Trump the Bully

TIME magazine has run a rather sympathetic cover story on Donald Trump. I do not like Donald Trump as a candidate. But I have to comment on TIME's description there of him as a “bully”--something I've heard said of Trump elsewhere. The use of the term in relation to Trump usefully illustrates the problem with anti-bullying programs in the schools: the targets are likely not to be actual bullies, but those vulnerable to bullying.

For Trump is not a bully. At least, he has never obviously bullied anyone during his candidacy, as Jeb Bush, for example, has. The examples TIME cites are: Trump raising his hand to say he would not rule out a third party run; Trump calling Megyn Kelly a “bimbo,” among other things; Trump saying he preferred war heroes who had not been captured to John McCain; Trump calling Lindsay Graham a “stiff,” Trump calling Jeb Bush a “puppet,” and similar comments about Rand Paul and Rick Perry.

All, manifestly, people who had just attacked Trump. To which his “bullying” was a direct response. In other words, Trump was not on the offensive: he was standing up to someone trying to bully him. Baier, Kelly, McCain, Graham, Bush, Paul and Perry were the bullies. Trump was the victim. The problem is, he did not lie down and submit. No doubt this was annoying to them.

Why TIME's mistake? Simple: to a bully, refusing to lie down and get walked over is unacceptably impertinent behaviour. Bullies do not handle such things well. And TIME magazine, like the rest of the MSM, is accustomed to bullying politicians.

Unfortunately, the same is true for teachers and administrators in the schools. They are often there for the perk of being able to tell a classroom, or an entire school, full of vulnerable people what to do on a daily basis. Given the authority to punish bullies, they will pretty consistently use this power not against bullies, but to bully and to punish anyone who stands up to bullying.

It's as predictable as night follows day, B follows A, and what goes up must come down.