Hi, kids. I hope you had a good school day. I know work was a real drag for me. There's chocolate-chip cookies on the table, so help yourself; I bet you're probably still hungry after your reduced-calorie vegetarian school lunch, especially when you threw it out and got by on black-market Fritos instead.
Today I want to talk to you about a very serious subject called "bullying". Now, don't groan like that. I know you're probably sick to death of being talked to about this by teachers, police, counselors, Muppets, MTV and the President. And that gay anti-bullying guy Dan Savage. Everyone wants to jump on the bully bandwagon to tell you its bad, but I'm here to take the wheels off of the wagon.
What you kids need to hear and know is that pretty much everyone who talks to you about how bad bullying is, is a bully. And so our Word-of-The-Day is hypocrisy. "Hypocrisy" is something a person can be accused of when they say publicly to others that something is wrong but persist in doing that thing themselves.
For example, your teachers will tell you that bullying the smaller and weaker kids is bad. Many of your teachers belong to teacher's unions, and if the regular people feel that the union's benefits are costing taxpayers too much, and they ask the lawmakers to get the union to pony up a little more and help pay their fair share (something the unions are always asking others to do), then the unions rally their entire membership to go take sick days and not report to work. They go out to protest instead, and if anyone says to them, "hey, we are just asking for some fairness here", they will bring out their biggest guys to intimidate and maybe even punch some guys who dare to be asking those questions. That's bullying.
Or, if your school passes a budget that the local homeowners feel is going to raise their property taxes too much, and it looks like the voters won't agree to the tax hike, the school comes out and says, "oh, we'll have to cancel after-school programs! We'll have to cut bus service! We'll have to have bigger classes. We can't have a music program anymore, because the voters are too greedy." They threaten to cut the meaningful and enriching things, rather than dump an administrator with a half-a-million-dollar annual salary. They threaten your parents by holding your school experience hostage, rather than thinking about consolidating some school districts, or ditching this "iPad" nonsense and going back to good old textbooks. We all know you guys are passing notes and doodling on the iPads during class, don't we? Yes we do.
Threatening to cut your music class because the taxes aren't raised again for the umpteenth time in a row is bullying. Your teachers and their various organizations engage in bullying.
How about the President? He's the President! He's supposed to be the best guy in America, more or less, right? He's got to set an example for the rest of us. We should be able to listen to him, right?
Nuh-uh.
The President is from Chicago, which is the number-one city of bullying. Chicago perfected the art of bullying, and made a unique form of government from it. When the President was just getting started in government, he won his Senatorship by unsealing private court records about his opponents, and leaking the information to the media. Well, maybe his friend David Axelrod did that, but the result was the same: Barry Obama's opponents were forced off the ballot, and with no one to really run against him, Obama became an Illinois Senator! Voters didn't really get a choice of candidate. That was bullying.
And when Barry Obama became President Obama after having his gang in the media attack his opponents while completely overlooking his own shortcomings, did he work with those who represented the other half of the country that did not vote for him? No! He said to them, "I won," which meant "Your ideas and concerns are not important to me, because if you did not vote for me, I don't like you." Having an enemies list and using the power of the government to harass those who disagree with you is bullying.
As far as that Dan Savage guy goes, he's the worst of them all. He's the worst because he should have some empathy for the picked-on and the minority, because he's gay. But does that matter? Heck no, kids! Dan Savage is a savage when it comes to Christians who have ideas and opinions different from Dan. Dan calls the Christian kids very bad, naughty names when they respectfully disagree with him. He wishes cancer on people. He's not a nice guy at all, and he gets a lot of money for telling kids "It gets better" when in reality, it doesn't get better.
In fact, it may get worse. It can get worse precisely because of those types of people I mentioned. Kid bullies are annoying and cause stress and injury to be sure. But when those kids get big, and get into positions of power, they cause widespread damage. Maybe now you can go and "tell the teacher", or tell an adult. Maybe something will be done about the bully, maybe not. But you've left the decision to act, the authority over your situation, with someone else. Maybe you have to. What's going to happen later, when you're twenty or forty years old?
The best thing you can do for yourself and everyone else in the world is to know who you are and what you stand for. This will take time and care, but it will give you confidence and self-worth, and these things will help keep you from becoming a bully. If your parents aren't screwed-up people, then ask questions and listen to what they tell you. They went through all this stuff already, why force yourself to re-learn it the hard way? Go have some adventures. Get into some minor trouble, and figure out a way to get things right again. Pick good friends, and be a good friend. And don't tolerate bullcrap. You all know what it is. Stop putting up with it. Learn to say to people who need it, "You're full of crap, and you're making the world worse. Go away." Say it until they actually go away. It may take awhile, and you may have to rest and come back, but keep trying.
The world has a lot of bullies in it, and many of them don't stop at name-calling. They depersonalize, they wound, they murder. You will have to face them one day. Start learning how to deal with them now, in ways that matter.
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