I’ve witnessed enough bullying after spending nearly thirty years in education. Too much. Most often among the kids, sometimes among adults, including professionals. Dealing with bullies at any age is a difficult matter because the victim must always – no exceptions – exhibit courageous behavior. After all, bullying implies a threat of some sort, something unpleasant the victim would rather avoid. But the alternative – the prospect of enduring oppression where intimidation reigns – is so much worse. The victim must suffer, call on his inner strength, or appeal to a higher power.

The only solution I know of for stopping a bully is to stand up to him. Such defiance might earn a punch in the mouth, but if someone has decided to confront his tormentor, he’s probably already thought this out and accepted such an eventuality. Chances are that a bully won’t continue his sadistic behavior if his victim successfully tags him with a few jabs of own, even in a losing effort. After all, bullies are cowards or they wouldn’t be picking on those who appear weaker than they. The bully may continue taunting or accosting the victim, but not for long, especially if the victim continues to somehow fight back. Bullies want to win, they don’t want to fight, even if the “fighting back” isn’t of the physical variety. Victims can alert whatever authorities are relevant to the situation: teachers, parents, the police.

As an educator, I was the higher power victims appealed to, but coming up with a solution for student-victims was never easy. Bullying takes place away from the light. In empty bathrooms, on dimly lit stairwells, and off school grounds on the way home. Even if the caustic event occurs in the school’s jurisdiction, administrators acting on a complaint with no witnesses or with witnesses whose stories conflict usually ends poorly for the victim. The bully gets away with one or more warnings. He wins as do those bullies whose behavior is never reported.

As much as I wanted to I could not counsel students to fight back physically, the potential for serious injury being too great. Potential lawsuits also deterred me. I would counsel students to document any malicious behavior and report it to me. I recommended they continue to alert teachers, their parents, and other adults. I suggested they surround themselves with whatever friends they have to create security through numbers. This done, eventually the bully may be caught and punished, but the victim is forced to endure the fear and humiliation far longer than anyone should have to. 

If the victim is a loner, he will suffer other social consequences: ostracism, name-calling, gossip, possibly even suspicion that he – being seen as odd – is the one to blame for the situation. I know kids can be cruel because as I wrote a year ago, I also tried my hand at bullying. I was confronted. I stopped. Matters become more complex when it is not one bully, but a gang of them tormenting multiple victims. Multiple witnesses, lies, half-truths, a greater potential for violence. 

Bullying continues into adulthood even if we don’t recognize it as that. Sexual harassment in the workplace and elsewhere is a particularly egregious form of bullying. Exceptionally personal and loathsome. Often the harassment comes from a superior in the organization. Victims need to find the higher power and report the harassment, the assault. Human Resources can provide relief. But what if the antagonist is head of HR? Ask those women and men who have been victims of sexual harassment how effective it is for their assailant to get a warning or an order of protection in those most dangerous of bullying cases – spousal abuse. What if the police officer, teacher, or priest is the abuser, and one does not feel safe driving a car, staying after school, or worshipping in a church?

Which brings me to the Trump Administration. What if the bully is the most powerful man on the planet?

Where can one go to escape the tyranny? What can a victim do? To whom can the persecuted turn? In a dictatorship, whatever course victims take will be fraught with danger. Thankfully, we live in a democracy, and the answers to these questions are: One shouldn’t escape the tyranny, but be vocal in challenging it; victims can communicate their displeasure to their elected officials, vote in every election, and become more intimately involved with the political process; besides involvement with the politics, victims can turn to the free press and the courts for redress.

What if the courts become co-opted by the party in power? What if the president uses his Bully Pulpit to relentlessly assault the free press for shining a spotlight on the truth? What happens when the Congress, like any student body, backs away from doing the right thing and allows the bully to run amok? What if the Bully-in-Chief’s attempts to confuse the populace succeed, when truth and lies intermingle from a multitude of outlets until confusion reigns? Isn’t it the same as in schools when some witnesses prevaricate, some tell the truth, and still others remain silent to protect their relationship with the bully.

Bullying on a mass scale is a dictatorship, whether in schools or in the country at large. But we live in a democracy, not a dictatorship. Despite the groupthink created by the White House with Trump’s fellow travelers calling into question anything critical of the President, we have recourse. Trump is a bully. His rabid supporters are also bullies, shouting down those who disagree with him. Many of his Republican colleagues are also bullies, providing cover for their hero as Congressman Devin Nunez did when head of the House Intelligence Committee. Like a corrupt principal siding with the bully, Nunez refused to listen to witnesses against Trump only allowing testimony from his supporters.

At least we still have a free press, even if some choose not to believe in it. In our present democracy children have been forcibly separated from their parents at the border for the “crime” of seeking asylum. This policy tore families asunder for no other reason than to pressure people into turning away from the United States. Yet seeking asylum anywhere on our border is legal.  It is international law. Such wretched people need not buy a ticket for today’s version of Ellis Island, even if they could afford one. The light of the free press made a difference in ending this inhumane treatment of people already facing life-threatening dangers.

Despite living in a democracy with two chambers of Congress providing a check on every administration, an administration run amok sometimes has a loyal group of followers who subscribe to the same ideals, even if those ideals are anti-American. (There just aren’t too many troops being sent to the Canadian border stopping whites from coming down and buying up all our Florida real estate.) When part of Congress supports the bully and another part fears challenging him, the bully wins. 

Therefore, we must appeal to our own higher power. We can and must vote. 

Despite the efforts Republicans and Conservatives to prevent people from voting, despite the efforts to confuse Americans and stifle news outlets, despite the fear-mongering and division this Administration has spread, we have a higher power. Vote to remove those who prop up the bully. Vote to show our silent representatives that showing courage is preferable to enduring oppression. Vote to show the bully that we aren’t afraid of him.

Vote while we still can.