Clementi’s Immoral Deficiency.

What they did to Clementi at Rutgers was despicable. A show of perversion of a society that considers immoral to have your sexual way and abominable to be yourself. I believe that Clementi’s suicide decision had to do not only with the shame brought about by public exposure of an act that would have been considered normal and even boring by many if it wasn’t for the cultural fusses attached to it. The cultural mind of the masses enjoys to make an act of freak circus from what in their eyes doesn’t constitute normalcy. A dwarf; an elephant man; Saartjie the “Hotentote Venus”, become evidence of nature’s capacity for deviation and reinforce our ideas of self-excellence. A group in society looks at itself in the mirror of extraordinariness falling back satisfied by the confirmation that they are not part of the so called abnormal. Insecurity about which group we belong made us curious of freak circuses. We need to find testimony that we have a close to normal stature -compared to the smallest person in the world. That we don’t have a small penis compared to the Pygmy’s. That we are not gay compared to what Clementi is doing in the live Internet broadcasting. We confirm that we are not what we suspect we are, that we are not too fat or too skinny, too white or too yellow, too wide or too narrow; always in comparison to somebody else. That is why they needed to make a circus and live broadcast what otherwise would be ordinary, even boring. If it weren’t for our own needing insecurities they would have never dreamed of getting an audience.
What is most disturbing about Clementi’s case is not only the betrayal from his roommate and his Internet freak-show audience. It is the lost of trust in humanity. It is not only that you have to carry on with an artificially constructed sickness. It is also the burden of having been proved that you cannot trust anybody. That the person you live with, share your space, lunch, dinner, bathroom, library, cafeteria, coffee, is your worst enemy. Your comrade may be the snake under your bed.
Clementi was too young to develop cynicism. The freak circus people and their audience cut short his time to let grow and strengthen his ability to do damage, to destroy, to be a real sonofabitch. un hijoeputa. As time goes by developing your survival skills implies recognition that there are people out there that enjoy humiliating you. There are people out there who are so unhappy about themselves --and the things they have allowed society do to them-- that the only relaxation they can find and the only piece of happiness they can get comes from hurting others, putting them down, degrading them in the public eye. They use the apparent abnormality of an act or a person to create a false sense of security regarding themselves, their height, color, intelligence, achievements or sexual orientation.
If Clementi only had two or three more years to develop capacity for perversion he would have thrown his victimizer off the Washington Bridge -rather that throw himself. He was too sane to do that. His lack of moral immunoglobulins allowed for moral disease to get hold of his body. He suffered from a syndrome of deficiency of immorality and that was what killed him in the face of a bunch of malicious elements. Sometimes you have to develop disease in order to conquer disease, the same way that you need to be inoculated with typhoid cells in order to create defenses against typhus.
Exposed as a freak for being talented. Exposed as a freak for being an artist. Exposed as a freak on the Internet for being gay. It proved too much to deal with for young Clementi. Immoral deficiency can kill you.