To all my friends and family members who voted for our current MAGA-centric, GOP-heavy, White Christian Nationalist government…
If you are only now realizing that you placed your trust in the wrong people, that you believed what the news reports were telling you, only to find that it wasn’t the whole truth. I want you to know we’ve all been there at some point in our lives. We’ve been burned by people we thought we could trust. We’ve bought into the lies of a friend, coworker, teacher, parent, or close family member, only to discover too late that we were manipulated.
The question is, what do you do now that you see things from a different vantage point, with eyes open?
I believe we should do the same thing we would do if we were to travel through time, back to our school days, where we realized that our best friend was bullying someone in our class because they didn’t quite live up to our friend’s expectations. A kid who would later commit suicide because he felt hopelessly alone in his pain and persecution.
I know what I would do in that situation. 20/20 hindsight tends to make everything much clearer. It drastically affects how we see and react to these circumstances going forward.
…and yes, that happened in my senior year of high school, we lost a kid to suicide induced by constant bullying. It wasn’t my best friend dishing out the abuse, but I definitely see things from a much different perspective now. I think many of my classmates do.
Hopefully, you too would reach out to your friend and show them that their actions were hurtful and that person did not deserve to be treated that way. Hopefully, you would tell them that you won’t stand for it anymore, and if they don’t change now, you will not be able to hang out with them anymore. Hopefully, if you see them continue to mistreat others, you will walk away from that relationship and place yourself firmly between them and their victims, get to know those who have been victimized, and take the time to understand and empathize with them, be there for them, and show them that their feelings are valid and that their lives have always mattered, even if you are only now realizing that.
We have all known the narcissistic bully on the playground, the one who pushes down everyone to make themself appear to be the toughest, the coolest, the one everyone should want to be like. The thing is, for those of us who have lived long enough to see how those stories pan out, we have seen the pain, fear, and self-doubt that many of those bullies were dealing with under the surface. We better understand some of the dynamics of their home life, the abuse, be it physical, emotional, mental, or a combination of the three.
I am not trying to excuse the behavior. However, I will say that when I look at some of the people who have been abusing the power of their elected office, who have been ignoring the rule of law, and actively hurting already marginalized people through their words and their actions, I see a lot of the same base behaviors. I see an active fear at their core, which motivates their attacks. It is the fear of losing their relevance, status, privilege, and power over those they see as less than. A bully always picks on the most vulnerable because it is an easy win. No one will stand up for them because to do so is to align with them and possibly lose their own status and privilege, to become the next target.
It is why MAGA is attacking so viciously. Like the bully who was challenged, they fight hard to push down any and all resistance to their perceived superiority, their power. They feel that their position is being challenged, and that does not sit well with them. They are becoming less relevant as people learn to care for others who are not like them, as diversity is seen through a lens of acceptance and compassion, as people walk away from the church as a whole, and as scientific understanding reaches a point where it patently disproves the basis for much of their elitist biases.
I understand the desire for things to be clear-cut, right and wrong, black and white, simple, and easy to understand, like they were when we sat through a high school biology class in 10th grade. But simplistic answers rarely exist in the real world. The rules of nature that we think are concrete seldom are. For many of those rules, there are exceptions. I am honestly tired of hearing people say that because the way I was born isn’t in line with someone’s interpretation or understanding of scripture, it must mean it is a result of “the fall of man.” Disregarding another person’s humanity and validity is in itself an act of bullying. Forcing people to fit in or be cast out, pushed aside, or ridiculed is not a healthy way to live one’s life.
Bullies are seldom happy with their lives. Being the “top dog” is a constant battle. It is a drain on both the body and the spirit.
Junior high tactics are being used in political forums, from high government levels to people on the street. Everyone is hurling insults, and though we may think some are creative and even funny in the moment, they are quickly stripping us of our dignity. We can easily be pulled into childish behavior by someone who posts a comment or meme that is intended to rage-bait others into an argument. Soon, we find ourselves hurling playground-level put-downs at our perceived enemy, and it leaves us feeling upset, worn down, and no better than before we lost our temper at a complete stranger on the internet.
Power cannot be taken from a bully by using the same tactics as them. A bully’s wrongdoing must be exposed as such and the bully themself made irrelevant by the creation of strong alliances between those who have been targets of their abuse, those people with privilege who will stand against the abuser, and those who remain in seats of power. This dynamic is what I see in our world today. A few bullies are using their seats of power to abuse and wage war against the most vulnerable among them. What gives me hope is that many of the marginalized communities have come together to speak out and take a stand against these abuses. Likewise, many of the world’s leaders have joined together to stand against these acts of abuse, terror, and murder that have been inflicted on groups of people who have little chance to survive on their own.
The people of many nations around the world are speaking out against what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine, and America. They are taking to the streets to do what they can to help bring an end to the tyranny and wars that have been raging on far too long. In the end, it is “we the people” of the world, not just the United States, that will make a difference. As we shout together, “in numbers too big to ignore,” we will see backlash from the bullies. We must continue to take our message of truth to the streets en masse, consistently, in order to bring change to each of our countries from within and hold our leaders and the leaders of other countries accountable for their abuses.
I still have hope that we can make this happen if we continue to stand as one and speak out against the evil that has taken hold of our world. We, the people, can affect the direction of our leadership, and as the leaders of the world once again unite under a banner of power with accountability, freedom with humanity, and justice with compassion, it is then that we will begin to see a global shift back toward peace.
~ elr
Image: ID 184809226 © Eli Wilson | Dreamstime.com