THE URBAN BULLY

PART 4


Outside the workplace, as in responding to academic or polemical bullying, you do not answer the bully directly other than by a short sharp rebuke, as in :"your comments are so grossly offensive that I will protest to your employer [editor, publisher, patron or promoter] rather than waste time on you." Then attack the audience, and that is very definitely not your audience but that of the bully, perhaps better called his protectors. Think carefully about exactly who that audience is, and think about what will disturb that specific audience, do not waste time on general motherhood issues. Instead of saying, "how can you editors publish such a bully," it would be better to say, "you can see from these quotes that this bully has no regard for his readers or the editors who have bought his material. Perhaps he has grown too big for his britches." Or "you can see from these comparison quotes that he just takes material from other writers and crudely uses it as his own. You may have liability from this."

However, to directly answer the bully, once identification has been made, is an act that can only be described as sincerely stupid. It will give the bully a great opportunity, which it will seize upon with joy, to kick you all around the floor.
Remember, the bully is not concerned with truth at all, just with the security of its audience and the certainty that it does have its claws fastened on a real victim. The only answer that is useful, as stated here, is one short, sharp and tight invitation to go to hell. Beyond that, let the bully get anxious while you attack the audience. And do not make any attempt at all to construct elegant argument based on reference to logical fallacies, or invite the bully to be "rational" (are you kidding?), or try to develop an imaginary round of verbal fencing (you may as well flounce across the floor in a tutu), or make phoney, nice or polite, or all the other chicken hearted things that intellectuals tend to do. To level a bully is a socially valuable function, so don't fool around, get into it and cut meat.

Every few days, for a week or so,get up and read the motto you have printed out, such as who among this creeps' possible audience shall I write to today, or who among my supporters shall I ask to attack his audience. In this effort persistence will pay off hugely. But who, if not you, will supply the persistence, and do not say "form letters".

Find something in the bully's production that should be corrected, if it is a matter of expert knowledge, and try to find some expert to do a short study, or more likely, tell you the chapter and verse of exactly why it is wrong. When you get these types of problems really understood then it is possible to write about them in a way that is unanswerable, often using material right at hand, instead of pages of footnotes. But this requires genuine intellectual work, which must must be done by someone for you (tricky) or by you yourself. If you want to show up the bully as an inferior specimen, you will surely have to make a superior effort.


Get close to the enemy. Look up the bully's other work, which is wonderfully possible on the internet today. Read its productions and get a feel for its proclivities and (usually) switches of position with fashion. Bullies do not care about truth, they just want to know what their likely audience wants to hear so that they can produce that and with it scout for victims and adopt the audiences pet hatreds in their own victim pursuits. So their "research" tends to drop off as soon as they can find something they can use to beat a victim over the head with. If they find a quote to the effect that there is a mass of research supporting their position, or they can find a claim based on apparent authority, they are not likely to go into that research to see if it exists and is reliable.



And since the main priority for the bully is to arm itself to attack the present victim, you are quite likely to find the bully worked the other side of the street in some piece a few years back. The consistent theme among literary bullies is that they will attack from the security of the established position in business and technology whatever that position is at the moment. That is where the security is, so that is where the bully will nest.


If by some unhappy chance the bully is on your side of an issue, then you should spare no effort to cut down the SOB and plow the ground he stood on with salt. Pro Labor bullies ALWAYS end up on the side of the worst of the exploiters, and when you consider how totally individual and selfish are their concerns you can see why. You can make book on their proposals such that going against what they propose has a pretty good chance of being the right choice.

There is one more thing. If you find that a bully quite suddenly tries to make friends or becomes polite, watch out. That just means the bully has intuitively felt that you are perhaps not a real victim and it wants to cautiously scout around a bit to see what you have got. If you let such a bully get close to you it will suddenly attack and give you quite a start. Remember, bullies are not like ordinary people, do not really want to resolve issues, and at bottom are actually mentally twisted a bit.

We are working into a time in society when we absolutely must have rational debates about a lot of very confusing stuff. It is definitely a time to make short work of bullies.

Conclusion of the Post on Bullies

Gramps