The Bullies Have Taken Control

What the heck is going on in American politics today? Simple. We’ve allowed the bullies to take power.

Now when I say “bullies,” I’m not talking about disgruntled people who have maybe had a bad life and just need a little understanding to come around. I’m talking about honest-to-god bullies: people who get off on belittling and controlling other people. True bullies are almost always narcissists who literally can’t deal with life when they don’t get what they want, so they punish everyone around them for not showing the proper deference.

Sound familiar? That’s because American bullies have found their leader, which, in turn, has allowed them to find their teensy balls.

Make no mistake: Racism and misogyny are bullying on a mass scale. It’s employing the law in order to take away others’ rights and bully legally, without repercussion. Because the vast majority of bullies at their core are two things: lazy and afraid. They don’t want to have to work at bullying people. They just want you to lay down and take it.

If you fight back, bullies will often then claim to be the bullied one, a technique that confuses normal people with empathy. Often, the person being bullied will fall for this scam, because they don’t want to be perceived as mean. The bully, on the other hand, has zero qualms about manipulating other peoples’ emotions to get what they want. The only thing that matters to bullies is winning.

(So much winning!)

One thing bullies do to control people is to play mind games that exhaust a person of normal- to normal-ish empathy. For bullies, the mind games come as naturally as breathing, and take far less effort than actually beating the shit out of someone. Twisting your words, turning them back on you, blaming you for things they’ve done — I’m sure you’ve heard the term “gaslighting” by now — these techniques are all simple fun and games for bullies. But for us normals, it’s disorienting, guilt-inducing, and most convenient for the bully: mentally and physically taxing.

Arguing, for instance, that a woman is “mistaken” about the men who sexually assaulted her is bullying. There is no valid argument there. This is not a “viewpoint” or a “political stance.” It’s bullying, pure and simple. It’s both bullying at the one-on-one, face-to-face, person-to-person level, but even more insidious, it’s bullying at the social level.

And that’s what we’re seeing more and more of:

Stand your ground laws that somehow only work for white people? Bullying.

Separating children from parents and locking them up? Bullying.

White guys who want the unfettered right to collect as many guns and as much ammunition of whatever type they want to without regulation? Bullying.

Denying women bodily autonomy and forcing them to jump through ridiculous financial and geographic hoops to receive legal healthcare? Bullying. (What anti-choice bullies do in this particular instance is to claim they’re protecting the unborn child. But that’s bullshit, because the bully doesn’t care about the mother, or the child once it’s born.)

And because people with empathy are so concerned that someone’s “rights” might be overlooked or unheard, or even that someone’s feelings might be hurt, we allow the bullies to roll right over us. We unintentionally give them power by taking them at their bullshit word that they have some sort of legal or moral grounds for their bullying. Often bullies will cite the Bible or the law to justify their bullshittery. The problem is, for the bully, laws and religious tomes aren’t sacred, they’re just a tool to get what they want. They don’t care about the rule of law for everyone. They care about the rule of law for themselves. They don’t pay much attention to the teachings of Jesus, which were about peace and love; they gravitate to the old testament when God was angry and vengeful and told people what to eat, and who to have sex with, and said that slavery was just fine.

Some of the lesser bullies, the bullies who are starting to realize they maybe, might be, kinda wrong, are now starting to whine that they just can’t be nice to the normals unless we give them a cookie first.

“If you want me to not vote for trump again, you need to be nicer to me and stop yelling at me.” Boo freaking hoo, Becky.

As many columnists have pointed out as of late, that’s classic abuser behavior: “Why did you make me hit you”?

And why is it that sometimes the cops won’t step in to defend victims from bullies like White Nationalists or Proud Boys or the KKK? Easy. A lot of bullies become cops. (No, I didn’t say all cops.) And bullies like to stick together, because bullying is easier in groups. (Remember what I said about bullies being lazy and afraid?)

Speaking of lazy and afraid, this is also why so many bigots refuse to publicly admit they’re racist. Admitting your racism opens you up to all kinds of public criticism, something bullies prefer to not have to fight. First of all, it takes energy, and second of all, it would mean admitting to being wrong. No, it’s easier to convince everyone around you that your racism is justified.

Obviously, not everyone on the left is totally passive. The hard left has managed to spawn the Antifa, a group that has decided to respond to bullying force with equal force. Of course the bullies are calling this “bullying” trying to discredit it. But that’s disingenuous. Antifa wouldn’t exist without the Proud Boys and other white nationalist groups trying to take power through bullying. (Somehow, for the right, the left has become Schroedinger’s libtard: we’re all bleeding hearts and soybois while simultaneously being dangerously crazy.)

The era of the bully needs to end, once again. It’s time to chase the roaches back under the carpet. Because bullies never, ever go away. They just hide.