Parents have done a disservice to their children for the past ten years or so. That disservice was the policy of zero tolerance for bullying someone. I know that sounds counter-intuitive but hear me out. Parents have believed that by having a zero-tolerance policy for bullying, they’re somehow making things better for their children. But that’s not what happened.
By removing all bullying from schools, the children didn’t develop the skills needed to be able to deal with a bully when they came across one. And they are everywhere. By not exposing your kids to bullying, they’re now woefully unprepared to deal with life outside of the protective cocoon of academia. And many have become bullies themselves. You’ll find bullies in the PTA, at your church, where you work and pretty much everywhere else.
Zero-tolerance doesn’t make the problem go away. It just time-shifts the exposure to it. The bully still exists, but the mean kid isn’t taught right from wrong or given the skills to treat people better. No, the bully just gets more proficient at making sure he isn’t caught.
Now, I’m sure those of you reading this that grew up with me will remember me picking on people when I was younger. I’ll admit, I did my share of that. But you’ll probably also remember that I got the crap kicked out of me plenty of times so I’m painfully familiar with both sides of the coin.
There are a couple of ways that you can deal with bullies. My parents used to say to me and my siblings that we should just ignore whoever is picking on us and eventually they’ll get bored and move on to someone else. That works great if you’ve got the time and patience to wait them out. Of course, that just moves the bully onto the next victim where it becomes someone else’s problem. The bully doesn’t learn any lesson and becomes increasingly bolder.
Or, you can do what my sister Pat did when one of the boys on the school bus wouldn’t stop pulling her hair. She sent him home with a bloody nose. Pat not only solved her problem, she solved the problem for the next girl too.
Now, you’re seeing the results of zero-tolerance. These now-twenty-somethings that grew up as kids in a bubble without bullies, have become the bullies. People are being censured simply for having the audacity to speak their mind. The “woke” name given to this by the media is “cancel culture”.
A long time ago, there used to be this thing we called “conversation”. Maybe some of you remember it. Here’s how It worked: Someone would say something, the listener would hear what was said, think about it a bit and then respond. Sometimes the two people agreed, sometimes they disagreed and sometimes they both learned something from each other. Ah, good times. Good times.
Sadly, that’s no longer how it works. We have more ability to communicate today than at any other point in history. Except, no one is listening. That awesome ability to freely exchange ideas has been weaponized to silence anyone the cancel culture doesn’t agree with. If you happen to say something that “triggers” another person or group, there can be serious consequences. People have lost jobs, livelihoods and, in some instances, their lives just because someone (and it only takes one person) disagreed with them.
And that’s what happened to the bullies that didn’t learn how to play nice with others.
I saw a statistic recently that said that 62% of people in America are afraid to share their political opinions. Nearly two thirds of us are afraid of being “cancelled”. That’s shameful and, as Americans, we should be embarrassed. We claim to value free speech yet allow 62% of us to remain too afraid to speak.
Now, I can already hear what some of you are thinking. “But Mike, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from the consequences of your speech.” That is true. But shouldn’t there be a more reasonable response than immediately turning the dial to 11? Why not have a lively discussion where differences of opinion are discussed openly? Because, due to the anonymity of the Internet, the bully has gotten better at not being caught.
If we want to stop this type of behavior, if we want to stop the bullying tactics being used to suppress free speech, we have two options. Our first option is to wait them out. This is what we’ve been doing. But, they just continue to get bolder and “triggered” by an increasing number of things. You can remain silent, but that just moves the problem to someone else.
Or, we can take a page from my sister’s playbook. If she were still alive today, I think I know what she would do. She would say “enough is enough”, send them home with a bloody nose, and make them think twice before they tried to hurt someone else.
