Courage is fire, bullying is smoke. - Benjamin Disraeli
This column is about bullying, not politics. It can affect caregivers in the workplace who face, everyday, a boss who leads with intimidation instead of love.
I saw people like Donald Trump as a child. A bully picked on my sister, who was born with a form of dwarfism. I stepped in. When the bully turned on me I thought others might help. Instead, of course, the other kids shrank back while I fought on.
After that the bully left Martha alone. I became a trial lawyer to protect the vulnerable from injustice.
Intimidation is an experience we have all shared. A bully attacks his victim with bluster. He or she counts on the likelihood that others will be afraid & is often correct.
The bullying story continues into adulthood. Lawyers call the phenomenon ad hominem arguing – attacking the person not the issue. Thus far, Donald Trump has skewered Jeb Bush for being weak, Carly Fiorina for being ugly, Marco Rubio for "sweating too much," Dr. Ben Carson for lying, Fox reporter Megan Kelly for being a "bimbo," illegal Mexican immigrants for being murderers and rapists and Senator John McCain for being a coward because he was captured (as my cousin, a POW with McCain, knows McCain's heroism shined time & again as a prisoner.)
The shock is not that Trump has practiced bullying but how well it has worked. Trump leads the polls. The problem is that his success has created a sort "Trump Effect." Instead of eschewing this approach, other candidates and even some reporters have sunk so similar tactics. After all, they've seen it work for The Donald. Why not try ad hominem attacks in their own careers? Maybe, they think, fear will work better than love.
Bullying relies on three things: Personal attacks to humiliate another, the assumption that others will, out of fear, do nothing, and the idea that somehow the bully will gain power and success through this approach. One wonders how much of Trump's success has come through bluster rather than through substance, whether he belongs more on a comedy show than he does in a board room, not to mention The Oval Office.
Why are millions of Americans going along with this behavior? Consider the history of great American leaders. Can you imagine Trump insulting a too-tall Abe Lincoln, a crippled Franklin Roosevelt or ridiculing George Washington for his false teeth? The attacks might be funny to some but this is demagoguery not leadership. All these leaders received such attacks. Fortunately, the majority of the American public picked loving leadership over spurious attack politics.
In the 1950s, "The Trump Effect was "The McCarthy Effect". Then Senator Joseph McCarthy ruined the careers of thousands of innocent people by recklessly but effectively branding them Communists. It took three years before lawyer Joseph Welch took on McCarthy after an innocent staffer was attacked. "Have you no shame, Senator?" Welch challenged, as T.V. cameras rolled.
It was the beginning of the end for that bully. But, others always take their places. Work site bullying is a daily terror that saps the life energy of thousands of caregivers.
Each victim hopes one of us will step forward to show that "courage is fire, bullying is smoke" – that you and I will live love, not fear.
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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