Posted on 02/11/2022 5:01:07 AM PST by Kaslin
China launched a cyber attack against a major American media institution. Russia is amassing troops on Ukraine’s border. Hundreds of thousands of people illegally cross America’s southern border and nearly 44,000 bridges across our country are deemed structurally deficient. That’s just a smattering of the serious issues facing our country while we continue fumbling our way through the pandemic unleashed by China.
Considering all that, why would we take the time to opine about bullying and complaining about how more needs to be done, yada-yada? Fair question. I thought the same. Is bullying, especially cyberbullying, really an issue worthy of our national attention, and right now?
In short, yes, but it’s not about a conceptual framework or some sort of federal program backed by more taxpayer dollars. Taking on bullying in today’s America is about two things: understanding its connection to the American ethos of personal responsibility and self-reliance, and acknowledging that only individual action will curtail bullying, not government.
Take a look around, bullying is everywhere. Look at the online trolls on social media. That’s bullying. Look it up in the dictionary and it's foolish to dispute. Trolling online, even a public figure is still a form of bullying. Our culture now says this is acceptable because we enter with the pretext that we’re less powerful than the accounts we troll. We justify it because we’ve been trained by Big Tech to accept the premise that merely existing on a platform assumes the acceptance of trolling as our only recourse.
That's the problem and it’s a direct derivative of unchecked bullying. Adults do this routinely. Politicians do it as a matter of daily course. Kids see it and think it’s permissible, a way of being in the world. From there it metastasizes into higher forms of abuse, addiction, manipulation, and any array of mental health issues for both the victims and victimizers. Then the idiots on cable news pontificate wondering why schools are attacked and why phobias and prejudices are seemingly worse amid the burgeoning woke era.
Charles Krauthammer said it best, “Politics is the crooked timber of our communal lives, dominates everything because, in the end, everything - high and low and, most especially, high - lives or dies by politics. You can have the most advanced and efflorescent of cultures. Get your politics wrong, and everything stands to be swept away.”
This has led to the pervasiveness of cancel culture, the venom of unchecked bullying. Cancel culture is all about attrition and the reassertion of perceived powerlessness. Those who cancel assume the identity of victims as a way to justify the victimization of their perceived oppressor(s). No matter the offense, canceling someone or a group of people is undoubtedly bullying. It is unrestrained, unreasoned, and intended coercion. In today’s America, it’s used as a way to harm those who don’t agree with our political views.
What we thought of as the immovable structures of decency and kindness are being swept away. Unique anti-bullying organizations are resisting this slide in an effort to bring back both elements in our young people by inspiring over 7,000 of them to publicly apologize for bullying and related behaviors like racism through a “courage to be kind” programmatic approach.
These are the real doers infusing the pillars of America’s ethos back into schools and youth communities across the country and the globe. These people are addressing the root cause of bullying so that future generations will grow up to lead our society far better than this sheepish and ill-fated class of American adults.
Today’s adults are directly to blame. We are so void of our own personal responsibility that we allow our kids to do the same no matter if they're the oppressed or the oppressor. We allow them to subjugate others, isolate themselves in fantasy worlds of gaming and the metaverse, strengthening their identity of victimhood which guides the rest of their lives. If you want to talk about the softness of America and our culture then the rubber meets the road with bullying and how we respond to it.
We get a high from the bravado of talking tough about meeting and defeating terrorism but as Paul Coughlin, an expert witness regarding bullying and the law, and founder of The Protectors, a faith-based anti-bullying organization wrote, “Terrorists aren’t the only villains who use violent acts to create fear in part by targeting innocent, non-combatants. Bullies do so every school day in America… [and] wed power to fear and target innocent classmates, except bullies do so to gain social status as terrorists strive to usurp political power.”
Bullying will always rear its ugly head. The problem is bullying’s pervasive nature and our anemic response to it. Letting it persist is like saying terrorism is permissible based on our levels of distraction or interest. This is illogical because the consequences at inflection points are far more serious than when issues are addressed immediately.
Though America’s elite ruling class has plunged us into the absence of civility and common decency doesn’t mean we can’t arm our children with the tools to get things right - something Coughlin’s Protectors provide. After all, isn’t that the realization we’re supposed to come to after adulthood has set in? That we acknowledge our faults and wickedness, accept the passing points of no return, and work toward providing the purer among us a better chance.
Like the cancel culture warriors, bullies live to overwhelm, not persuade. But America has a proud history of producing more good, strong and loving people than bad seeds. Let’s launch a new era of 246 more years of standing up to bullying and purging our politics of its derivatives like cancel culture by raising responsible and confident kids.
Otherwise societal losers who get to exercise power over other people.
The schools and the government are the bullies.
No matter what the history rewriters tell us, bullying was always about promoting the homosexual agenda.
Never a peep about black on white/asian bullying, rich on poor bullying or even mean girl bullying.
At least that is the way is appears to happen in this area.
I always look forward to election season when the trolls show up here and the Viking kitties come out to play.
Cowardliness and weakness are an epidemic. People form themselves into circular firing squads, trying to figure out who’s fault it was. Look in the mirror! You knew what was happening when it started.
Example: The “never Trump” Republicans in 2016. I was already aware that some of these individuals are pu$$ies, but when they started saying “I just can’t vote for Donald Trump! Vote for Evan McMullin!” - I was still amazed. I was like “Are these people digging their own graves OR WHAT??!!” It was obviously a reaction of fear (and rank stupidity) that motivated so-called Republicans to turn on their party and the ONE CHANCE that our Constitutional Republic had to regain some of its integrity. “We’re scared so we’re going to pretend we’re taking the moral high ground.” So much for them! (And the ones who “changed their minds” and started saying DT was all right after all? Do you read their columns and agree with their points of view? Do you trust them? I mean, what was wrong with saying, “Donald Trump isn’t my favorite person, but if you think I’ll help vermin like Hillary Clinton get into the White House, you must be crazy!” They could have said something like that: “Hold your nose and vote for Trump, silly goose!” But instead we got the total pu$$-out: He’s a bad man and my conscience will bother me if I recommend people vote for him! Hilldog will be president then, of course, leading to unimaginable atrocities, but at least I’ll have my, um, ethics!)
When you back down in the face of aggression, you put your neck in the noose. If you are in a position of responsibility over others, you put everyone else’s neck in the noose. Fighting isn’t always the best route - you have to assess the risks, of course. But just backing completely down and thinking everything will work out, leaving the dirty work to others, lending no support - dunno about you, but I’m pretty old and I could die any moment. I started worrying about “doing the right thing” some time ago and thinking that I only had a finite amount of time left to do anything significant with my life. I don’t want to leave this life with a bunch of regrets.
Even if things go completely south - I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it might get a lot worse before it gets better - you don’t want to be stuck with the awful realization that you could have made a difference if only you had stood up to the bullies.
“Oh, so-and-so” is bullying me[.]” never works in the long-run. We encouraging bullying when we run to someone else to protect us from mean words.
Grow a backbone. This forum is probably full of members who finally one day didn’t cower to a bully and remember it as a day that changed their lives,
“Sticks and stones. . ..” was a motto my Choctaw grandmother thought me and I carried throughout my life. Worked well.
I guess it’s out of favor now for someone to tell some pansy to suck it up, or to grow a set of balls.
I just saw a clip on Newsmax about some school in Conn. (I think it was Conn.) that wants to start monitoring the social media accounts of students to ensure that possible signs of bullying other students is revealed and dealt with by the school system.
I’m still looking for a link to post about it. Anyone else run across this story??
If this is true, wt heck?!?
start monitoring the social media accounts of students to ensure that possible signs of bullying other students
Let’s hope.
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