We Are Being Bullied

I know what it feels like

I grew up a single child of a single mom. I was a latch-key starting at 6 years old — largely by myself except for school — which was a daily nightmare. I was extremely shy and insecure around others except adults who to their credit generally didn’t kick the shit out of me. At five years old, I didn’t want to be a firefighter, I wanted to be an astronomer.

I’m not going to get into a long, sad story of how I was bullied, but I was. It was bad. School was something to get through, not to learn from. I did learn, a lot, but it was from reading books and talking to grown-ups. Other kids — specifically other boys — were largely an enemy to combat.

So, my childhood was an exercise in learning to distrust authority, who did nothing to protect me, and to hate bullies, who hurt me for their own fun and profit.

Here’s the thing. Schoolyard bullies are just fascists-in-training. To “bully” is to gain power and pleasure at the expense of others. Fascism is the act of obtaining power (and pleasure) without regard to humans.

So when I built 60,000 followers on Twitter despite constant targeted harassment and abuse, when I picked myself up after they intentionally shut me down and rebuilt here while the abuse continued, none of this because of some personal glory. As I said, I am — believe it or not — extremely shy.

I do this because we are all being bullied right now — all day, every day.

I fucking hate bullies.

Bullies grow up to be Elon Musk and Mike Flynn and Erik Prince. They grow up to be like the sociopath who runs the @KassandraSeven account, who gets money and pleasure from abusing people — from abusing women. They grow up to be like Fredrick Brennan who is responsible for the incel movement, GamerGate, the alt-right, 8chan, and the leftist cult who covers up for him and his collaborators now.

These people were broken inside from the start, their empathy either absent or intentionally destroyed by their upbringing. They are trained as children how to work within a system — like school, or social media — and abuse it for their own personal gain. And then they grow up to be monsters, capable of anything.

It’s important to understand they really think they are better than us. In their broken hearts they think it’s true. They think they should be able to take our lunch money, to trip us in the hall, or to beat us up in the locker room. They think they should be able to control what we say, what we believe or disbelieve, and what women should do with their bodies.

Of course, the only way to deal with a bully is to stand up to them — which we all have to do together. This is not the time to go along with the flow. This is not the time to see what happens. The bullies that tormented me and so many others are all grown up now. They have turned into the greatest threat to civilization we have ever seen. They have nukes. They have a death cult in the United States called the Republican Party. They have the Supreme Court.

Right now the world is cowering and begging for the bullies to stop which just encourages them. As I eventually learned as a kid, the way to stop bullies is to defeat them psychologically, to make it painful for them to abuse you, even if you can’t physically win the fight.

The way to defeat fascists is the same way you defeat bullies. By embarrassing them. By exposing their inherent weakness and showing people entranced by them how small and pathetic they really are.

So, if you’re wondering what makes me tick, why I do all this despite everything they’ve done to me? I hate bullies. It’s that simple.

#ArrestMikeFlynn #CodifyRoe #SlavaUkraini🇺🇦