people are going to get way bigger and stronger than you are, right? So, you know, if you have a kid when you're 20 and then you're pushing 50 when they're in their late teens and a woman, like you menopause, you're older, bones are brittle, like whatever is going on, right?
[0:34:52] Then you're really backing the wrong horse. You are really doing the wrong thing for sure, because what's going to happen is your kid is going to get bigger and stronger, your son is going to get bigger and stronger, and you are going to get older and more frail and weaker. And you have a lot of power. In fact, you basically are omnipotent compared to your child when your little boy is a toddler. You can do whatever the fuck you want to him as a little kid, right? So, but when he becomes, let's just say mid-teens, right? Let's just say mid-teens. So, you have the kid when you're 30, and then what happens is, by the time you're 45 and older and weaker and so on, your kid is 15. By the time you're pushing 50, your kid is 18, and you're old, and you're tired, and you're weak, and you're frail, and you're a woman. And he now has more strength relative to you than even you had when you were 32 and he was two. And he can leave. So, for whatever narcissistic, bullying, dominant, selfish reasons. You had to dominate him. He had to do what you want when he was two and you were in your 30s. You just had to obey.
[0:36:28] Well, he's now big, independent, and the family separation, the going no contact, the deFOO, which is to separate from relentlessly abusive parents when you're an adult. I mean, that's out there in the world. That's out there in the world, and it's going to be more and more so over the next 20 years. So, when your kid becomes independent and you are a bullying mother or a bullying parent.
[0:36:58] You're toast, lady. You're toast. The only thing that kept people in the orbit of abusive parents was the misinterpretation of the ethic of honor their mother and their father, right? Honor their mother and their father when joined together with thou shalt not bear false witness. It's so pretty simple. Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honor their mother and their father means tell your parents the truth. Don't lie to your parents. So if they were mean and bullies and they made you miserable, don't bear false witness. Tell the truth, right? We honor people by telling them the truth. We dishonor them by lying to them. So I take a lot of what I say from the Bible. It was a big, obviously very influential document to me when I was growing up.
[0:37:48] Yes, yes, yes. And so for the bullying mother with the son, in this case, when the son becomes more independent, he's just going to hate her. He's just going to hate her. And she could be in physical danger. She could be in danger of being abandoned. Now, of course, why, oh why, would the selfish mom, who's only about her own needs and preferences, why would she care about being abandoned? Well, I mean, fundamentally, she doesn't really care about other people except as they serve her narcissistic needs.
[0:38:32] So, you cannot care about things and then be upset when they don't work, right? If you turn on your TV and it's broken or you boot up your computer and you get the blue screen of death or whatever. It's, you know, it's annoying, right? It's negative. It's bad, right? You're late for work and your car won't start. And, you know, it's an important meeting. And, you know, it's really frustrating, right? So you can view things as objects to serve your needs and then still be frustrated when they don't do what you want, right? You may not be like Basil Fawlty and whip your little car with a tree, but you are frustrated and annoyed and angry and experience things, experience negative emotional stimuli when things that are just objects to you that don't work when they don't work, right? So she'd be upset if he doesn't want to see her because that would be something not working, that she wants to work. She wants him to come see her. He doesn't want to come see her. She's angry. But even more importantly is that it sounds like the Clancys were a pretty aiming at status kind of couple.
[0:39:36] A really good income, got a nanny, an expensive house, and she was running half marathons, and so fitness buffs, and it sounds like, and I don't know what she was like in her prime. She's not particularly my type. I think Patrick Clancy was a very good-looking guy, as is evidenced by the fact that he ended up shacking up with a fertility doctor in New York a year plus after his wife murdered the three children, which I find incomprehensible, but whatever, right? I mean, I think they were both religious, right? So that's the answer. Well, you know, unfortunately, the devil got her. And it's like, well, the husband is supposed to stand between these devils and his wife, right?
[0:40:26] So I think that they were a status couple. And, you know, we're all interested in status to some degree. Everybody, I'm not, oh, you've got to be above status. Like, status matters. I think it's an Aristotelian mean. You should care a little bit about status, but not too much about status, right? I mean, you should care enough about status to not show up to the airport in, pajamas, but you shouldn't overly care about status to the point where you live beyond your means to impress people, to impress others.
[0:40:58] If there was a singular focus or a significant or perhaps an extreme focus on status in the Clancy household, in particular perhaps from Lindsay Clancy, then the problem with screaming at and trying to crush the souls of and dominate, your little boy is that when he gets older, he's not going to want to have anything to do with you. And, of course, he may also be angry and do you physical damage as he gets older. It's tough. If you're an abuser, you have to know the tipping point, right? You have to know the tipping point to the point where you will use violence, enough to dominate, but not enough that your kid beats you up when they get bigger. It's a tough thing. It's a tough balancing act from a just brutally practical kind of standpoint, right? Because if you use too little violence, your kid will just be defiant and disrespect you and that costs you status. God forbid he does it in public or rolls his eyes or calls you a bitch at some dinner party or whatever it is, right?
[0:42:14] So you have to use enough violence to keep him in line. But the problem is, if you use too much violence, then he just might beat the shit out of you as a teenager, like when he becomes a teenager because he's bigger, right? And if the father is weak, well, the father's weak probably because he doesn't want to fight his wife because he's a, quote, reasonable guy and a soft spine guy. And that's bad, right? So it's a tough call. So, if you're a dominant kind of mother this way, and you try to geld your sons, so to speak, you try to spay your sons and turn them into little Lord Fontenri-compliance empty robots, then the problem is that when your kids, your sons, become independent, and by that I simply mean big enough to fight back, they might just punch the shit out of you. It's a tough call. And even if they don't punch the shit out of you, they might just leave you. And then if they leave you, your status collapses.
[0:43:29] So, I think, again, all of this is just conjecture, but I think that whatever happened in the Clancy household, that had the mother post in desperation, that she just could not force her child to obey her will, and he fought her all the time, and he resisted her all the time, and everything was a battle, right? So whatever she did in the household to escalate that created a situation, of significant later potential blowback, either violence, disrespect, or abandonment from the son, in which case...
[0:44:07] See, one of the most dangerous times to leave an abusive relationship, sorry, one of the most dangerous times in an abusive relationship is when you try to leave, right? That's really bad. That's really bad. That's really dangerous. So, if a child leaves an abusive parent, like an adult child, like say he's 18, 19, 20, 21, whatever. So he decides to leave the abusive parent, then he's out of her control. And he may be, because people are going to say, well, why don't you see your mother? Why don't you see your father? Oh my gosh, my mother was this, she was that, she was brutal, she was aggressive, she screamed, she called me names, you know, she threatened me all the time. It was just an endless, horrible, difficult battle. She could never admit that she was wrong. So the problem with going no contact with your parents is your parents freak the fuck out because people are going to ask questions.
[0:45:02] They're gonna ask questions of the child, the adult child, and they're going to ask questions of the parents. Oh, I haven't seen your son around recently. Yes, well, you know, we're going through a bit of a challenge. You know, he seems to fall into a bit of a crowd. We're working with him, blah, blah. But you just have to lie, right? And people don't like that. And narcissists in particular don't like that because they don't like to be bullied. And yet they fear the consequences of being honest and saying, oh, yeah, like he kind of hates me at the moment because I was really mean to him as a mom and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? So they can't say that, right? That would be to take responsibility and have self-knowledge and morals and like that. That's not, don't hold your breath for that shit. I'll tell you that right now.
[0:45:45] So when you defoo as an adult or you go no contact, and even if it's not a permanent thing, even it's just, you know, I just can't be with the, I can't be with my parents right now. I'm going to just take a break and figure things out and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, the questions come, right? God forbid there's a Thanksgiving dinner right Thanksgiving party a big family gathering everyone goes to the cottage, it's Christmas it's someone it's grandma's birthday it's the son's birthday or whatever right and the son is not there.
[0:46:14] The son is not there! Then everyone's going to ask questions. And the selfish, dick-bob parents, in this case, I think the mother a little bit more, it is horrible. It is the worst thing in the world because they put forward a big, shiny, happy people, REM-style face or front. Everything's great. It's all wonderful. I just finished my 5K marathon, and the kids are doing great, and everything's perfect and I love my husband and look, I've lost all my baby weight and it's just status, status, it's status spraying like a skunk, you know, just status spraying all the time. And this absolute, desperate, pathetic need to look good in the eyes of everyone else, to look perfect in the eyes of everyone else is one of the, that tension, that emptiness, that shrillness, that stress, means that the kids just have to fucking obey the parents, because everyone's got to look at the big grinning, smiling Christmas family photo and they've got to say, oh, look at that wonderful, lucky, great, happy, athletic, attractive family. Oh, so great. They feed on envy like vampires. They feed on envy.
[0:47:30] When the children, and in this case, the son, grows up and decides to go no contact, to deFOO, to take a break from the family, to whatever, right? Then the family dysfunction can't be hidden. The family dysfunction, things that were screwed up in the family can't be hidden. Where's your son? It's Christmas. Where's your son? It's Thanksgiving. Where's your son? It's grandma's birthday. Where's your son? It's his birthday or his sister's birthday. where's your son? What are they going to say? It's fucking torture. And, you know, I mean, it sounds a bit odd. I kind of half sympathize with it. Like I empathize with it. I understand it. It's a horrible thing to say, my child doesn't want to talk to me because then the question is why? And it's a horrible thing for the parents. It's a horrible thing for the bad parents. Brutal. What are they going to say?
[0:48:33] Uh, oh, he started listening to this online cult. What are they going...? They'll just make up some shit. They just have to make up some garbage and hope that people will more or less accept it. It's really sad.
[0:48:46] So, the independence of the children is the worst thing in the world for the abusive parent, because they're going to be exposed. My son doesn't want to have anything to do with me, and all of the vapid, vainglorious pride that this kind of person took in putting forward the shiny, happy, perfect family, all vanishes and collapses. And they got some splaining to do. They got some splaining to do, and they can't explain it. Oh, he fell into this bad crowd. Whatever, right? He just isn't listening to us. It's like, okay, but why did he fall into a bad crowd if you're such great parents, right? They have to find someone external to blame, you know, me or whatever, or someone else, right? They have to find someone external to blame so that it's not their fault, so that they can get sympathy. Yes, he fell into this terrible cult, and it's really sad, and we're working with him, and it's just, oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that's so bad. Oh, you know, my sympathies, and they just, you know. But, you know, that can work for a little while. That can work for a little while. I don't know that it can work for too, too long. At some point, it's like, well, where is he? You know, I see him posting on Facebook.
[0:50:11] He's not in some locked compound where they keep all of the youthful virgins. He's, not in a cult. He's just out and about. He's with friends. He's got a new girlfriend. He's got a job. Like, I don't understand the cult thing. Like, it's tough, right? While after time goes on, people, but like, yeah, something, there's something they're not telling us. There's something this family is like, what on earth is going on? There's something, and then the gossip goes around and did you know and blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, God forbid people contact the son and say, hey, you know, what's going on? We haven't heard from you in forever. Like we missed you and blah, blah, blah. What's going on with your mother? And what are they going to say? They're going to say maybe like, well, you're going to have to ask mom, but I have some pretty good reasons and blah, blah, blah. Right. And if they press or push or he's going to say, well, you know, she was really, really abusive to me when I was a little kid and all the way up to my teenage years, screaming at me, yelling at me, calling me names, putting me down, demanding I obey her in all things. And then, you know, I think it was, I guess, oh gosh, it's been 18 months already. Yeah, it was about 18 months, a little over 18 months ago. I tried to have a couple of conversations with her about it and she just escalated and yelled at me more and gaslit and I'm just like, no, I just can't. I just, I can't. I did this. It's just terrible. It's just terrible.
[0:51:31] And I'm frankly, I was dating this really great woman and I'm like, oh God, if I've got to introduce her to my mom, I'm going to lose her because she's going to be like, oh my God, I don't want to be around this woman for the next 50 years or whatever, in the next 40 years.
[0:51:43] So I'm like, I had a terrible relationship with her. She was really abusive. I couldn't do anything about it. I was a kid. As an adult, I've really tried to talk to her about it. I've suggested we go to therapy or she go to therapy. She won't do it. She just escalates and gets mad. And I'm just like, I'm just done. I can't fix it. I can't. And I have no, I'm out of, I'm out of any gas or juice or desire to fix it because I can't fix it. And I can't live with it the way that it is. She's not willing to change. I can't fix it. And I've gone to therapy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So at some point it's going to come out and then the whisper network, oh my God, could you believe that I talked to the son? Like all of this is just an absolute beat. Comprehension nightmare for this type of narcissistic person. Again, in this case, theoretically, it's a mother. It could be, of course, a father or both, of course, right? And so that's just an absolute nightmare. And all of the brutal power that was exercised against the children when the children were little is now all over. And all of the unjust power that was brutally exercised against the children is now coming back in spades. All the humiliation that was poured on the child is now coming back to the parent. And they lose an absolutely catastrophic level of status in their community.
[0:53:10] I mean, how could they have been such parents that their own son has gone to therapy, has offered to go to therapy with them, they won't accept it, and he won't have anything to do with them. Oh my God.
[0:53:22] And these people, they cannot live without status. They cannot live without status. They cannot live without envy. They've got nothing if people aren't envying them. So when they run out of narco fuel, right? Narcissistic fuel, which is status and other people envying them and things looking perfect and everyone obeying them, everyone obeying them. The narcissist views everyone who disagrees with her as an abuser, who is to be punished. So I know that this is a long way of putting it, and I'll tie the bow in a minute or two, just so you understand why I'm talking about all of this. And again, it's just conjecture. I don't know. It's all just my opinion, because I don't know this family very well, other than the fairly, well, extremely brutal facts of how it fell apart.
[0:54:12] So, the independence of the son draws murderous rage to an abusive mother who's not allowed to vent steam by only attempting to kill her children and to force their compliance.
[0:54:26] So, is she one of these grit teeth, take a deep breath, go to your happy place, live, laugh, pray, and so on, and the sort of grit teeth, it's fine, doesn't deal with the problems. They just kind of build up. The pressure builds up like a volcano or like Old Faithful with a cork in its opening. So the woman cannot force compliance from her son through attempted murder, or the physical threat of attempted murder experienced by the child's body, as my child's body experienced. And so the thing that she's most frightened of is the independence of her son. The independence of the son who goes to daycare and might talk about what happens at home. The independence of the son who's going to have friends and might talk about what happened at home. The independence of the son who's going to get bigger and stronger and tell her to fuck off and maybe pop her in the nose if she gets too aggressive. And the son who, when he gets older and gets to be an adult, will crush and destroy her vanity by refusing to participate in the narcissistic show charade called a happy family. He might just get the fuck out, he might bug out, he might get the hell out of Dodge and never come back, in which case the entire personality structure collapses.
[0:55:52] I mean, the last time I talked to my mother, her entire personality structure collapsed, because I said to her, and I was with others, other family members, and I said to her, look, you know, you do talk a lot about these court cases that have been going on for like 15 years and I don't really know the status of them and I sort of try to follow, but, you know, if we could talk about them a little less, I'm not saying we can't talk about them at all, but if we could just talk about them a little less, I would really appreciate it because I do a little bit space out with all of these details. And again, it has been 15 years, no resolution and so on. In other words, I was mildly, and I know this sounds like everyone's like, well, I was just being so rational. Like, honestly, I mean, the people who were there could corroborate all of this. I was really being quite reasonable and saying, I also wanted to be a little bit included in the conversational topics and not just, she couldn't just only talk about her own stuff, but I would like to talk about other stuff, you know, sometimes. And that is in a non-combative, non-aggressive, non-conflict way, asking for some consideration, some thoughtfulness, some reciprocity, and some empathy.
[0:57:06] And my mother's entire personality, okay, saw it right there. It's like watching those buildings get detonated at the bottom. My mother's entire personality structure collapsed. She started screaming at the top of her lungs. She was throwing pillows around. She was sobbing on the couch. And that's because she was confronting all the evils that she did. Because the only way that you can be brutal to people is if you dehumanize them. And if they gently humanize themselves to you, then your conscience takes you down, right? This is the James Taggart thing at the end of Atlas Shrugged. So, the independence of the son, you ready? I'm bringing it home, baby. Thank you for your patience. It's important to do a couple of these paint-by-numbers details. The independence and autonomy of the son is the greatest danger to the abusive mother and the weak father.
[0:58:01] Now... what happened the morning of Lindsay Clancy's son's young life the day of his death? What happened to Lindsay Clancy's son the morning of the day he was murdered?
[0:58:21] He expressed a foundational milestone of independence, right, from what I've read. And there's a picture. And the picture of him standing hands over his head, joyful in his independence, joyful in his autonomy, because he had dressed himself for the first time. He had expressed and manifested empirically and provably, he had expressed and manifested all of his upcoming independence. That's right. And I would argue, I don't know, maybe she planned these things beforehand. I don't know what the status is. But you can plan things without, but I hate to use the word executing on them.
[0:59:10] So why that day? She was eight months postpartum, so it's not really postpartum depression, and she was never diagnosed with that anyway, to my knowledge. Neither was she diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, as far as I know. Not that they're really diagnosis, they're just descriptions of behavior. But the day that her boy was murdered, and the child I believe that she murdered first, had that very morning, achieved a significant milestone of independence, of not needing his mother. And when the narcissist is no longer needed, and the narcissist can no longer control, and the narcissist, and I'm just using this word colloquially. I'm not diagnosing Lindsay Clancy as a narcissist. I obviously don't know. I'm not a psychologist, but I'm just using the term in an amateur fashion.
[0:59:59] When the narcissist, I think of a narcissistic husband who bullies his wife or his girlfriend all the time. He is at his most violent, and she is in her greatest danger when she tries to leave, when she tries to become independent of him. The most dangerous time in an abusive relationship is the time when you're leaving, you're getting out, you're escaping because the narcissist is losing control, and the narcissist explodes in violence because the narcissist is nothing without control. They go through massive, anxious panic attacks that feel like they're being assaulted and they explode in terrifying, terrifying levels of violence. When I was trying to escape from my household when I was three or so, I think closer to four, but yeah. So when I was trying to escape from my household, I was trying to escape my mother's control. And so she tried to kill me or threatened to kill me or acted in a way that would have caused my mental or physical death. Trying to get out is very fucking dangerous. Now, when you say to the narcissist, I don't need you, and therefore you have no control over me, they explode with rage.
[1:01:18] 'Cause they gotta dominate you. And so the poor little boy, so proud and so happy that he had achieved this significant milestone of independence. And it is a very significant milestone of independence. Because, you know, battling over clothes was probably one of the big fights. And he may have, in fact, gotten that independence a little early because he was tired of fighting with his mother. That little boy, proud, joyful, happy, thrilled, and excited that he had achieved some independence from his brutal, controlling, domineering, bullying mother. And she saw, I think, perhaps, through the tunnel of time, to the end result of that, and she just struck.
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