Meet the New Boss

As inauguration day approaches, much is being said and written about our divided country, and the fissures have qualitatively and quantitatively widened over the past decade.   The vitriol seems to be getting worse over time and this is the first time in my memory that people protested after the election results were in.  Generally, the American way of protesting is THROUGH the ballot box.   There are lots of explanations for our political divide—gerrymandered “safe” districts, social media that excludes conversations with people that have opposing views, the news media transformation into advocacy rather than reporting.  Finally, there is an economic explanation.  People of radically different classes, cultures, races and religion get along better when everyone is relatively prosperous and our economy has not delivered.

What can we do about this?  I have a one proposed partial answer.  Stop bullying—of all kinds.  The trouble with bullying is that bullying begets bullying.

In America, the political Left has become very adept at bullying in all its forms.  Bullying takes on various forms, through words and actions.   Sometimes bullying is explicit.  Sometimes it’s explicit.  It is coercive, and not borne out of a voluntary exchange.  It is most often accompanied by a threat and is marked by mocking, disparagement and name calling.  Social media has made it much worse---it’s an easy way to publicly bully someone and show public scorn without much repercussion. 

• ·     Barack Obama.   Barack Obama is a bully par excellence.   He has successfully employed bullying tactics throughout his eight years as president.   Because he rarely raises his voice or displays emotion, on the surface it doesn’t look like bullying, but it is bullying nonetheless.  How do we know?  He employs the language of bullying often.  “I have a pen and a phone,” is perhaps his most infamous quote.  Quotes like “If they bring a knife, we bring a gun,”and “I want you to get in their face,” is not the language of negotiation, middle ground and consensus, but of bullying. Much of his administration has involved bullying—imposing his will through executive orders and regulatory agencies rather than through negotiation and agreement.  His most egregious acts of bullying have come through the regulatory agencies.  Using operation Choke Point, he directed the bank leaned on bank regulators to come down hard on banks that loaned money to industries that were out of favor with him.  Rather than let the market decide what it wanted, the Obama administration targeted certain industries for harassment or extermination—coal, Payday lenders, electronic cigarettes to name a few.  Without legislating, without consensus, without even a hearing, he was able to punish certain industries and they have little recourse but to knuckle under.  That’s bullying. Barack Obama may be one of the most skilled bullies in our time.  He does it with panache and flair, but he doesn’t intend for this to be an exchange.  Obama has used the language and tactics of bullying often, and like an expert bully, mostly through surrogates.
  
•  Academia.   Academia has become a fertile ground for bullying.  Rather than an environment that fosters the free exchange of ideas that are respectfully heard, American universities have been transformed into factories of indoctrination of ideas of the Left.   Opposing thought or contrary ideas are routinely shouted down or otherwise ridiculed or marginalized.  The poster child for this was Asra Nomani, a Muslim and a former Georgetown (a Catholic institution) professor that supported Trump.  She was savaged in social media by C. Christine Fair who compared Trump to Adolph Hitler, called Nomani various names, including a “slut,” and so far there have been no consequences.   Various conservative speakers such as Condi Rice, Milo Yiannopolis, Ben Shapiro and David Horowitz have been shouted down and heckled.  Even at my alma mater, The University of Chicago, Sean Spicer was heckled by students.   Not allowing another voice to be heard by an implicit threat of violence or shouting down is bullying, pure and simple.
  
•  Disrupters— Bullies of the disruptive type are straight out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.  Their goal is to disrupt day to day activities or to attempt to provoke a confrontation.  Black Lives Matter is very adept at this.   They don’t simply protest.  They distrupt and stand nose to nose with law enforcement officers to try to get them to throw the first punch.   An activist group at the University of Chicago employed this very successfully.  They disrupted numerous events—graduations, lectures, conferences, and reunions to attempt to persuade the university to build, underwrite and support a trauma center at the hospital.  This activist group did not turn to wealthy donors or otherwise turn to political representatives or otherwise show any initiative in that regard.  Instead they continued to bully, terrorize and disrupt day to day university activities tirelessly until they got their way.  It worked.  The university buckled.  They got their trauma center through gangster tactics worthy of the mob in NY in the 1960’s.
  
•  Entertainment--Entertainment is yet another, more subtle vehicle for bullies.  Although not as effective or threatening as the other forms, entertainers have begun to use this method with some regularity.  Mike Pence was subject to this form when he attended Hamilton.  He was subjected to derision by the crowd and an unwelcome lecture by one of the cast members. Colin Kaepernick has done the same by drawing attention to himself and making a public spectacle of kneeling during the national anthem.  Meryl Streep politically vomited at the Golden Globe Awards.  I had my own experience at a Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert in which I was subjected to left wing political rants disguised as song.   These events are all a form of bullying.  If you have attended an event in person, you have paid for a ticket.  You are in your chair.  You are captive.  You are powerless to mount a counterargument.   You have signed up for entertainment and instead you get a commercial and lectured.  Your only choices are to sit and listen to the rant or leave.  Of course those inflicting this form of bullying on you wrap themselves in a free speech argument. But the show, lecture or concert is neither the time nor the place for a lecture.  They are stealing time from you and forcing you to listen to their preaching, frequently when you have paid for something else.  It is bullying and abusive. 

The Left has gotten so very expert and proficient at this, that you don’t even know you’re being bullied much of the time.   So now along comes Donald Trump.  Middle America grew so tired of being bullied and coerced that it went out and hired its own counter-bully.  Trump is a reputed counterpuncher that has the ability to bully right back and in a very blunt and coarse way.  Jim Acosta recently felt the sting as he attempted to bully Donald Trump at Trump’s press conference this week and Trump showed that he is not going to genuflect to the MSM in the way that other Republicans have in the past.

But we are a democratic republic.   If we are to come together as a people, the bullying must stop. 

Sadly, Trump so far looks like someone that may not improve this state of affairs.  Even before coming into office, his attempt to secure greater manufacturing employment in the U.S., laudable as it is, has relied primarily on threats and coercion.   He has threatened companies with a punitive tariff if they move operations abroad.  He made implicit threats to Boeing over Air Force One and Lockheed over the F-35 to get price reductions.  The correct position is to create a favorable tax and regulatory environment and a skilled and educated workforce that makes these companies WANT to stay. But if Trump engages in bullying (rather than counterpunching), he will be no better than Obama, and his thin mandate (to the extent he has one) will flame out quickly.  It’s one thing to hit back--as he did with Jim Acosta and Meryl Streep. It’s yet another to issue threats to people and companies.

For companies and individuals who run them, threatening them with a regulator or with taxes or by publicly shaming them into submission are just different tactics used to bully them into certain behaviors.  If Trump continues to do this, corporate America will be humming Won’t Get Fooled Again, “Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.”

First lady elect Melania Trump has picked cyberbullying as her cause.  Perhaps she should broaden her push and lobby against bullying generally.  If we want to unify as a nation, bullying of all types needs to be tamped down.  She will be doing this country a great service if she whispers that into her husband’s ear each night.