My Bully Pulpit
by H. G. Lowry
When you see an older child harassing and intimidating a younger smaller
child, the feeling that this should not have happened, the desire to
punish them and to protect the smaller child can be quite overwhelming.
This is the root of bullying,
the feeling of helplessness and injustice
that makes one want to strike out and empower one's self. In the bully's
mind, their own experience of unfairness and victimization is the
battery that drives them to battery.
Hurricanes, floods and disasters of all kinds will continue to bully us
whether they are fair or not. Life will never be without this emotion.
The desire, even the ability to sanitize life is an illusion. War,
brutality and crime will always continue, and the desire to protect the
weak can never be fully realized. This does not mean that it should
cease to be a goal, but when the act of "defense" comes directly out of
the desire for power and control, it automatically switches into the
behavior it is trying to prevent. The whole anti-bullying mania sweeping
the united states has such a PC "let me tell you how to behave" vibe
that one can't help feeling BULLIED BY IT!
I noticed, when I had my Happy Hiram account in Yahoo that I could get
25 violations in a day and not lose my account, but as soon as powerful
and influential people started working on me, I was gone due to 4
violations in a week. I had to hurry up and make my last accusations
because I knew when I got the email that my time was up. These folks
used anti-bullying rhetoric to "gang up" on me and "punish me" in the
same manner as the bullies I grew up with.
Is there no middle ground
between sympathizing with and protecting the weak, and turning society
into a TSA checkpoint (which have noticeably been rife with abuse as
we have seen in the news lately,) or can we go back to dealing with bullies WITHOUT LEGISLATION AND
FANATICISM? I went to a seminar on bullying in 2011, and a presenter there said "everyone should act a little gay, so that gay students will not be singled out." She didn't say everybody should act a little straight in case a straight child gets harassed! She didn't feel the need to "act" any way other than as herself to protect others. When I suggested that in the future they might make it a crime to root for one sports team over another, she pooh poohed my concern. But telling people how to ACT, in discordance with their natural inclinations IS BULLYING!
Parenting for goodness sake, can be described as beneficial bullying,
trying to impose your values and dominance on a "weaker minority". Parents invest their values and behaviors in their children, like it or no. But gosh what if those values differ from others or - God forbid - include intolerance of some action or association?
Should we just let kids run into the street so as to not be "bullies".
I for one, would like to see the end of groups and laws "bullying" us into anti-bullying. I think common sense has been the first casualty of the anti-bullying mania. But I don't want to push the issue to hard. You know what that would make me.
