Bully Tactics

Dealing with a bully effectively means to disassociate his ability to terrorize and bully.  How we accomplish the above depends on your definition of cruelty and power with some believing that rhetoric is always better than conflict and regardless of how long it takes “jaw, jaw, jaw is better than war, war, war.”  Winston Churchill

At what point does the bully recognize his deeds as terror or when does an individual actually start to understand that what they are doing is wrong?  How long do those who are affected allow the terror to control their lives and disrupt their free expression of life and choice?

Being a bully is a choice, not a great choice for those who get bullied but it is a choice.  Choosing to be a bully may have some serious extenuating conditions but to those who are bullied those conditions mean nothing.  All they care about is the fear, the danger and the daily terror inflicted upon them and the utter hopelessness of trying to dislodge themselves from the grips of those who make them suffer.

Bullies may be born that way or may develop those illicit traits as a result of life experiences but when you’re being bullied does it really matter how the bully got their?  Those deeper questions can and should be answered but not at the time the bullying is taking place.  Stopping the terror should be the primary focus, not a dialogue of hope that may or may not, in the future, have some positive benefits for the already mentally deranged individual.

The psychology of a bully used to be about compensating for a low self esteem but today it is understood that bullies have a sense of entitlement melded with feelings of superiority and a lack of compassion for others.  These profiles seem to change with the weather as do most things, especially if you spend the time to consider history and the events that created our history.  But the basic premise of being a bully has never really changed, it is still the outward attempts of the anti social, impulse deficit, cretins who relish the pain and suffering they cause others.

There are ways to deal with bullies, some better than others.  Your first decision needs to be how to get the suffering to stop and for that the best advice seems to be to ignore the bully.  Good luck on that one.  You may want to hide away or make yourself scarce in order to be forgotten but that does not solve the problem it only puts it on hold.  

Let’s consider a real life, worldwide bully, Kim Jong Un.  Here is a severely entitled individual who is certifiably deranged.  It may have been due to his upbringing and his social ineptness or it may be simply due to his lack of compassion for anything or anybody other than himself, does it really matter?  

He has taken it upon himself to threaten the most powerful nation in the history of mankind and for the first time in over 25 years we have a President that will not be bullied by this despot leader.  But what if he sends a missile  topped with a nuclear warhead to Guam or worse to California?  You need to ask the question, if we fail to confront the bully now what will we have to confront in the future?  Will rhetoric be enough to scale down his threats and return the world to a more peaceful stance.  What happens to those who are watching North Korea and waiting to see how America will react, like Iran, Russia, China etc...how will our decisions at this time affect our future choices and threats?  

My opinion is that we have two choices, both difficult and both dangerous.  The first is we back down and hope for the best.  Never really knowing how those who are aligned with North Korea will interpret our inaction.  Chances are they will be emboldened, leading them to make more egregious threats and an increase in more provocative rhetoric based on our decision not to engage.  Will a decision to ignore be met with less violence or less risk in the future?  I do not think so and I think history supports that premise.  

The second choice is to take a definitive stand.  As the greater power we have the option of attempting to force North Korea’s hand and in a way bully him to stand down and disarm.  This position should have been made years ago, but it wasn’t.  Instead we chose to sit back and ignore the threats and hoped that they would just go away.  

There is a risk but it is my opinion that any action we take now will be less than in the future.  From a stance of power, greater power and threat to their existence, the chances of a peaceful resolution is far greater than a continued process of appeasement and compromise.  

What are we negotiating?  What are we willing to give up to allow North Korea to remain a constant and ever present threat to our sovereignty and safety?  Like with Iran, past leaders tried to appease and please but failed to demand and follow through leaving the rest of us subject to an ever increasing threat because of an ideal of peace from words rather than a peace derived from strength.  

Trump has decided it is better to call them out, like some gunslinger from the old west, knowing he is faster and has a bigger gun but also realizing that any further delay will result in our adversaries having the time to hone their skills, increase their firepower and become emboldened by our fear of action and our cowardly attempt to talk our way out of what has become a real life showdown.

Whether a bully on the playground or a bully on the world wide stage the process is exactly the same.  The consequence are much greater but the steps to defuse the issue should not be minimized because of the level of threat.  Just like the concept of not negotiating with terrorist, negotiating with a bully only creates a scenario of failure, compromising with evil always nets more evil than before.  

There is a risk to standing strong, especially when the position of past leaders was vacillation and rhetoric without strength or position.  I side with Donald Trump and his stance of power and strength and against the bullies of this world that would see us destroyed and forgotten.