Moving on from the bully-in-chief
Just before my 5th birthday, we moved from the countryside in Essex to a suburb of Liverpool. While geographically not far, the remarkable regionality of accents in England meant that I started school talking very differently from all the other kids. I learned quickly that differences in school were not an asset. I couldn’t shape shift and conform; it’s not easy to shake something so unconsciously and conspicuously part of you. I resented what made me different—which seemed so arbitrary — and longed to blend in.
Unable to blend in, I had to harden to face the headwinds of school. A developing sense of humor and quick wittedness helped, but it seemed like everyone took their turn being beaten, ridiculed or shamed for whatever their difference was. Craig was shorter than average. Neil had red hair. Joe did well in school. The difference didn’t matter — they could even be imagined and assigned. A remarkable thing about attending an almost 100% white school was seeing how divisions, boundaries and groups were constructed and enforced — like which football team you supported, which side of the Mersey you were from, or whether you tried in school or not. I learned that it sucked to be singled out.
The system we moved into had deep roots, stretching through older siblings, parents, grandparent and beyond. Roots that ran to the Liverpool docks and the working class that had thrived and then been decimated. When we arrived, the whole region was on life support. As with other, much more destructive and violent systems such as misogyny and racism, enforcement fell to individuals, often times individuals who themselves were victims of the system they enforced.
Getting out
At 16, I left home to attend boarding school in Yorkshire to pursue an opportunity to play rugby more intensively. I was struck by the stark difference of the world I had entered. My classmates were free of the overt generational and socioeconomic trauma, and part of a system which didn’t tolerate petty squabbling or active hostility, I found peace for the first time in over a decade. That is, after my sharp edges had been worn down a little.
This was an important transition — the opportunity to see the other side. To see a tolerant world that embraced and celebrated differences, rather than punishing and persecuting them (more tolerant, but not perfect — let’s not forget, I’m a straight, cisgender, white man — I have it easy). It was freeing to be let out from under the futility and oppression of a previously inescapable system.
I learned, with time, to move past the hate and resent I held for the shapeless, nameless blur of people who had enforced the system I had grown up in, and started to develop understanding, if not empathy for the context in which they found themselves. The kids who had beaten me were no different than the kids I found myself thriving amidst at boarding school. Just different environments, different contexts.
In theory, there’s no difference between the characters on Friends and the characters on It’s Always Sunny in Philidelphia. Just different environments, experiences and contexts.
Grow or stagnate
I’ve noticed a thread of trauma in the people who are the most sincerely compassionate and empathetic. People who have learned from and grown beyond their experience. People who have turned something painful into an outward expression of love. Trauma makes people what they are, for better or worse.
The alternative is to remain bullied, and to be a bully (the two are inseparable). People who never escape the system that made them feel small and fearful. Perhaps that’s because their system is practically inescapable. Perhaps the oppression is their family, or their own denied identity. Perhaps they are too deeply entangled — oppressive systems can, perversely, become part of personal identity, and offer something close to belonging. Everyone is vulnerable to this stagnation, which is why there are so many seemingly counter-intuitive groups in the bully camp. Folks working against their best interests to uphold a system that actively oppresses them. To be embraced by the system, no matter how fleetingly, can feel like acceptance.
Consciously and pragmatically, I strive to be positive. Subconsciously, there are times when there is clearly still healing to do. I still want to put self-confident teens in their place so they aren’t so cocky. That’s not super healthy or constructive, but I’m working on it.
With great power…
Tomorrow, with President Elect Biden’s inauguration, we get to begin the process of healing from the collective trauma that we’ve experiencing on a daily basis over the last 4+ years (yes, there have been bigger traumas, but comparative suffering isn’t helpful). There will also be some heartening, glass-ceiling-breaking representation in the White House, with Vice President Elect Kamala Harris.
Through relentless hypocrisy and gaslighting, the Republican Party finds itself devoid of the philosophical and moral underpinnings that made it at least a once defensible, legitimate party. It has been on a death spiral in a changing world for years, but the desperate asymmetrical polarization that led them to elect this great bully will cost them dearly.
I believed the kind of fear based system I experienced as a child could only be upheld by damaged kids, and that I’d graduated into a more just adult world. To see (damaged) adults perpetrating, supporting, and amplifying the same school yard behaviors, on an international scale, has been a painful exercise in reliving this experience on a daily basis. The insurrection at the Capitol last week reminded me of the chants of “Fight. Fight! FIGHT!” that would signal unrest during lunchtime as an egged-on, futile struggle for power unfolded. Teachers would ultimately break up the fight, suspending from school those at the center. It’s a sad state of affairs when suspension from Twitter is the punishment for inciting a domestic riot where people died.
They, along with their leader, are like the school-yard bullies from my childhood — desperately fearful of “different”. They are intolerant of people who look, love, or pray differently. They mock physical disabilities and weakness. It’s the same petty school yard intolerance, elected to the highest office in the nation. And just like at school, it feeds on power.
Tomorrow, as the power goes out on the Republican Party, losing the presidency, house and senate, I am hopeful once more.
Never done
Just like moving to boarding school didn’t rid the world of bullies, it at least offered some distance. Distance that I needed to become my best self. Tomorrow doesn’t heal or fix everything — not even close. But it is progress, and restores some faith in the long arc of progress towards justice.
The last 4 years have brought into focus, and provided a physical embodiment of the scale of problems we face. The triggers I’ve faced, along with my formative childhood experiences pale into insignificance next to the ongoing systemic triggers and injustices facing our LGBTQ and BIPOC friends and family. While I will never know what it is like to be anything other than a straight white man, I have a responsibility to apply my lived experiences to inform my empathy, and extend love, kindness and allegiance to all those who are being oppressed. The bullies can’t win.
Together we must build a nation that is more equitable, more compassionate and more inclusive.
— Bernie Sanders at the DNC , August 2020
