Kimberly Steele

Doesn’t everything feel like a power grab these days? Anyone who has had the misfortune of going to an American public school knows the phony posturing about togetherness, sharing, and cooperation is a load of steaming crap. It is dog eat dog from the second you step over the threshold in those accursed establishments. My husband pointed out how the popular kids usually had well off to obscenely rich families. This jibes with my experience. When I was a kid, I was not aware of money and adulation being so deeply interlinked. Many of my own bright-sided blinders had to be removed by brutal experience before I realized popular people were not popular because they were wonderful or friendly. No, they were there because they were self-absorbed snobs who largely put themselves first, often at the direct and indirect expense of others whenever the opportunity presented itself). Furthermore, their parents were the same way with the same training. The apple does not fall far from the tree.
 

I don’t think it would have taken me so long to forgive snobbery of rich, popular kids — we are all young once! — if they had not been so damn mean. In the late 70s and 80s Gen X milieu in which I grew up, the Law of the Jungle was the rule where bullies and the bullied were concerned. Those who fetishize Gen X were clearly not present for the bad parts and are unaware of the drawbacks of the era. For one, unless you were in a particularly liberal urban center, to be openly gay, non-Christian, or of a non-white race often painted a target on your back. No, the current trends of bullying white people for being white, Christians for being Christian, and straight people for liking the opposite sex is not any better, but back then, yeah, that is the way it was. Bullies routinely got away with it, and the target did not have to be homosexual or Asian or whatever. All you had to do to get bullied was to be “different”.

I was a weird, cerebral, awkward, ugly duckling of a child who was also terrible at sports. Naturally, I got my fair share of being mocked, pointed at, and excluded. In my own case, it took me decades and at least a thousand banishing rituals/discursive meditations to get over how I was treated in public school, and I wasn’t even beaten up! I know people who are so profoundly damaged by their public school years that they allow their past traumas (and the assailants associated with them) to live rent free in their heads to this day. Their lives have been wholly warped by their school years, their relationships with their parents in tatters, their habits rendered into destructive addictions that attempt to soothe the open gashes delivered by an endless carousel of toxic memories. They are like trees that chose to be lopped off at the stump and sprout a few deformed branches to compensate for what was lost. Yes, I said they chose. If and when these people end up having kids, it’s Lather, Rinse, Repeat as the entire mess replays itself in perpetuity like an echo haunting.

Movie announcer voice: In a world…

I wonder what would happen in an alternate universe where bullies were immediately punished? We all know that schoolyard bullying of the sort that permanently damaged my middle aged contemporaries did not come to an end because a few more people decided to become aware of it. Bullying continues to this day. Perhaps the perpetrators know how to hide it better. Many of them have likely retreated to the internet where they can bully anonymously. Would bullying be impeded if bullies were immediately expelled from school and social media, including the popular girl bullies who neither hit nor kicked but instead ripped on some nerd girl’s appearance or perceived sexuality until she was suicidal? Would it help to publicly flog a bully and his parents in public, baring their asses to a switch as they do in Singapore? I’m thinking bullying would actually get worse in such a universe, because bullies love revenge and will do anything to get it.
 

A bully is a person who feels helpless and scared and hides it. We all feel helpless and scared from time to time, but the bully is one who decides to flip the script in an instinctive bid to gain a better outcome for himself or herself. Such a decision is rarely a conscious one. Bullies perceive success as a zero sum game (most bullies love sports for this reason) where there is no such thing as win-win. There can be only one. Someone must lose and they are terrified they will be the loser. Bullies have no concept of a rising tide lifting all boats. They must build their own astral pyramid at all costs and the only way they know how to do it is as an oppressor who dominates as many little people as can be gathered. Their game is Empire and their obsession is to kill or be killed. Though a bully may be quite intelligent, there is no reasoning with them because they will always shoehorn reality into the Procrustean bed of dominance, hierarchy, and empire-building.
 

Types of bullies

The Tough
 

The Tough is straightforward and for all his faults, he is the most honest of bullies. He avoids working on his own fear of helplessness by injuring, maiming, and killing others. He is a pirate and a raider. Women can be toughs but men are better at it because they are physically larger and more formidable than women as a rule.
 

The Puppet
 

The puppet is often a cat’s paw for a Tough. His bullying is quieter and indirect, but his actions are often as bad or worse than the tough. The Puppet often acts as a siphon for unearned wealth; he steals. He is often in a high political position or prominently placed within a corporation.
 

The Prom Queen

The Prom Queen is the It Girl. She is addicted to attention and she feels like she will literally die if she does not get plenty of it. Though she is rarely out in the open about her bullying, her clandestine actions do not mean her bullying is ineffective. Most live in fear of crossing her. She is usually not above using violence to enforce her will over others, but she will never dirty her hands by doing it herself unless it is behind closed doors where she thinks nobody can see or find out.

The Madam
 

Bitter, foul, and mean, the madam is either too old to be the Prom Queen or is a never-was who did not have the beauty or talent to become the Prom Queen. She makes the most of what she perceives as reduced circumstances to amass a small army of sycophants and whores. Her court of devotees must constantly walk on eggshells to prove to her that she is beloved, and those who do not toe the line and play into her general insanity are made into targets for her ample wrath.
 

The Order Follower

The only thing the Order Follower fears more than his imagined Apocalypse if everyone does not follow the rules is the idea of facing himself and his mea culpas in discursive meditation. He loves fear porn and marinates in whatever the nice man on TV has to say as long as the fear juice keeps flowing. His masochism and love of being cucked turns to sadism when he encounters an opposing person of free will. He wants uniformity at all costs so he can avoid thinking about why and how he causes his own misery.
 

The Nightmare

The Nightmare is a mini-version of the tough who acts as a petty tyrant. His chosen targets are his own family and their pets. He is often a wife beater and a child beater and/or molester. Sadly there are many female versions of him. He is a sick, sick person and he gets off on ruining or killing others who dare question his narcissism. To make matters worse, he usually gets away with it.

The Class Clown
 

The Class Clown is an It Boy who is secretly a sociopath. He wears a big smile and whispers under his breath about how he will kill your family and get away with it. If he has a wife or girlfriend, it is usually the Prom Queen and it is a guarantee he will be cheating on her. If she cheats on him, he will become deranged and psychotic. He is more than a little bit gay with all of the attendant anger that goes with repression of one’s own sexual reality. He will always be a prisoner of his own youthful, idealized image of himself as demigod. He does not age well.

The CryBully

The CryBully was mollycoddled from the second she popped out of her mother’s womb. Though she has more privileges and comforts than 99% of the world’s population, she is constantly inventing sob stories about how oppressed she is and the villainy of her oppressors. There is no sweetness in her life that she has not managed to take for granted: potable water, fresh fruit in winter, decent health, wealth that buys ample free time and entertainment as well as food and shelter are all easily forgotten for the outrage du jour that the media pundit told her to be mad about.
 

In my next essay, I’ll offer some suggestions as to what can be done about bullies. I have a great deal on my plate so I do not know if I’ll get Part 2 out by next week. If I don’t, thanks for understanding.