The Bully Party?
Starting Young?
- Mitt Romney’s Anti-Gay Bullying Has a Human Face Now--Common Dreams
"I love guilt. I wish people felt more of this emotion so foreign to Mitt Romney that he claims not to remember what a brute he was in school. . . "
It Starts Young
Wherever you have large groups of people together on a regular basis, you are going to have pranks. But there's a line between pranks and bullying. The alleged incident from Mitt Romney's days as a prep school student probably stepped over that line.
For one, need to remember that bullying was not the issue it is today. It may have been seen as a part the education process; boys were required to learn to stand up for themselves, in girls it was likely a secret or something that only 'bad girls' engaged in.
But a closer look at Romney's incident may say a lot about his character and that of the American Right. Romney and his friends allegedly chose their target because he was "different".
The idea of directing anger or singling out the "other" seems to be a common component of right-wing though. Since most right-wing movements are based on some notion of a top-down plutocracy, a kind of corporate state, they need a way to convince the masses to support their ideas. The main way they do this is the creation of outgroups. The American Right has several they can chose from; African-Americans. Women, Latinos, and as recent events have shown, Homosexuals.
But there's another force that may drive many on the right. I wonder how many of them were bullied. I could see a right-winger being picked on, and a measure of revenge may come from the idea of "picking on" a member of one of the many right-wing outgroups.
This could be a reason why many on the right take issue with anti-bullying programs and initiatives. It keeps their ranks from growing.
