The world's terrorists can sleep a little more soundly and enjoy a guilt free conscience after learning that millions of American football fans are perfectly fine with a 220 pound sociopath brutalizing a four year old with a stick. In fact some Americans are such sick fucks they think the idea of a large, powerful man torturing a small child is amusing and a cause for celebration.
One...sick...bitch.
Just imagine the thrill of power Adrian Peterson must have felt administering blow after blow. Nothing says manliness like torturing a smaller, weaker victim. Hey Adrian...did you get your secret hard-on while listening to a helpless child screaming in pain? I'm sure you did. What a rush it must have been. After all, that's what your parents did to you and look how wonderful you turned out.
Adrian Peterson offers a relatively standard textbook excuse for child abuse. His was tortured by his parents, so he's going to torture his children.
Brilliant defense Adrian.
A parent's job description can be stated in one simple sentence. Your job is to transform an infant member of a violent, predatory species into a civilized young adult, preferably by consistent role modeling.
Fail in your job and you may produce a Ray Rice, Ryan Tucker, or Adrian Peterson. Or you may produce a sadistic fuck who instills a homicidal rage in other people's children.
Columbine jock anyone?
Fear not sports fans. Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson will miss a few games and lose a little money, but they'll both be thrilling audiences with orchestrated violence once again. Roger Goodell and all those filthy rich team owners know that the ticket buying public doesn't give a rat's ass about the safety of violent crime victims. The American public speaks with their wallets. And their wallets say that victims...don't...matter.
And that's Chicken Soup for the Terrorist Soul.
I don't see the problem. Since the publication of "League of Denial" everyone knows football causes brain damage.
ReplyDeleteSo what's wrong with felons getting brain-damage? And some people (not you or I) voluntarily paying for it?
There's nothing wrong with felons getting brain damaged. But this weblog isn't about felons being brain damaged. It's about felons who are so popular with the public and so financially valuable to their organizations that they're shamelessly allowed to get away with criminal behavior that would result in any ordinary American being incarcerated. It's about large and noticeable swaths of the public proudly displaying depraved indifference toward violent crime victims. This weblog is about the example Americans set for others...
DeleteIn our glorious war on terrorism we've attempted to set ourselves up as some sort of moral compass for the world to follow. Then every day or so our media presents to that world another example of how Americans really behave and what they really value. The fact that the three men mentioned above are not in prison is bad enough. The fact that all of them have large numbers of supporters among the general public, supporters who want heinous criminals to become multimillionaire celebrities sends a clear message to every serial killer, mass murderer, and terrorist, foreign or domestic...
People are evil and callous and deserve to be destroyed.
I'm not sure why millions of Americans choose to broadcast that message but recent history indicates that it is being received.
I was mobbed/bullied out of my promising career, where I excelled.
ReplyDeleteFor the longest time I blamed myself: for not being strong enough, for not being wise or clever enough, for not capitulating to the instigator’s demand that I become one of his loyal dirtywork henchman...
But as time passed I found out others were getting the same. Big John (6’4”, fit, very hard working). Jane (not big but smart and former military). Big Stu (an ambitious football lineman sized blowhard). And two others. I puzzled over the pattern.
Then it dawned on me. What all six victims had in common, was integrity. Big Stu may have been an arrogant asshole, but he’d earned it the hard way, with advanced degrees and experience in corporate R&D. He expected to ‘legally’ outcompete others.
The instigator (mine also) was a lazy Machiavellian who wanted money for nothing. He knew that excellence is rare, and that the common are common. And common people don’t want to have “excellence” as bosses, because excellence tends to promote the same. So, the common, greatly outnumbering excellence, can be coerced into simply mobbing them away, like so many crows mobbing the eagle off their territory. The Machiavellian couldn’t legally compete with his competition so he used another way to get ahead.
As for the bystanders? The basic character of today’s common American corporate worker reminds me of that animal show with the polar bear. One hungry bear walks into a herd of walruses and attacks individuals. Instead of a few walruses, each twice the size of the polar bear, surrounding it then goring it to death with their massive tusks, they all, all hundreds of them, flopped their way to the ocean in a massive stampede.
The basic pattern of abandoning or blaming the victim is outlined in my "Chicken Soup with the Bully Enablers" post.
DeleteI read the enablers section – seems about right. I’m curious if you have a post about types of bullies?
DeleteIn my first comment the situation was far more complicated than one pack alpha and a bunch of different enablers. That bully was himself, actually a tool of (and student also!) of a far more clever puppetmaster psychopath (as I call her). While she loved power and control games over people, at 5’1” tall I don’t think she’d played much contact sports. A hidden alpha?
Also, you mention elsewhere that “our culture overwhelmingly still accepts it as normal, legitimate behavior”. The source is obviously our culture of competition, which provides fertile ground for growing bullies, be they the ‘just-being-a-tough-leader’ kind enablers accept, or the outright successful sociopath who takes advantage of the system for their own gain and everybody else’s detriment.
Bullies as I define them are all attempting to satisfy the same basic need. They are establishing a social hierarchy for the same reason that dogs and chimpanzees do. This no longer serves the same genetic purpose it once did when everyone was a hunter/gatherer. Today, most of us end up reproducing anyway. Bullying is instinctive behavior that any civilized society would have long since deprived of any legitimacy. Our society still has a long way to go.
DeleteThere was a silver fox study done in Russia where pet quality domesticated foxes were bred, as well as foxes so aggressive they’d bite anybody without fear. It proved the biological basis for aggression.
DeleteAs we know, trying to tame wild animals almost always results in disaster (so many stories about adult chimp pets, wolves, bears, snakes, Siegfried and Roy...) I see extreme bullies as being basically wild animals. But getting more domesticated (normal) people to understand this is difficult. Many tend to project the belief that what works for them will work for everything else, onto the animal. Then they get to experience the hard way that this isn’t how reality works.
I know you won’t advise victims for legal reasons. Maybe I can? 1. Giving the bully an itch they cannot ever scratch works for me. The phrase “cannot ever scratch” is so important it’s everything. If the itch is annoying enough, they’ll eventually implode.
2. Don’t give up learning, then educating tamer humans.
Success at these should keep the might-be terrorist’s head screwed on straighter.
I'm not sure what you mean by giving the bully an itch that they cannot scratch but it sounds like taking revenge upon them. This is ineffective even when you get away with it because it does not address the core problem.
DeleteBullies enjoy a strong sense of legitimacy because the general public protects their right to bully and usually blames bullying on the victim. School shooters like Eric Harris recognize this even if they don't articulate it and take revenge upon the enablers. After reading my Bully Enablers post you should understand this better. Attacking a crowded venue like a high school created the false impression that they were killing people randomly. They weren't random. Take notice of the absence of dead and wounded goths and other similar social misfits.
This weblog is about the process of creating killers by shamelessly legitimizing bullying thereby setting yourself up as a legitimate target for revenge by the victims.
I understood your Bully Enablers section because I lived it. In that situation, there were a mere few toadying sycophants and social climbers (of the corporate kind) instigating all that trouble. Just a few oblivions, but many slaves, calluses and cowards. The big bosses were essentially paranoid cowards, who could be easily lied to.
DeleteAs far as “revenge”, it is only ever effective if you can get away with it. But bullies have many enemies, making this easier. And what’s wrong with turning the tables – turning them into the public scapegoat? Or turning them against one of their enablers? We just might be creating another anti-bullying ally here who can offer insights. I was advising any victims who might be interested, by offering what worked best for me, what kept me from becoming a domestic terrorist and getting on with my life. But of course they’ll have to come up with their own answers, be it total forgiveness or a less polite solution. Or perhaps you have more ideas about changing things?
The “wild humans” bit supports your pack alpha assessment. Understanding the silver fox experiment may be helpful for female airheads. There are blogs entirely devoted to serving their kind (Lovefraud is a good example) and many commenters there appear to struggle grasping these simple concepts.
There's nothing wrong with turning the tables, but you have to escape suspicion or it simply makes things worse for you.
DeleteSounds like you had yourself a bully with a Napoleonic Complex.
ReplyDeleteMost short dudes are alright but.... well, some are born with all the right traits to be assholes- they just lack the size to pull it off most of their lives.
Then, once getting into power, the start acting like some shrewd "Little Finger" on Game of Thrones who "plays the game quite well."
The problem with dealing with bullies is that they have no qualms about the most utterly immoral of tactics- if you fight someone who cheats with honor, 9 times out of 10 you'll be the loser.
I’ve known NC’s. But two of the best bosses I ever had were little guys. I once thought that parenting made all the difference, but once, intentionally had a conversation with the parents of ruthless little boss “Dennis the Menace” at a work party. They were sweet people, who kept saying that he was always a tough guy. “We never knew where that came from.” It had to be some kind of genetic anomaly – like when you see a family of all brunettes with one blonde kid. There are lots of stories on the internet of terrified/mystified parents who’ve had the bad luck of birthing a psychopathic baby, who ruins their otherwise normal family. And now they have to try and explain this to a pissed off world.
ReplyDeleteSorry about all the OT diversion. Back to Adrian Peterson, he might eventually get his from his own kids. My cousin’s father was a well-intentioned but boneheaded parent who’d mindlessly strap the crap out of his boys for minor offenses. In adulthood they had derogatory names for him they’d use behind his back which everybody knew about, ruining pops reputation.
I have another cousin - different family who I just now figured out from reading this stuff. I personally never had issues with football players (was a high school oblivion). But my cousin is a well-built guy, largest/strongest in his football loving family, who hates football and all the players. It didn’t make sense – he would’ve made a great linebacker. But I think I get it now....
An unknowable but probably significant number of people avoid sports because of the pathological behavior of parents, coaches, and fellow players.
DeleteIn a football culture there are a lot of what I call “performance bullies”. Their targets aren't ‘strong enough’, ‘normal appearing enough’... whatever the group they’re trying to own, doesn’t want to be. Alpha pack mentality is rationalized through competitive / tribalistic values, and has in a messed up way, some kind of integrity.
ReplyDeleteBut if pro football was anything like what I experienced in the corporate office, then the coaches bitch (mistress or close family member) would have been the ‘star’ running back, with slaves and scapegoats making up for the obvious skills gap. Which is why so many people like football. It’s real. Winning is everything, and nepotism and cronyism would be soundly booed. It doesn't matter how popular Tim Tebow is. If he can't compete, he's out. Adrian Peterson is a “sick bitch” for disciplining his son with stone age bullying techniques, but he competes honestly and well on the field. (he might be the next dude in a white bronco... but I digress.)
The corporate bullies I experienced appeared to have no morals of any kind, at all. If the company collapsed because of their shit, they’d simply move on to greener playfields, and use scapegoats and lies to get away with it. A pro ball player would look like a loser if they they got caught doing this. This kind of corporate bully appears to hide inside the system (the performance bully system) with all the typical enablers also being oblivians - unaware of their true nature.