The Bully Mentality--III

Answering Kennedy’s Call

JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

“Fostering a culture of fear and ignorance is not the way to run a political party, or country, if it would ever come to that.”

I wrote this in 2014 about what I have called the Bully Mentality pervading the Republican Party that has enabled it to coerce its own supporters to vote against their own self-interests, making Republican red states the poorest states in our country.

These are states that in the main have opposed a higher minimum wage, union organizing that would enable workers to bargain collectively, and rely on the richest states via transfer payments to fund much of their governments. (Red states such as Mississippi, W. Virginia, Montana and Kentucky receive more than 30 percent of their revenues from other states).

Why does the USA have such a problem with bullies? Whether in the schools, in politics, or on Internet social media? The result has been teenage suicides, horrendous school shootings by students who felt bullied or belittled, and now a whole political party that opposes anything that smacks of aiding the poorest, seniors, and less educated.

That possibility has come closer with former President Trump seeking a second term without ever conceding that he lost the last election.

Bully Mentality is a state of mind that pervades those who are only good at one thing, preying on the weakest to empower themselves. 

It is something Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote about during the Obama administration when it created Obamacare.

"But nobody expects to see a lot of prominent Republicans declaring that rejecting Medicaid expansion is wrong, that caring for Americans in need is more important than scoring political points against the Obama administration. As I said, there's an extraordinary ugliness of spirit abroad in today's America, which health reform has brought out into the open."

I said then the "ugliness" is really a textbook definition of bullying behavior.  Bullies prey on the most vulnerable and have tried every trick in the book to oppose any programs that smack of aiding those most in need.

• · Derogatory name-calling and nicknaming
• · Spreading rumors or lying about someone
• · Threatening someone
• · Yelling at or talking to someone in a rude or unkind tone of voice, especially without justifiable cause
• · Mocking someone's voice or style of speaking
• · Laughing at someone
• · Use of body language (i.e., the middle finger) to torment someone
• · Making insults or otherwise making fun of someone

The textbook definition fits former President Trump.

If the Republican Party can't keep its constituents poor and less educated, then the Republican Party, now Trump’s party, would lose its hold over them. Conservatives oppose expanding educational opportunities such as Head Start and pre-school aid because it would encourage rational thinking, and an appreciation of science. Their constituents would then begin to understand global warming, and maybe evolution instead of creationist theories that the world was created by a God just 7,000 years ago!

The danger of such behavior is even greater today. We have a Republican presidential candidate who has no compunction about endangering our national security by wanting to weaken NATO and other alliances, been indicted and awaiting trial under the Espionage Act for his carelessness with Top Secret documents, and endangered our economic security with his tax cuts that have created record deficits.

How then have Republicans been given the edge in various polls on the economy and foreign policy? It is another attribute of bully behavior—the total disregard for truth and facts that is at the heart of their propaganda machine.

There are many ways to counter bully mentality. Firstly, by recognizing that bullies are cowards at heart, which is why they avoid confronting those showing strength. It creates a pervasive culture of victimization, a feeling of powerlessness in which those so afflicted transfer their allegiance to a con artist such as Donald Trump.

That is how dictators all over the world have taken and maintained power. Can that happen to the world’s oldest democracy? It’s up to ordinary citizens to stand tall in opposing such behavior. It’s surprising how quickly bullies will disappear when citizens take back their own strength.

Harlan Green © 2024

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