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Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Why do we pretend that bullies don't actually get what they want.


I'm back from my short blogging break. I hope that everyone had a nice President's Day weekend. Chances are better that you did if you don't live in Ukraine. After reading the coverage about Ukraine, how Russia has it completely surrounded on all sides, and how an invasion is imminent if it already hasn't started, I wondered to myself: why do the bullies always win?

Hollywood is full of movies where this isn't true. Bullies are always put into their place by heroes of all kinds, whether it is in a buddy cop movie, a big budget superhero movie, or some kid standing up for himself in a high school by learning karate. I look at all of these stories now under a different light. They all seem like gaslighting to me. This isn't how the real world works. It's an idealized world...it's how it should work. In an idealized world, women can knock out giant men twice their size in brutal cage fights. It's like the David and Goliath story. It's how it should be. But it isn't.

In the real world, bullies seem to get whatever they want. Bullies invade countries and other countries just let them because they know if they don't, it will mean the start of a World War. Bullies punch down and other people watch them do it, because they are afraid to do anything about it. We have bullies in jobs, bullies on playgrounds, bullies on the highway cutting us off in traffic, bullies forcing us to do labor while giving compliments like, "you're so essential," and bullies demanding to be accommodated even if it means trampling on other people. Being a bully seems to have a good track record. Sure...there are a few stories of people getting their comeuppance. But by and large I see more bullies getting off with no consequences for their disrespect of consent than I do for those who are punished for this same disrespect. 

Consequences seem to be really hard to enforce. Our civilization seems to mostly run on threats and bluster. When enough people start to test those threats, the whole thing starts to collapse. Humanity is a very strange thing when you realize that a lot of the rules and safeties we take for granted are just an illusion that we've all bought into by putting faith that "there are consequences for behaving badly." 

Over President's Day here in Utah, there were a handful of protestors up at the capitol who were protesting Russia's bullying tactics and threats of invasion against Ukraine. I thought to myself, "How useless and what a waste of time." And then I realized, this is about all the power that people have to do anything with a bully like Vladmir Putin. The lesson: really big bullies get what they want. My opinion is that we should accept this truth, start to teach it, and stop gaslighting people into thinking that it is otherwise. I imagine Hollywood would be very opposed to this idea, and the effective spin to combat what I'm saying is easy: "We are not gaslighting...we are selling hope." There's always a way to rebrand, repackage, and sell an idea, which makes getting to the actual truth a very complicated affair.

It's kinda like how a series can come out (about that kid who learned karate so he can stand up to bullies in high school) where a hero is suddenly shown to be a villain all along. In Johnny Lawrence's words (in Cobra Kai), "He showed up, sucker punched me, poured water on me at a dance, took my girlfriend, and then used an illegal karate move without hesitation to win a tournament." It's a great way to rebrand, and I was kind of stunned when I realized what was happening. And...I can't argue with it at all. But at the time, it didn't seem like the kid who learned karate was a villain.

The most successful bullies are ones who are great at misinformation. They have the ability to confuse, to muddy the waters of morality, to get people to see the other side of things. And thus, downtrodden people wish and long for a higher power, a thing that has the ability to decipher truth from lies, to find intent, and then to punish wrongdoing. But because that doesn't actually exist, bullies win and get what they want. It's kind of fascinating in a very sad way, but it is likely the human condition and it will never change.

Any of you have any thoughts on bullying (or the doom of Ukraine) that you'd care to share?

3 comments:

  1. One just has to look at the surge in crime recently to see that bullies often win. In a perfectly moral world, that wouldn't happen, but that's not the one we live in. Bullies know they can get away with it and don't even feel bad about it.

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  2. When you're a bully with nuclear weapons it's easier to get what you want. That's the difference between Russia invading Ukraine and Saddam invading Kuwait 32 years ago.

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  3. Bullies find positions of power. And they do what they can to maintain that power. And then when they seen bullies coming up behind them, they're more likely to help them out as they see themselves in them.

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