I’m old enough to remember when the advice people gave to deal with a bully was “Beat their ass and they’ll stop.”
But bullies somehow changed the narrative to where fighting back was wrong. It’s not. Self defense is never wrong. The only people that argue this are bullies.
Some people only speak the language of violence, and if you want them to understand your reply it must be delivered in a way they understand.
Bullies do not self correct their behavior. They find it rewarding and it continues until they are stopped.
But bullies somehow changed the narrative to where fighting back was wrong.
I grew up in the age of zero tolerance policies in school which meant you would get suspended for fighting back no matter the circumstances. I blame those policies for the shift.
Yeah our millennial era zero tolerance horseshit was such garbage. I saw kids get suspended because they got punched. That kinda injustice was asking for kids to snap, when in reality kids should have been given a firm handshake for defending themselves.
In the age of zero tolerance, my son discovered that the school security will respond to fights, but not punches.
He had someone bullying him in high school, making fun of him for having a big nose. Told the guy he was done, and didn't want to hear it anymore, and said if he said one more thing, there'd be trouble.
The guy opened his mouth again, my son stood up, punched him in the face, and sat back down. There was a security guard walking by at the time, and he saw it, and just kept walking.
I've felt my son's punches in karate class, so my first reaction when he told me about it was to ask if I should prepare for a visit from the police, but he said he pulled the punch.
No one ever said anything about his nose again.
It amazed me that anyone would ever consider bullying him. 6'5" tall, solid muscle, about 12 years of Karate classes. It seemed like bullying him would be obviously suicidal, but he is a good kid who didn't want to hurt anyone, so bullies irrationally thought he was an easy target.
I think you're right. I grew up right before that... got bullied a lot until about 6th grade. Got into fights at the bus stop probably once every two weeks or so. Got beat up pretty bad when we had deep snow one time.
Once I got home, I got a knife and a bat and went over to his house where he was outside with a neighbor. I chased that SOB around with a steak knife and a bat until he ran out of breath... didn't hit him when he started crying and begging me not to hurt him; but I sure instilled the fear of god in him.
He's a Baltimore city police officer last I heard.
That policy lead to a LOT of abuse from the staff at my sped-ed school as-well. "You looked at me funny? Calls timeout staff to drag you by each of your limbs to the carpeted room"
My high school in the latter half of the 90's tried zero tolerance... briefly. Fighting got worse under the policy, cuz us kids figured if we're gonna catch a suspension, might as well earn it.
i didn't fight back and i still got suspended because he scraped his elbows when he was beating the fuck out of me. then i got grounded for being suspended, and grounded more for 'lying to try to get out of it'. 'zero tolerance' was some fucking bullshit.
And the people responsible for that were thr columbine shooters, who were actually remarkably aggressive bullies themselves and not the victims people make them out to be.
I’m old enough to remember when the advice people gave to deal with a bully was “Beat their ass and they’ll stop.”
Our method was to covertly fuck with them.
They were bigger and could beat the shit out of us, but once we learned the location of their locker in gym class, they often left gym selling of various old lady perfumes.
They dominated the kickball field - sneak into the supply closet and slash the kickballs.
We'd turn our papers in at the teachers desk as we left for lunch. Sneak back in later when the teacher is away and steal the bully papers.
The beauty is they feel like the world is out for them. They either lash out and fuck up big time or fall in line.
That was so mild too. Call them creepy shrimp dick loners. Make them look deeply unsettling and unhinged and inhumane and illogical little unlikeable creeps they are and isolate them. Use whatever sticks. Their top guy is a proven rapist and was best buds with pedophiles. Keep hammering that!
Taking the higher moral stand doesn't work with these people; grab them by their fucking hair and drag them through the mud kicking and screaming. Do you wanna win and maybe slow this country's descent into full on fascism or do you want to "not stoop to their level" and "uphold decorum" with words? Because what's coming is going to be much more unkind than words.
That is the only way to handle these types. Time to grow some ovaries and start calling these pieces of filth what they are.
The great thing about “weird” is that it’s not really aggressive but more disgust. Like, if some guy says women are inferior you can say “that’s freaking weird dude” and leave it at that.
It seems that internal polling put the "weird" message as not really helping (or hurting) the Harris campaign. Arguably, keeping up the "weird" message may have been useful, but they were likely trying to find something that seemed to have a larger impact.
I never cease to be amazed at the “if you don’t treat bullies with respect you are the baddie” discourse in the US. It’s been the MO in schools for about 80 years and has become the standard operating procedure for many adults. Protecting yourself and others from bullies is an ethical imperative. As is supporting others who have defended themselves or others are being further victimized as a result. Bullies (and the people/systems that support them) lack empathy, compassion, reason, and accountability and are only happy when they feel powerful, which they achieve by harming anyone they think they can get away with. The only language they understand is force and any other tactic is as useful as yelling at a brick wall.
This is Trump's strategy too. Make a brutal enough example of a few universities, or law firms, or immigrants, or other countries' economies, and the rest will comply in advance. Like Trump said in his West Point commencement speech recently: "As much as you wanna fight, I'd rather do it without having to fight. I just wanna look at them and have them fold.”
A prediction: Walz might be the George Washington of the Founding Parents for a Free States of America. Unlike most of our leftish politicians, he has some military experience and seems inclined to fisticuffs. Maybe Mark Kelly as well.
We are going to need that sort of person, who is willing to lead and fight by example.
We need people who do not care if they piss off the wealthy. People willing to forcefully and lawfully remove money from politics. People willing to challenge their own party members and even party leaders.
Primary every federal office in every election until the comfy incumbent lives in fear.
I've said this for a while now. You want to make a dent? You go after the ego.
Picture this: an endless stream of totally “realistic” phone-recorded AI videos of Trump playing golf. He lines up the putt—misses. Tries again—air ball. It’s literally an inch away now—misses again. Doesn’t blink, just traps it in, smirks, walks off like he nailed it. Over and over.
The key is subtlety. These can’t look staged or flashy—make them feel like someone’s nephew filmed it from the cart. Make it look like he’s genuinely terrible but thinks he’s crushing it.
Then blast them everywhere. Flood the algorithm. Turn his “I’m the best at golf” schtick into a punchline.
This is how you use AI to actually take Trump down—with a thousand tiny ego papercuts.
If you don't fight from a losing position, what incentive does anyone have to put you to win a winning when it is voting time? Counting on the Trump admin being awful enough for people to vote Dem is way too risky. Fight and inspire. Build collation and prepare to rebuild a new vision. You can't just offer return to neoliberal politics is not the answer either. You'll just restart the cycle over again for the next Trump.
They didnt fight from a winning position, and they still blame the voters. Short of some kind ofcoup in the party, they will keep trying to be republican-lite while working with Republicans, and then complain when Republicans vote for the real things and people who dont like Republicans simply dont vote, again.
I had a theory during Covid that if I would be able to embarass the shit out of anti-vaxers on Nextdoor, that they'd stop showing up and spreading bad info. I never got to check / test / confirm any results to what I was (completely unscientifically) doing; but this is a great article to make me feel like I am getting a pat on the back.
If we look at the common exhibitionist subtype of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) that most people think of when they hear the term narcissist, it is fairly easy to see that they use a simple three-part defense to create a façade of extreme self-confidence. I call this the “GOD defense.”
G – Grandiosity: They act as if they are special and entitled to do or say whatever they want. Grandiose motto: “I am special.”
O – Omnipotent: They make all sorts of unrealistic claims about how powerful and knowledgeable they are. Omnipotent motto: “I can do anything, and I know everything worth knowing,”
D – Devaluing: They feel free to attack and devalue anyone who is not clearly above them in their status hierarchy. Devaluing motto: “You are worthless, defective garbage, and are here to serve me.”
Yeah, you could just put "Example: Donald Trump" on all three.
I have big narc tendencies and lemme tell ya that shit would kill me. The only point I am saying this is to harden the fuck up through some niche forum so that ‚public embarrassment’ doesn’t feel like dying anymore.
It kinda worked. But it took a lot of trolling like a lot and multiple bans on any possible social media you can imagine to shape oneself into someone more resistant to words.
First gain resistance by learning to say whatever shit is on your tongue and feel nothing about consequences and then come back to reason and you feel like unlocking superpower. Finally not shaped by others but being more of a rock staying solid and unaffected by external factors whatever happens.
The hardest battles are those we fight with ourselves
If one of them says, "Well Harris was/would be worse!", explain the concept of Schodinger's Cat to them; in a universe where Harris was never President, you can't say shit about what she would have done.
Nah, they don't want to become a target. They'll wait until it blows up on the streets, then point and say 'see?'. Meanwhile, the public is waiting for the congressmen to do something. It's something to watch.
When did I say that? The election had abysmal turnout, and most non-voters say something along the lines of “both sides are the same”. The most effective way to fight back against that narrative is to…actually not be exactly like the other side. Yet the Dems just couldn’t forgo a few million in bribes and actually be materially different on key campaign issues.
I think that's a bit simplistic. I think Biden's position on Gaza hurt turnout, but at the very most, that would mean Trump would win the electoral vote only rather than both the electoral and popular votes. There were several other reasons, e.g. the economy, Biden not bowing out earlier, Harris not putting some separation between them, etc. that ultimately doomed them.
And seeing these downvotes-- you do understand that picking Walz as your champion means losing whatever election you run him in, right? You cannot run a genocider from the left and expect the base to show up. You need to join the fascist-right if you want to support a fascist right wing ethnic cleaning of innocents. You cant have it both ways.