Bullies aren’t smart. In fact the opposite is true. One of the biggest reasons bullies bully is they know they’re mentally inferior and socially inept, so they use the only weapon available to them to push smarter, more civilized and civil people out of the way, marginalize them or make them more submissive. And it works too: like the bully who picks a fight on the playground who other schoolmates cheer on, even though they have nothing against the kid being bullied, maybe even don’t know.
Other goals are silencing the victim, making them their bitch, encouraging others to kill those who won’t submit and, of course… humiliation. Essentially bullies are social terrorists.
We enable them, like moms who tell their progeny to just ignore them, try to be their friend. In a bully’s world any of those tactics makes you look weak and more deserving of being terrorized. In a bully’s world you are either part of his gang, agree with him, or you’re the enemy. A bully’s weapon works because society tolerates it, insists on claiming the terrorized must have done something wrong to deserve being bullied. And so few people want to challenge them when they accuse the victim of doing exactly what they are so obviously doing.
And if Trump has any talent it’s bullying. Certainly not business. He’s failed a lot even though he financially started on home plate. Anyone who can turn Chris Christie into a submissive puppy is talented at bullying. Since the current version of the radical right wing is bully-based, it was a safe assumption that the majority of them will worship Trump no matter what he says or does.
There’s always been some of this going on in politics, true. LBJ was no wall flower, pols playing hardball is nothing new. I suppose some could claim Obama spokesperson calling those journalists left of Obama “the professional left” was a very soft form of bullying.
But the right wing, followed by Twitler, has lowered the bar so low that bullies, like New Hampshire’s Josh Moore, eagerly step over any line, like insisting if women breast feed in public Moore has a right to grab, and play, with their nipples.
Thanks for that, Mr. P-grabber in Chief.
The bully has become the preferred model for Republican candidates; especially for the highest office, and sometimes the VP. Hence one of the bigger samples of scum on the sludge pond portion of humanity: Cheney. Or, as a friend prefers to call him, “Biggus Dickus.”
But this goes far beyond any of that. The bully seems to have become the preferred model for Republican candidates; especially for the highest office, and sometimes the VP. Hence one of the bigger samples of scum on the sludge pond portion of humanity: Cheney. Or, as a friend prefers to call him, “Biggus Dickus.”
It’s not that those who are real, solid, Trumpites don’t care when Trump acts like a bully boy a-hole. They care. They want more of it. It’s like the chocolate fudge frosting on a chocolate cake with chocolate chips in it to a chocoholic: they still want even more. They don’t just like it, they love it. If bullying were a deity they’d build temples to it and worship there every day. When people bring up how Trump stiffed vendors for many years they view it as him “getting tough;” even though that’s about as anti-small business as one can get, and if it happened to them they’re wail like little babies.
Never let it be said, “Consistency thy name right wing be.”
FOX doesn’t care about O’Reilly’s or Ailes’ behavior. None of this is new news. They were intentionally kept around for decades. In fact their kind of bullying is responsible for high ratings. For example: there’s a distinct connection between their demographic and this type of behavior with women, with bullying guests, talking over them, having their mic potted down or cut off, yelling, “Shut up, shut, up,” calling people “pinheads,” and screams of “DO IT LIVE!!!!!!!” A good portion of their main demographic has a passion for this type of bullying, for many of them are bullies too. They are not unlike the audience at the Roman games where literal human meat was thrown to the wild animals and people acting out parts were slaughtered during recreations of famous battles. If FOX decided to run the same kind of programming with women’s rights advocates, liberals, environmentalists, journalists and Trump protesters being ripped apart by rabid hyenas this portion of the Republican base would not only tune in, but demand more. If their true symbol of worship were revealed it wouldn’t be the cross. It would be the fist ready to punch, the wild beast shredded pieces of a pregnant woman and her fetus.
This goes far beyond politics. It’s a mindset that’s based on all you have to do is declare you feel threatened and it’s no longer murder. Of course anyone who they find disagreeable, even due to the color of their skin, that doth not apply, even if you’re being stalked at night by someone who doesn’t identify themselves..
Think Trayvon Martin.
A bully would believe if think you need to drop a bomb you drop the biggest bomb possible. ‘Collateral damage’ is of no concern. Unless you’re a black Dem president. Then we need to get the “White back into the White House,” as their signs so often said.
A bully would believe the more you torment those you don’t like the more they will fall in line, tell the truth. Basic human rights are of no concern and actual truth telling really isn’t the goal. It’s satisfying their sadistic nature. Torture makes them happy, indeed giddy. I wouldn’t be surprised if some kept pictures of waterboarding; or worse, in a secret drawers and occasionally jacked off to them. Makes me wonder what’s in Cheney’s ‘drawers.’
A bully has no respect for life. ‘Pro-Life’ for them is simply controlling and humiliating those they have no respect for. Although they rant incessantly about too much government they are all for big gov when it backs up bullies. They think the guy who edits videos into lies, like wearing a pimp suit and exposing Acorn ‘fraud,’ is a hero. So are the ‘protestors’ who infiltrate leftward protests and encourage, even participate in violence, like one guy who brags about it on the web, or those who infiltrated 60s protest groups. ‘Funny’ how the police often seem to know who they are and they leave un-arrested, without a bruise.
A bully’s view of the world is hardly even 1 dimensional. It’s a sociopathic, sick, depraved and, yes, Hillary had it right: ‘deplorable.’ The Klan and other right wing hate groups loved Trump, and they are truly deplorable. They view bullying as the “cure.”
It’s the kind of view that cheers on an immigrant mother being deported back to where she will be murdered by her government, while the child left behind who has severe physical problems loses the one person well trained to attend to them. It’s the kind of worldview where sabotaging the ACA, sabotaging the post office, are legit. Anything to defund any organization that has unions or isn’t the sole bitch of the right when it comes to funding elections.
In elementary I had a 2 year period where two bullies chased me down as I rode my Schwinn home. They’d jump out, grab the baskets, push me off the bike, hit me, as well as the usual bully tactics. Not one of a mom’s solutions were ever a real solution. It stopped the day I got off my bike and beat back: hard.
The left, collectively, has to learn to get off the bicycle and beat back harder than they beat us. Right now we’re more like the wife fearing what her husband will do next, maybe even kill her. This 30 plus year abusive relationship, one way or another, has to end, and whatever happens to Trump, legally, has to make what happened to Nixon no big deal.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 40 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks, and into the unseen cracks and crevasses, that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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