It generally helps when we respond to schoolyard bullying, whether done by 10-year-olds or by 72-year-olds going on 10. Exception: occasionally on the Alzheimer’s ward someone’s dementia is too severe for them to learn anything.
In this case we definitely want to teach listeners, third parties, that passive or active participation in bullying is a ticket to long-term passive avoidance by potential employers, by potential lovers, by everyone except for other hard-core bullies and a few hangers-on.
In some ways it’s like joining a cult. You’ll find out someday that the hard-core bullies are by and large a rather selfish and abusive lot. They’ll focus their manipulative abilities on you. The bullies will often claim that if you’re not 100% with them, that you’re one of those hated others, in fact you’re worse than those others because you deserted them.
That’s how street gangs work. That’s equally how American neo-Nazi skinhead groups work. Cross them and they’ll threaten to shoot you dead, like a really bad death cult. Meanwhile, the worst of the gang members look so tattooed with racial invective and they naturally talk so disreputably that many of them can’t hold steady jobs. That hurts their lives.
Mr. Trump was born rich and so he can buy friends and lovers, although few staffers can stand his rages. Most of us aren’t billionaires and can’t really afford to be abusive all day.
Now in Senator Warren’s case we see racial abuse used to feed a bullying crowd of Mr. Trump’s supporters. Sen. Warren is covertly being accused, with the nickname “Pocohontas”, of having mostly Indian ancestry. I see a parallel with labeling someone with 1/4 Jewish ancestry as Jewish. Second, Mr. Trump is dragging up simplistic racial stereotypes of a huge group of people, First Peoples, in order to tar and denigrate the entire group.
I’m writing because racial denigration is evil. I don’t want to patronize any business that hires a real nut.
