A Nation, Bullied

In one of my favorite episodes, “Please Don’t Kill Me,” of one of my favorite shows, Mr. Show, an evil genius called Dr. X holds the world hostage with threats to blow up the earth—a plan which is inevitably thwarted by an annual Doomsday Telethon, held by—who else?—Dr. X, who pleads with people to contribute generously to the thirty million dollar goal. He brings out a poster boy for the telethon who is prodded by Dr. X in a baby voice, “Tell ze audience vat you told me backstage,” to which the boy replies, “Please don’t kill me.” Dr. X’s face breaks into a saccharine grin. “Awwww. Dis is vhy I do dis,” he says, a tear in his eye. “For de kids.”

As with every sketch on the brilliant Mr. Show, there’s the obvious send-up of straightforward telethons, and then there’s the underlying scorcher—the nod at our society’s propensity to endanger people, only to give ourselves an opportunity to appear to save them.

“Please Don’t Kill Me” first aired in 1997, but it was a prescient indicator of things to come. I often feel, reviewing the news of Bush’s determination to manipulate us into a war which subsequently opened a new terrorist front from which he now professes to save us, that I’m living in an endless Doomsday Telethon.

The kids look thrilled.

It’s really just a kind of cowardly bullying—wanting to play the hero on behalf of those who wouldn’t be in danger (or perceive themselves to be in danger) were it not for your own actions, not for your own grim reassurances that they have something to fear. Yellabellied bullies aren’t brave enough to be seen as bad guys themselves; instead, they demonize someone else and promote themselves as your only chance for salvation, masking themselves in faux heroics. In the end, the effect is the same—their victims are cowed and submit to their will. The evil genius is thirty million dollars richer, but hey…at least the earth didn’t blow up.

I was induced to think about bullies, overt or not so, when I read at PSoTD that the U.S. Department of Justice and the National Association of Psychologists estimates about 160,000 students are skipping out on school every day to avoid being bullied. Putting the problem in perspective, PSoTD says:

Imagine that somebody threatened a city of 160,000 people - say Las Cruces, New Mexico - that they would be physically hurt if they went anywhere next day. Imagine those people then did not leave their houses.

It’s not hard to imagine at all, sadly. Tragic as it is, I challenge anyone to be surprised that bullying is so pervasive, when our foreign policy has been reduced to little more than schoolyard bullying, when our biggest campaign issues are the equivalent of pulling girls’ pigtails and refusing to let the gay kids play 4-square with the rest of us, when anyone who disagrees with the popular kids finds nasty rumors scrawled about them on the bathroom walls. There’s small bloody difference between an idiot bully screaming “Fag!” at a weaker kid who stands up for what he thinks is right, and a majority party maligning dissenters by screaming, “Traitor!” with approximately the same level of careful consideration. That is to say, none.

Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity—all their shills are bullies, too, rudely interrupting guests, deliberately mischaracterizing arguments to score mendacious points, gleefully bloviating assertions of rightness and superiority, cutting off mics, and generally behaving like schoolyard miscreants who attempt to finagle the appearance of capitulation or unnecessary apologies from their ideologically disparate targets, like it was so much lunch money in the pocket of one’s dungarees. Certainly some of their devotees, I can attest from personal experience, have incorporated this brand of argumentative bullying into their everyday dealings with people who have the audacity to disagree with them.

This is the example that’s being set by the so-called grown-ups. We can hardly feign surprise that their kids are behaving like assholes, too.

The experts have a suggestion.

The best way to safeguard your children from becoming a victim is to teach them how to be assertive. Bullies are less likely to intimidate kids who are confident and resourceful.

I didn’t see the word “triangulation” in there, did you?

I also didn’t see a suggestion to accommodate—or in any way indulge—bullying.

Bullies are nothing if not contemptuously opportunistic little shits; their first response to being called on their bad behavior is to whine and cry about how it is they who are the real victims (See: The War on Christians), and if you don’t immediately cosset their delicate egos, they’ll lash out with the accusation of intolerance. “Hypocrites! You liberals only claim to be tolerant!” But there’s no value in tolerating, well, intolerance. To paraphrase some guy called George, we don’t negotiate with bullies.

So…confidence, progressives. At every turn, on every issue. A nation bullied is no good for anyone, except perhaps the bullies. Time to be bold.

Let’s do it for the kids.

(Crossposted at Ezra’s place.)