The year of the bully

Published : 17 May 2012, 06:33 PM
Updated : 17 May 2012, 06:33 PM

In a swanky high school for the wealthy elite, one Friday night a boy lay in his bed. The long-haired boy was known as a non-conformist, something with which the other students took umbrage. John Umber bothered young Mitt Romney, the teenage son of Michigan governor George Romney. According to a recent report in The Washington Post, Mitt objected to Umber's long, bleached hair, which, I suppose must have looked very Andy Warholian.

It was the hairdo that clearly offended the eighteen-year-old Romney. Romney was an upper-classman in his final year of Cranbrook Boarding school, and he was already showing signs of budding leadership. He summoned a possee, and at the head of an army of six boys, he tackled Umber, pinned him to the ground, and while Lauber wept and screamed for help, Romney cut off his hair with a pair of scissors.

The other boys involved were guilt-ridden. The victim was a younger boy, weak, effeminate, an easy target, and the act was blatant bullying. Forty-seven years later, all the other boys recall the incident with shame and regret. They recalled wondering what sort of consequence Romney would suffer as the mastermind of this assault. But no consequences were forthcoming for the powerful son of the Governor. In fact, the boy who was eventually ejected from school was the victim, kicked out for smoking a cigarette.

Fifty years later, the bully is running for president. We've had bullies in the White House before. In fact, President Theodore Roosevelt called the US Presidency "The Bully Pulpit." In some way, I don't mind the image so much. We've done OK with bullies. The first successful military action of Ronald Reagan's presidency was the invasion of Grenada, a country so small that the protesters at the March 12th BNP rally in Dhaka outnumbered the entire population of that nation by 7,000!

We bullies know how to pick our targets.

I can imagine a future President Mitt Romney picking on weaker, noncomformist people, like, say, the French Canadians. I can almost see him dragging them out of their beds in the middle of the night, pinning them down and shouting, "Come on! Speak American like a normal Canadian!"

But America is far from being the world's biggest bully. That distinction has to go to China. That nation is like the ninety-pound weakling who went to the gym, grew strong, and started to boss around everyone else. What's most frightening to me is that recent events prove that my country, a pretty big bully in its own right, can be intimidated and bullied by China.

Several weeks ago, in an escape that could have been scripted in Hollywood, blind activist Chen Guangcheng was able to elude a net of Chinese security and undertake a daring odyssey that took him from house arrest to the safety of the US Embassy in Beijing.

Or at least he thought he was heading for safety.

With the United States hoping to strengthen economic ties with China, US officials relayed a threat from Chinese officials that Chen would never be reunited with his family if he didn't leave the embassy. So he left, with reassurances by the Chinese government that he would not be harmed.

And we all know how trustworthy Chinese assurances of safety are.

China has since demanded an apology from the United States for interfering in Chinese domestic affairs and has arrested Chen's nephew on charges which could force the young man to face the death penalty. The nephew defended himself against a police attack so brutal that three hours after the attack, the young man was still bleeding from the face. In the process, he wounded a police officer.

China is in the economic position to bully anyone it sees fit, and everyone's afraid to stand up to this big bully, especially when it is only oppressing people within its own borders. But this bullying doesn't even stop at the national frontiers of China. Recently, China has violated the territorial sovereignty of The Philippines and sent fishing boats deep into Philippine territory. Many pundits see this as a test of the resolve of the US to use its power to stop China. If the US fails to respond, China will see it as permission to drill for oil in Philippine waters. If the world fails to react, China will grow greedier, like a school ground bully who steals everyone's lunch money. China has already claimed the waters around the shores of The Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia and Singapore. The map of China's claims show how patently ridiculous the claim is; the area extends beyond the coast of China like a giant bovine udder that nearly touches the shore of Brunei. China is willing to back up the claims with military presence, knowing that no nation on earth has the fortitude to face its wrath.

But it's not just the Chinese or the Americans who bully the weak. India bullies Bangladesh, and within Bangladesh itself, the bullies are running amok, especially within the last month.

The climate of the world is getting hotter, and the tempers of the world's governments and those who protest against them are growing short. Still, just as decent people cannot countenance random acts of violence in the name of supporting any government, decent people shouldn't countenance random acts of vandalism and violence in response to government wrongdoing either. Let's look at some recent events closer to your shores…

The disappearance of Ilias Ali seems strange to me. I think that reasonable people could conclude that someone in power may have had something to gain from his disappearance. Whether or not the government is responsible, at least in this case, it wasn't unreasonable for the BNP to protest. But since that disappearance, the headlines have been replete almost every day with stories of protests of every sort turning violent, responding to or causing excessive police response, promoting a mob mentality vandalism which is countered by more police response, all of which seems to be an attempt of one side of almost every issue to out-bully the other. Though many of these protests are unrelated, the common thread is always the reports of physical injuries and vandalism. On the other side, the issue of "forced disappearance," a tactic I remember from my first trip to Argentina as an exchange student during the military regime, has surfaced twice in less than a month.

The "disappeared" garment worker who was produced by police clearly fears for his safety. Again, only from the lens of the Internet and my vantage point thousands of miles away, it looks like Mr. Salman Shamim Khan has one black eye. Yet he claims not to have been mistreated.

Here's another thought…I might just be misreading this story, but if the police can produce one person who has disappeared, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that they might be able to produce another? Are forced disappearances becoming a political tool?

In any case, as a concerned friend who has followed Bangladeshi news almost hourly for two years now, the reports of people using violence as a means to solve problems are escalating. Bangladesh must develop a culture that supports a less violent means of redressing grievances. After all, this is a nation of thoughtful, literate, often optimistic people. How could things get so out of hand?

Then, today I read that the opposition was staging another rally. Oh no, not another hartal, I groaned. However, I noticed that the BNP has called for mass hunger strikes. That's good. I know a thing or two about hunger strikes. This year, I completed thirteen days of ingesting nothing but water. At the end of that time, I was looking a little grey and my loved ones were getting worried. However, I would not have had the energy on day thirteen to set fire to a car.

I hope that the AL can compromise with the BNP to cede to at least one of their demands. Hunger strikes are far less violent and destructive than other types of protests and should be encouraged. If the BNP can declare some sort of victory, perhaps we would see less violent demonstrations. After all, what sort of violence can one possibly practice against a hunger striker? A forced feeding?

One thing is clear. At the heart of all bullying, lies the interplay of power and fear. The bully fears the destruction of an image, a loss of power, and creates an environment in which his victims fear to oppose him because of the imagined consequences. Meanwhile, reason and purpose drown in the murky waters of common cowardice, born of mutual distrust. It's always the same story. Group A cannot trust Group B, and therefore must preemptively strike, and test the resolve of would-be enemies. Group B feels victimized and strikes back. One group becomes fixated on the other until neither group can see any purpose beyond its own preservation and the annihilation of the enemy. Cooperation means weakness, and therefore cooperation is impossible. When these warring groups are political parties, the entire country becomes vulnerable, ironically, to international bullying.

My prayer for the people of Bangladesh is that you all find politicians who ask, in the habit of the Native American, how each decision they make will affect their people unto the seventh generation. Only then will the day-to-day fears cease to be the cause of unrelenting chaos. Seven generations from now, the opposition families may share common descendants, and the stories of these current troubled times might be met with a shake of the head or a click of the tongue, because long ago, people of faith chose love over fear and trusted. May we all be wise enough to understand that every coin has two faces, and in order to receive payment, you must accept both the head and the tail.

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Frank Domenico Cipriani writes a weekly column in the Riverside Signal called "You Think What You Think And I'll Think What I Know." He is also the founder and CEO of The Gatherer Institute — a not-for-profit public charity dedicated to promoting respect for the environment and empowering individuals to become self-taught and self-sufficient. His most recent book, "Learning Little Hawk's Way of Storytelling", teaches the native art of oral tradition storytelling.