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BULLIES
11/29/2009
I’ve had it with bullies! Honest to Pete, I have really had it. I’m thinking of moving to Ireland where instead of bullying each other, people just get drunk. Besides, I have family there, and every time I see pictures of those green hills, and hear that wonderful brogue, I want to live on the Emerald Isle.
But back to bullies. Nobody has bullies like we have here in this country, except maybe Italy, where the Mafioso still bump people off, or a few Muslim countries where women get their heads chopped off for being raped.
I’ve lived around bullies all my life. Many of the nuns who taught me were bullies, as were a few other teachers. I’ve seen nuns pick up kids by their ears and throw chalk and erasers at them and tell them they were going to hell. I’ve been chewed out by nuns for something as simple as not joining a club that was supposed to be voluntary. No matter how bad the nuns were (and to be fair there were a few good ones) the priests were worse. I’ve overheard priests yelling at kids in the confessional, and ripping off the beanie of a classmate – at the communion rail - because she had dared to fold it in half so it fit on her head in front of her ponytail. But those things were nothing compared to the sexual abuse of children, which is another type of bullying, the use of authority to get your own way with people who can’t say no.
You know what other group of people like to bully? Republicans, especially the radical conservative ones who spew hate on radio and television. Rush Limbaugh is a bully. Sean Hannity is a bully. Bill O’Reilly is a bully. Lou Dobbs, is a bully, and a bigot. And little Glennie Beck is a bully, and crazy to boot, which is what makes him so incredibly dangerous. I’ll take a page from little Glennie’s act: Hitler was a bully too, and crazy.
I’m not going to give examples because it’s not worth my time. Just listen or watch for one hour and you will see and hear the bullying. There is always an enemy, always someone to attack. Usually it is our black president - there’s no bully quite like a racist bully as proved by our sordid history of slavery and lynchings - but it can be others: some media personality, “socialists,” Nancy Pelosi or another woman (bullies love to go after women). Recently, at a town hall meeting, the bullies who call themselves tea partiers shouted down a woman who spoke about her daughter-in-law and unborn baby who died because they had no health insurance.
Keep this in mind: bullies are of three varieties – people who have no firm and healthy sense of self and therefore have to get it by attacking others, people who have been bullied themselves and are passing it down, or people who do it for money. The thing that makes these conservative media nuts so heinous is that they are bullying people for money. Gee, I wonder who else does that? Hit men, maybe?
Bullying is often something that starts at the top and works its way down the food chain.
The playground bully is usually being beaten up at home by his alcoholic father.
The little people who watch the FOX bullies, or listen to radio hit men, learn the talking points from the bullies whose words infiltrate their brains, and bully their neighbors and family members who hold different political perspectives.
The tea partiers, who are pitiful in their lack of rationality, carry signs and guns to intimidate others because some believe they have been bullied by the big banks, the government, etc. What’s particularly amusing about the tea partiers is that they love to call Obama Hitler, or carry signs warning of Nazis taking over the government, yet their mob mentality, their mass hysteria, and their response to demagogues is exactly what Hitler counted on to get the people to follow him and throw Jews and homosexuals into gas ovens. These marchers should study real history, not just listen to Glenn Beck who doesn’t even have an education, and who is about as mentally unstable a person as I have seen on television.
Recently, my oldest son was subjected to bullying and watched as some of his staff were bullied. He manages a bookstore in Seattle – one of the major chains. He had given one of his employees permission to make a pot of coffee in the café before the store opened, as it was her job to get there early to receive the book shipments. (The company did not provide coffee in the break room, or even have a coffee pot where the employees could make their own.) She said she would pay for the coffee (35 cents a cup) when the café opened. Over time, there were a few occasions when she either didn’t pay or forgot to pay.
While my son was here for his brother’s wedding, one of the café workers decided to call the anonymous tip line and turn her in. The company sent a loss prevention specialist from San Fransisco, set him up in a hotel for a week, and had him investigate. He spent hours watching tapes of café transactions and thought he had her. She had gotten coffee several times and not paid for it. He interviewed her and then told my son fire to her. So the company spent hundreds, perhaps a thousand or more dollars, just to bully someone over a couple of bucks.
The chain itself is doing poorly. They have made bad business decisions over the years and they may not make it. They’re counting on this holiday season to prevent bankruptcy and they are all scared. So the higher ups bully the district and regional managers, and they visit stores and bully general managers like my son. One of them got in his face and yelled and screamed at him, telling him that the former district manager, who was just fired, was “dead” to them, and demanding to know if he was going to “play ball.”
Instead of putting up with this treatment, he quit, and is returning to school so he doesn’t have to stay in retail, where this kind of bullying happens when stores are in trouble. He’s going to have a rough road ahead of him. Even if he gets into the school of his choice, and gets his degree, he may still face a tough economy when he looks for a job. But he refused to stay in an environment where he and his staff were treated like dirt.
In our once noble country, people are being treated like dirt every day. The tea partiers who have no sympathy for people without health insurance, the conservatives who believe everyone has the same opportunity and therefore people without work are lazy, the media personalities who make fun of sincere people trying to improve people’s lives, the “birthers” who are beside themselves because a black man is president and therefore make things up about where he was born, the district managers who act like mobsters, the bosses who scream at workers, and religious leaders who shame or abuse or excommunicate their members, or pray that Jesus comes so he can reward them and punish everyone else – these are all bullies.
We have a lot of problems in this country, and in the world. Families are hurting, businesses are going under, people are dying. We need solutions, but instead we get bullies. I am ashamed of what is happening in some segments of our country.
It is time for us to pull together, to encourage each other, to have compassion for each other, to find political compromises so we can help those who most need it. Bullying doesn’t solve any of the problems we have. It doesn’t help a book store chain stay solvent. It doesn’t bring health care to those who need it. It doesn’t feed the hungry, or clothe the naked, or bring jobs to the jobless. It doesn’t make people closer to God. It only adds to the misery and the anger.
All content © 2005 outragedcitizen.com
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