. . . Jesus, I'm doing it. I actually sound like a snarky geriatric already. Times have changed enough, the sociopolitical tectonics have shifted, and my worldview, the paradigm I took for reality as a child, is now outdated, even antiquated. Well, fine. I can deal with that. Do you know why? Because, goddamn, I am right (as usual).
The recession is not over. We still have limited economic growth in this country, especially compared to the 90s, and millions remain jobless. College education as a sound investment is being questioned by talking heads and even a few people who may have some idea what they're talking about. Across this great nation, in dozens of cities, thousands are unintelligibly voicing their dissatisfaction with . . . stuff. Quite a few of them are getting maced, bludgeoned, and/or imprisoned for it, so they must be striking a nerve with someone, which means it's not totally off-base. As a country, we are still figuring out how to disentangle ourselves from several international conflicts, while dancing around others we would just be itching to get into 15 years ago. We're trying to figure out how to reinvent the USA for an era without superpowers in the traditional sense.
So what are the legislators in my state busy doing? What bold measures are they taking to address these issues? How are my tax dollars being spent to improve my life and those of my fellows? Passing laws against bullying. Yes,
bullying, truly the greatest threat to our union since the Civil War.
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Pretty much the modern Hitler. |
As much of an obedient drone as I am, even I have to question just what this legislation's practical upshot will be. What are we going to do, fine 12-year-olds? Send them to jail? The worst part is that I seem to be one of very few people who realize how ludicrous this measure is, how anyone who genuinely supported it 20 years ago would have been laughed off stage (right after their milk money was taken). It's a testament to how stupid and sensationalistic our society has become that lawmakers feel obliged to intervene. I think it started when we freaked out at even the merest suggestion of childhood violence. I recall a case in which, I shit you not, a little boy was suspended from school for taking a discarded chicken-bone in hand, pointing it at another student, and exclaiming, "Bang!" Up went the Paranoid Post-Columbine Massacre Flag, and the kid was booted.
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Whoa, watch where you're pointing those things, asshole! |
Do you know how many times I would have been expelled as a kid? My primary form of playground entertainment was staging reenactments of fight scenes from
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In fact, the majority of boys' games consisted of mostly-feigned violence, which wasn't even prohibited at my school until the umpteenth kindergartener got his teeth loosened playing
Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers. Even so, I never heard a mediagasm about the epidemic of traumatic injuries and shell-shock resulting from these destructive episodes. No, the press hadn't yet perfected the bullshit spin-machine of hysterical pseudo-news.
But no longer. Now, I can't go two weeks without reading some entirely serious commentary on the "bullying crisis" or the nuanced psychology of adolescent harassment, unless it is superseded by some tragic story of a teenager or even preteen
killing themselves over it. Don't get me wrong, it is sick and sad, but really? Your existence is so unbearably miserable, your self-worth so degraded, that you no longer want to live? Because Cheyenne keeps telling you you're ugly, because Derek always pushes you into the lockers, you feel compelled to put an end to the miracle of your own life? Yeah, sounds logical. Most inmates of Nazi concentration camps didn't do that, but what did they know about
suffering?
The media has even coined the term
cyberbullying, for Steve Jobs' sake.
Cyberbullying. Oh, the agony of having to read mean-spirited texts! How do these kids cope? Had my childhood transpired during this golden age of technological intercession, I would have been impervious. Dickish post on my Facebook wall? Instant messages telling me to eat shit and die? Sticks and stones, motherfucker. Meet me under the monkey bars.
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No, please, just make it stop . . . oh, wait, I can close the browser. |
Shit, I laughed off taunts
to my face, once I'd gotten used to them. Badass, huh? If you are such a passive-aggressive pansy that you can't even insult or threaten me without using a digital mediator, bring it on. I like my odds. The only thing that could make someone a bigger coward?
Actually being intimidated by this tactic.
Seriously, how weak and fragile have we made this up-and-coming generation's collective psyche? For the most part, the younger set nowadays are the offspring of late Generation Xers and the early . . . whatever my generation is called. The two generations that produced the video game
Bully. For those who don't remember,
Bully was a game in which you assumed the titular role at a private academy, distributing noogies, wedgies, trash talk, and the occasional kneecapping until you ascended to the top of the schoolyard food chain. Or something.
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Strangely, your avatar looked like a cross between King of the Hill's Bobby Hill and Vincent Crabbe, Harry Potter's portliest perennial tormentor at school. |
While this is something of a sick role-reversal/revenge fantasy for dorks (think
Inglourious BastNerds), it is also evidence that most of us rarely took bullying all
that seriously, certainly not in retrospect. Sure, it sucked like Nickelback, but it was part of growing up for the majority of us, at one point or another. I didn't emerge emotionally-scarred (much), let alone depressive or suicidal. And you know what? Neither did anyone I knew. If back in 1995ish, one of my classmates had killed himself because he was tired of his ridiculed life, I believe the primary reaction, aside from obvious abhorrence, would be
What the flying fuck? And I think the media would have had a similar - if less-colorful and more judiciously-worded - response to the event, because that shit just did not happen back then. I refuse to believe the blackboard jungle has changed this drastically in a decade or two (damn, I
am old). It has gotten to the
nadir that Googling images of 'bully' brings up this:
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And that's just the hall-monitor. |
I mean, really? This is what is considered an accurate representation of the phenomenon these days? A Tarantino-esque curb-stomping? Get real. Yes, the above picture was obviously staged for shock value, but it says something about the state of our society when anyone would realistically consider using such an exaggerated depiction, for any effect other than parody. This looks like a scene from
Schindler's Hall Pass.
My point? Not to flog the bloody, rotting remains of a long-deceased horse, but our culture fosters
hyperbolic victimization. In our quest to protect children from everything, we prepare them for nothing. We pad, censor, and sanitize their world to spare their delicate little minds and bodies, reassure them that everyone is a winner no matter what, refuse to discipline them properly for fear of inflicting irreparable damage, and medicate the hell out of them at the first sign of a parental challenge. Then reality kicks in, and they freak out. Cue the violins, the
60 Minutes special report, and every other conceivable form of sympathetic validation to reinforce helpless victimhood. Ad infinitum.
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It's a sad day when this is one of the better outcomes you can hope for as a parent. |
I did not have this problem, and I'll wager few in my age-set did. Maybe by the time I was fifteen, I was nearing Ferris Bueller levels of popular immunity, but for my entire life I have been short, underweight, quiet, smart, and curly-haired. In other words, as obvious a target as a paraplegic albino deer. Seriously, God painted a bull's-eye on my back. I won't claim I was incessantly picked on or thrashed daily in the name of sport, but I was always on my guard, and with good reason. A year or two down the road, my school tried to teach us all a brilliant psychobabble program called "conflict resolution," which stressed using specific steps and clear language to express your hurt feelings and desire for a peaceful end to hostilities with your antagonist. Which was, of course, the surest way possible to get a royal asskicking, and we all knew it.
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"But I said 'Please stop beating me, it hurts my self-esteem'!" |
Back then, I feel like kids just had an innate sense for dealing with this stuff on their own. Indeed, the few times throughout my life that I involved higher authorities only served to reaffirm my suspicion that they were really powerless to do shit for me. My parents never taught me a thing about fighting, and I truthfully can't recall them telling me anything about standing up for myself; I just knew to do it. In all their endless obsessing over this "new" hot-button topic, I rarely see any media outlet suggesting, let alone advocating, the most patent and simplest answer: don't back down. Fight back. Bullies are
never going to go away, so you'd better prepare your kid for them. It irks me that the sole recent example of this mentality I can cite is
Captain America: The First Avenger, in which the wimpy, pre-superpowered Captain, Steve Rogers, says of bullies, "Once you start running, they'll never let you stop."
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He knew even chiseled cheekbones wouldn't spare you a beat-down. |
And it's true. So I never ran. Nor did I often end up in all-out fisticuffs, and that's the point: if you showed no fear, a willingness to get your ass handed to you, most bullies wouldn't follow through. If they did, well, what was the worst that could happen? Surely a split lip and some bruises are preferable to suicide. The fact that I feel compelled to point this out shows just how deluded the discussion has become in this milieu of drama-based media coverage, which glorifies the victims and only encourages more youths to see themselves as similar martyrs. And, because it's anathema to condone any type of violence, even self-defense, in children (let alone crack down on the mentally-anguished bullies) the harassed kids see little alternative. Yet the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes, people don't need therapy; they need to get some blood on their knees.
As for verbal abuse, I quickly learned the basic truth that assholes aren't bright. As such, I could pretty easily outspar them, humiliating them right back. My tongue only got sharper for the practice, my wit quicker and my eye more critical. Which has led, bizarrely enough, to this very blog. So you can thank my adolescent tormentors for that.
*NOTE: I didn't mean to put so many World War II references in this article, it just sort of turned out that way. Also, sorry if you didn't find this particularly funny, but I feel pretty strongly about the subject.