“Bullies” and Other Labels

The other day I was watching the new Percy Jackson series with my family, and it had a line that said:

“Like all bullies, they want you to believe that it’s your fault.”

And I thought that was a really good line.

But then I considered the example of a schoolyard altercation in which each kid is accusing the other one of being a “bully.”

“Well, you started it!”

“No, you started it!”

At that level, the word “bully” becomes only another label: a name we call the people who we don’t like.

At some point, calling someone a “bully” is no different from calling them a “poopy head.”

So what do you do to bullies? You stand up to them?

You walk up to some kid on the playground, and you punch them in the face, and then when you get in trouble for it you make excuses and say, “Well they deserved it, because they are a bully”?

No.

When you do that, you become the bully.

But substitute the derogatory label word of the day in place of the word “bully” above, and you’ve got a broad strokes outline of much of what passes for political discourse in the public sphere these days:

“They deserve [mistreatment] because they are a [label]!”

How about, let’s stop mistreating others on purpose, shall we?

“Well, okay,” you may well reasonably ask, “but what if I witness a dispute in progress, and each side says the other is a bully. How do I know who to side with?”

I can tell you from my experience as a parent, that dispute resolution is much simpler when I don’t take sides.

The priority is for the fighting to stop.

But this brings up a reasonable question.

When you witness an altercation in the public sphere, how do you distinguish one side’s reasonable self-defense from the other side’s malicious assault? Which one do you defend, if necessary?

You defend the powerless against the powerful.

You defend the few against the might of the many.

Let’s consider the playground example.

If you are a parent or a teacher, and you see a bunch of kids who are all picking on one solitary kid: wouldn’t you tell the bunch of kids to cut it out and leave the one kid alone?

No matter what the bunch of kids say about the one kid, it’s no excuse for ganging up and hurting someone.

And after the bunch of kids has told you their side of the story, would you then allow them to prevent the one kid from telling the other side of the story?

Would you tell the one kid, “Well, I heard what these other kids said about you, and it’s so bad that I’m not even going to listen to your side of the story”?

If the one kid tried to tell you their side of the story, after you had already listened to the group’s accusations: would you accuse the one kid of perpetuating the conflict?

Would you, in fact, punish the one kid, without ever listening to their side of the story?

Not only that. Would you allow the group of kids to continue beating up on the one kid? Would you tell them to carry on, because the group’s name-calling and accusations were enough to convince you that the one kid deserves pain and humiliation?

I certainly hope not.

By why, then, don’t you hold adults to the same standards?

We have a legal system for a reason. As imperfect as it may be, at least it strives for consistency.

Our law is based on the premise that individuals have rights.

Mob justice, on the other hand, does not care about consistent standards, or rules of evidence, or reasonable doubt, or allowing the accused to offer a defense, or the basic rights of the individual, or prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. Mob justice merely delights in the suffering of others, for whatever flimsy excuse happens to be trendy these days.

Mob justice is what you get when a big group of adults all decide to be bullies.

Advocate goodness. Speak out against cruelty.

Avoid labels. Apply consistent standards.

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