Living in the Shadow of a Bully

Commentary

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

I do not believe in hell in the classic sulfuric, flame-ridden sense. It defies my sense of logic and my experience of God. However, I have experienced hell. I have travelled to war zones and ghettos.I have been in emergency rooms and psychiatric wards. I have experienced the misery of loss and grief. No question about it. I have been in hell.It takes different shapes and expressions, sculpting pain and suffering in a variety of ways, but it is unmistakably, hell.

In all this, one hell that has touched me deeply is the mindless bullying I experienced as an adolescent. 

During 8th grade in upstate New York, I was bullied by a gym teacher. This alleged educator hounded me in front of the class, calling me names and shadowing me with physical intimidation as he shoved and pushed me around the locker room. When it came time for wrestling, he would pit me against a boy twice my size who would be publicly encouraged to “beat the crap” out of me. He was inevitably successful in this endeavor, which of course, empowered others who then took their turns with malicious glee. They waited for me at the bike rack after school. They followed me home with taunts and beatings administered with sadistic glee. It was a special kind of hell that was isolating, painful and from which I still suffer even as I walk through my seventh decade as an alleged adult.

Spiritual assassin

A bully is an assassin of the Spirit. A bully trades in lies and  innuendo. A bully seeks vulnerability and aims at those tender, unprotected spots with appalling accuracy and devastating affect.

I have watched with alarm and disgust as I have come to the horrifying realization that the Republican candidate for the President of the United States of America is a bully. That he is more than this, we know.  He is a convicted felon. He is a narcissist. He is a sexual predator.  He is greedy. He is a pathological liar. And he is not, in spite of his own protestation, a Christian.

This former Bully-in-Chief is an assassin of the Spirit, tearing at the fabric of nation and community, leaving most of a nation in chronic depression and grief over the evaporation of civility and decent mutuality. That he is a liar is an incontrovertible truth. He can be caught daily in prevarications ranging from denying that he said something that 25 million people heard him say on television to making up things about former Presidents and other leaders out of whole cloth. A friend of mine recently asked how you could tell that Donald Trump is lying.I innocently shrugged and my friend said, “It’s when his lips are moving.” Finally, this malingering wannabe President seeks out the vulnerable and takes clear, careful aim at them. From young people once protected by the DACA rules to championing the removal of health care for millions of people, he brazenly seeks to wound and even kill the defenseless.

This bully has a much broader reach than the teacher-inspired tormentors of my youth. He is not merely hanging out waiting to sucker-punch you at the bike rack after school. No. This bully has used, and will again exercise the levers of government to strip protections from minorities, laborers, women and children. This bully seeks to steal retirement benefits and Social Security from millions who have faithfully paid into these programs most of their lives. This bully taunted the leader of another country, pushing us all closer than we have been in decades to an all-out nuclear war.

Whether it is on the playground in upstate New York or in the oval office, bullies exist because no one will rise up to stop them. When I was a boy, lot’s of people stood and watched as I was assaulted daily on my way to and from school. Teachers watched. Cops watched. Neighbors watched. And it continued unabated until one day when I fought back. The look on this one boy’s face when I finally turned to confront him was one of surprise, certainly, but the real surprise to me was that I saw fear on his face. That’s right. Fear. The one(s) who had spent so much time and energy trying to make me afraid were themselves wallowing in fear. When we stop, turn around and confront the bully who aspires for a second term, we will see the fear in his eyes as well.

Escalating hate and war

But make no mistake about it. If he is elected the bully will continue his malignant behavior until we rise up to stop him. We cannot, we dare not stand by doing nothing while this would-be dictator promises to target sisgers and brothers for deportation and worse. We cannot, we dare not turn a blind eye to the escalating rhetoric of hate and war. We may not stand idly by while Donald Trump seeks once again to use the office of the President to empower racists and thugs who seek to derail our whole national enterprise. 

Part of being a civilized people is the active embrace of the reality that we are connected to each other. We are inextricably bound together upon this tiny planet, breathing the same air, and exposed to the same future. Let us, therefore, not make the same mistake that the people of Germany made as Adolf Hitler and his thugs rose to power. These people did not assume responsibility for one another. They stood by and allowed their neighbors to be arrested and killed. They stood by while Jews, Gypsies, Gay and Lesbian and mentally ill people were dragged away to horrible deaths. They participated fully in the genocide because they did not act to stop it.

Let us awaken to the power that we have as a people. Let us take responsibility as citizens for the health, welfare and well-being of all people. Let us be the ones who say “no” to the bully. Let us lift up a vision of an America where all people have health care; where all people have homes; where all people have enough to eat; where all people have decent jobs and access to education. Let us dare to live into this vision together and let it start by saying “no” to the bully.

The bully has the power we give him. Let us take it away. Now.

The Rev. Schuyler Rhodes is a retired clergy member of the California-Nevada Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church.