America's New Epidemic: A Nation Overrun by Bullies

It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign…

The song that was inspired by this article is available here.
My reading this article as an audio podcast is available here.

On his eponymous TV show, Joe Scarborough pointed out this week how angry and toxic Xitter has become recently. I’ve seen the same thing, as have many others; quitting Xitter has become a thing, largely as a result of the venomous culture that’s taken hold there.

This seems to be more closely connected to it being taken over by a morbidly rich South African immigrant who seems to delight in bullying his own child (and others) than to the political season; previous election cycles didn’t see similar reports of such widespread hostility and bullying behavior that was driving people to quit particular social media sites altogether.

That’s probably because one of the first rules of social organization is that culture flows from the top down.

When dad is violent, the family tends to be violent (or damaged by that violence). When corporate CEOs are bullies, middle management generally emulate that bullying style. When teachers or professors delight in picking on vulnerable students, the entire class often joins in.

“A fish rots from the head down” is such a long-held truism that the cliché is claimed by Turks, Chinese, and British ethnohistorians.

And, of course, it’s also true in politics.

We all watched in amazement back in 2015 and 2016 as Donald Trump — a notorious bully when he was in elementary school who even tormented members of his own family — peeled the bark off the entire class of Republican presidential wannabees.

“Lil Marco,” “Low Energy Jeb,” “Horseface Carly,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Lightweight Lindsay” each came under withering attack, and not one managed to successfully retaliate. Rubio tried, with a comment on the size of Trump’s hands, but it didn’t even nick the New York media star; he just shrugged it off and turned it around.

Voters watched in slack-jawed amazement, many delighted that mealy-mouthed Republican politicians were finally getting taken down a peg. Others worried that this was an early sign of a coarsening of our political culture like other countries had seen just prior to authoritarian takeovers. How little we knew back then about how bad it would get.

There’s a long collection of scientific studies examining the emotional and psychological impact on victims of bullying.

— Children who are bullied are more likely to grow up with serious mental challenges that range from depression to an inability to make friends to suicide.

— Adults who are bullied — most of those studied have been in the workplace — often turn to drugs or alcohol, are more likely to end up divorced, and sometimes snap, violently “going postal.”

— Spouses married to bullies often collapse emotionally, surrendering so completely to the physical and emotional violence that they’re unable to leave without an external intervention.

And now, for the first time in American history, we’re learning what other countries that suffered under authoritarian bullies know: the damage runs deep, tears communities and families apart, and spawns its own mini-industry of strutting militia-type bullies intent on emulating dear leader.

Brownshirts, Blackshirts, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, you name it; they’re all mostly made up of men deeply insecure about their own masculinity or role in the world who find safety and meaning by joining the über-bully’s gang.

Most recently, notoriously shouty half-dressed bully Jim Jordan has initiated an “investigation” into the daughter of Juan Merchan, the judge assigned by the court system to oversee Trump’s trial for bank, insurance, and tax fraud.

James Comer and “alpha males” on Fox “News” and across rightwing hate radio led a similar bullying crusade against Joe Biden’s son as he struggled with addiction.

And this morning we learned that another grandstanding Republican bully, Rep. Michael McCaul, is demanding that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken pause his efforts to find peace in the Middle East so he can participate in a campaign stunt designed to dredge up Republican complaints about how president Biden withdrew from Afghanistan.

For bullies, nothing is sacred, not even a family in crisis. And certainly not a nation.

To some extent the groundwork for this bullying was laid by a group of rightwing billionaires who believed they could keep their own taxes low by bullying politicians and voters who wanted “nice things” for average Americans like a national healthcare system.

They funded astroturf groups like the Tea Party to harass “socialist” Democrats inclined to vote for President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, even though it was a massive giveaway to the insurance industry that was first written by the Heritage Foundation and put into place in Massachusetts by then-Governor Mitt Romney.

These, in turn, inspired other groups more closely aligned to the Klan — America’s first national bully group — to show up in the streets with torches and swastikas chanting, “Jews will not replace us” as they murdered a young counter-protestor, Heather Heyer.

And that, of course, led to the murder of three police officers and the death of five others — and the near death of our democratic republican form of government — at the hands of Trump’s mob on January 6th.

America is today suffering from a surfeit of bullying. It drained many of us of our hope and optimism, much as it did in the 1950s when Joe McCarthy last led a national bullying campaign. It was causing people to check out of the political process, to essentially give up like an abused spouse, or to retreat into sports, music, and hours of binge-watched TV dramas.

America, in other words, has been suffering for nine long years from being tortured by an unrepentant bully and the “tough guys” who attached themselves to him.

And now his partner in this emotional crime, JD Vance, is trying to bully women who are unable to have children or choose to pursue careers. And women who want or need an abortion. And poor people who don’t have billionaire patrons to lift them out of their struggling “hillbilly” lives that Vance now ridicules.

The best way to take on a bully, my dad told me when I was 7 years old, is to “kick him in the nuts.” (Mom was horrified!) Fight back, in other words, even if you must use the bully’s own weakest point against him in what may otherwise be thought of as an unfair fight.

If we don’t take on bullies — particularly fascist bullies — they keep going further and further until either they win or you fight back and defeat them.  The best political example of this writ large was Hitler.  He pushed around most of Europe and they kept giving in or trying to appease him, thinking at some point he’d have gotten “enough.”

Neville Chamberlain thought he could negotiate with a bully and came back from his meetings with Hitler believing he’d achieved “peace in our time.”  But, of course, you can never actually negotiate with a bully: you can only defeat them.  Which is what FDR, Churchill, and Stalin ended up having to do. 

From that experience, Europe learned a lesson about dealing with fascist bullies, which is why the governments of the continent are united in their support of Ukraine against the murderous bullying of Russia’s fascist leader. And outspoken about their horror at the prospect of a second Trump term.

David Rothkopf writes that he believes America is suffering “battered nation syndrome.” That’s clearly true for many of us, and definitely true for much of the media (David elaborates on that) but, thankfully, it appears the Democratic Party is waking up and fighting back. Which, at this moment in time, is vitally important.

That’s because bullies never stop, unless they are stopped by somebody stronger than them. And, most importantly, every time they win they set their sights on the next conquest.  Giving in to their demands only creates a newer and more elaborate set of demands. Responding to their bullying with anything other than a literal, verbal, or metaphorical punch in the face is a waste of time.

Thankfully, that’s a lesson not lost on a former prosecutor and a football coach. Vice President Harris and Governor Walz know exactly — from long years of experience — how to take on bullies and, odds are, Trump won’t know what hit him when he steps onto the debate stage next week.  

Hopefully, the next two months will see the end of our “long national nightmare.” For the sake of both our democracy and our collective mental health, it can’t come soon enough.