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By Noah Lawrence
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Remember during and after the 2016 elections when accounts surfaced of a national rise in school bullying? Researchers embarked on a data-driven investigation of this narrative. Now, they have published their findings.
In Virginia localities that had voted for President Trump, by contrast with those that voted for Hillary Clinton, 2017 found higher rates of seventh and eighth graders "reporting that (a) they had experienced some form of bullying in the past year (18 percent higher) and (b) 'students in this school are teased or put down because of their race or ethnicity' (percent higher)," Francis Huang and Dewey Cornell wrote in January's "School Teasing and Bullying After the Presidential Election," in Educational Researcher. In 2013 and 2015 "there were no meaningful differences."
What can we learn from this disturbing information?
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First, the study suggests a new aspect of Trump's effect on American society, and a powerful new reason why Trump must go. Trump's words and conduct have let loose forces that are doing palpable damage to the ways Americans treat each other, already percolating into the next generation.
Second, since Trump is not only an ostensible inspiration to bullies but very much a bully himself, we can better understand how to defeat him in 2020 by inspecting him through the lense of why bullying works, at least in the short run, and how it can be countered.
We wouldn't be the first to apply this analysis to a political heavyweight, of course. Journalist I.F. Stone wrote in 1953 that Senator Joseph McCarthy rose to power through "the ineptitude of gentlemen in dealing with a brawler who pays no attention to the rules, Queensberry or otherwise." Stone's metaphor, referencing the landmark 1867 rules for boxing, potently laid bare both the way McCarthy operated, and the troubling fact that it won McCarthy significant successes.
Chris Rock similarly diagnoses Trump's rise. In his 2018 special "Tamborine," Rock describes his daughter's high school orientation, where the vice principal said the school has no bullies. Rock riffs about the effect on education and society when schools are bully-free ("What kind of…education is this?…Life has [a colorful word for 'bullies'], and you should learn how to deal with them"), and then says: "That's how Trump became president…We got rid of bullies. A real bully showed up. And nobody knew how to handle him."
Per Rock and Stone, the crucial truth about bullying's mechanics is that against-the-rules brawlers have a tactical advantage over "gentlemen," and that, especially for lack of practise, rule-abiders often don't know "how to handle" bullies.
This truth comprises a cycle of factors. First: There are some actions that against-the-rules brawlers are willing to do that rule-abiders are not. Second: Human nature is such that sometimes, those actions work. Third: That success provides positive reinforcement for the bully, and copycat bullies, to bully more, as exemplified by the trickle-down of Trump's conduct to the schoolyard.
The 2016 elections were a case study in this dynamic. Trump's bullying was central to his campaign: from words and policies of xenophobia, to red-line-crossing disparagement, to interrupting and physically looming over Clinton. He also knew his followers were not remotely put off by these displays; as he famously remarked, "I have the most loyal people…I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose any voters."
And indeed, the sum of two kinds of voters—those attracted to Trump's bullying; and those willing to vote for Trump, knowing his bullying—voted Trump into the presidency.
In 2020, a Trump challenger must neutralize the against-the-rules brawler's advantage, and halt the Rock-Stone cycle.
How does one do so, without becoming a bully oneself? Three strategies emerge.
The first is to speak and to act fearlessly and forthrightly, and to lay fair but direct blows that disarm Trump without demonizing him or his voters. Humor also helps. Speaker Pelosi can often be found offering masterclasses in such blows ("I'm a mother of five, grandmother of nine — I know a temper tantrum when I see one," she remarked during the recent government shutdown.)
Where Trump's premises and policies are false or extreme — e.g. that there is "a growing…security crisis at our southern border," and a need for a "border wall" in response — one needs to challenge the very premise of Trump's argument, not debate him on how a fictitious crisis might be resolved.
The second strategy is what worked against McCarthy: an appeal to the "sense of decency" most Americans still believe themselves to hold in common. This approach is to call out bullying for what it is, and to appeal to the desire within people to be better than that — to summon "the better angels of our nature," in President Abraham Lincoln's words.
The third strategy is to put forth a plan of one's own. Many Trump voters, particularly people whom the 21st century has economically deserted, felt that Trump got their troubles while Clinton did not, even though Trump did so only in a charlatan's way. A Trump challenger must offer a robust, effective, positive socio-economic plan.
These strategies will not convince die-hard Trumpists. They can, however, persuade swing Obama-Trump voters, and restore the proverbial Queensberry rules, and a gentleman or gentlewoman who observes them, to the Oval Office. The stakes are too high for us to permit any other outcome.
Noah Lawrence is a legal scholar. He previously worked for Senator Richard Blumenthal, for the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and for the Supreme Court of Israel, as a foreign law clerk.He received a J.D. from N.Y.U. School of Law, and currently studies at New York City's Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School.
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