I do not believe
in hell in the classic sulfuric, flame-ridden sense. It defies my sense of
logic and my experience of God. However, I have experienced hell. I have
travelled to war zones and ghettos. I
have been in emergency rooms and psychiatric wards. I have experienced the
misery of loss and grief. No question about it. I have
been in hell. It takes different shapes
and expressions, sculpting pain and suffering in a variety of ways, but it is
unmistakably, hell.”
In all this, one hell that has touched me deeply
is the mindless bullying I experienced as an adolescent.
During 8th
grade in Schenectady, New York, I was bullied by a gym teacher. This alleged educator hounded me in front of
the class, calling me names and shadowing me with physical intimidation as he
shoved and pushed me around the locker room. When it came time for wrestling, he would
pit me against a boy twice my size who would be publicly encouraged to “beat
the crap” out of me. He was inevitably
successful in this endeavor, which of course, empowered others who then took
their turns with malicious glee. They
waited for me at the bike rack after school. They followed me home with taunts
and beatings administered with sadistic glee.
It was a special kind of hell that was isolating, painful and from which
I still suffer even as I walk through my 6th decade as an alleged
adult.
A bully is an assassin
of the Spirit. A bully trades in lies
and innuendo. A bully seeks
vulnerability and aims at those tender, unprotected spots with appalling
accuracy and devastating affect.
I have watched
with growing alarm and disgust as I have come to the horrifying realization
that the President of the United States of America is a bully. That
he is more than this, we know. He is a
narcissist. He is greedy. He is a pathological liar. And he is not, in spite of his own
protestation, a Christian.
This Bully-in-Chief
is an assassin of the Spirit, tearing at the fabric of nation and community,
leaving most of a nation in chronic depression and grief over the evaporation
of civility and decent mutuality. That
he is a liar is an incontrovertible truth.
He can be caught daily in prevarications ranging from denying that he
said something that 25 million people heard him say on television to making up
things about former Presidents and other leaders out of whole cloth. A friend of mine recently asked how you
could tell that Donald Trump is lying. I
innocently shrugged and my friend said, “It’s when his lips are moving.” Finally, this malingering occupant of the
Whitehouse seeks out the vulnerable and takes clear, careful aim at them. From young people once protected by the DACA
rules to championing the removal of health care for millions of people, he
brazenly seeks to wound and even kill the defenseless.
This
bully has a much broader reach than the teacher-inspired tormentors of my youth.
He is not merely hanging out waiting to sucker-punch you at the bike rack after
school. No. This bully uses the levers of government to strip protections from
minorities, laborers, women and children. This bully seeks to steal retirement benefits
and Social Security from millions who have faithfully paid into these programs
most of their lives. This bully taunts
the leader of another country, pushing us all closer than we have been in
decades to an all-out nuclear war.
Whether
it is on the playground in upstate New York or in the oval office, bullies
exist because no one will rise up to stop them.
When I was a boy, lot’s of people stood and watched as I was assaulted
daily on my way to and from school.
Teachers watched. Cops watched.
Neighbors watched. And it continued
unabated until one day when I fought back.
The look on this one boy’s face when I finally turned to confront him
was one of surprise, certainly, but the real surprise to me was that I saw fear
on his face. That’s right. Fear.
The one(s) who had spent so much time and energy trying to make me
afraid were themselves wallowing in fear.
When we stop, turn around and confront the bully in Washington DC we
will see the fear in his eyes as well.
But make no
mistake about it. The bully occupying
the Whitehouse will continue his malignant behavior until we rise up to stop
him. We cannot, we dare not stand by
doing nothing while sisters and brothers are being targeted for deportation and
worse. We cannot, we dare not turn a
blind eye to the escalating rhetoric of hate and war. We
may not stand idly by while Donald Trump uses the office of the President to
empower racists and thugs who seek to derail our whole national
enterprise.
Part of being a
civilized people is the active embrace of the reality that we are connected to
each other. We are inextricably bound together upon this
tiny planet, breathing the same air, and exposed to the same future. Let
us, therefore, not make the same mistake that the people of Germany made as
Adolf Hitler and his thugs rose to power.
These people did not assume responsibility for one another. They
stood by and allowed their neighbors to be arrested and killed. They stood by while Jews, Gypsies, Gay and
Lesbian and mentally ill people were dragged away to horrible deaths. They participated fully in the genocide
because they did not act to stop it.
Let us awaken to
the power that we have as a people. Let
us take responsibility as citizens for the health, welfare and well-being of
all people. Let us be the ones who say “no”
to the bully. Let us lift up a vision of
an America where all people have health care; where all people have homes;
where all people have enough to eat; where all people have decent jobs and
access to education. Let us dare to
live into this vision together and let it start by saying “no” to the bully.
The bully has
the power we give him. Let us take it
away. Now.
