No bully left behind

Rush Limbaugh and the conservative hacks who savaged and defamed Sandra Fluke for urging Congress to protect contraception coverage in The Affordable Care Act, deserve our pity; just as any other bully does.

All the smoke and sparks about sponsors, free speech, and religious freedom veil what Rush and all other agents of torment are telling the world about themselves. As well, all the PSA talk about bullies as a social menace, how to survive them, or about how "it gets better" (though that's a crucial message)--misses the message conveyed by their acts of cruelty. What they illustrate are the lengths (or depths) bullies are willing to go to forget or smother the memory of their own suffering (always endured as children).

Most certainly not one member of Rush Limbaugh's radio audience (numbered in the tens of millions) was present at any moment of humiliation or deprivation he experienced as a child. Yet his massive appeal owes to the bond he shares with listeners as individuals who rile up over any reminder of their own pain or vulnerability; summoning a pox upon anyone who might dare let their difference from prevailing norms, show.

Anyone who might scoff at this reality have no other way to account for how a grown adult could recklessly and repeatedly speculate on the sexual habits of a woman he knows nothing about. Oh, but Rush is an entertainer--a provocateur--wanting to reach the widest audience possible, his defenders explain away.

Indeed, leave it to Rush and his drones to 'give away the goods' as it concerns their own sexual hangups or unexplored psyches: sexual pleasure and self-empowered women rank as intolerable aspects of our culture that must--must!--be ridiculed, debased, caricatured.

The struggle against bullies demands another, mostly unexplored front--that is the threshold of their psyches. All responses to hostility should point out that the bully is just as wounded as the victim he attempts to afflict. Instead of allowing the brute imagine his actions come from a place of strength, the social menace should endure a gauntlet of reminders that the victim's greatest offense was reminding the agressor of his own weakness.

Rush Limbaugh and petty tyrants of his ilk may not reform their behavior as a result of being thus confronted; this approach at the very least reframes the prevailing conversation about bullies--that they share a deep kinship with the victims they torment to forget.

A decade of denial

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman stood out over the 9/11 weekend--among the various civic nine-eleven observances and rote reflection-making for the tragedy's tenth anniversary--to rub salt, not in a national wound, but to smart the festering hubris of a select group of leaders. This swollen lesion belongs to the elected- and appointed officials who believed they could parlay nine eleven's moments of nation-wide panic and sustained uncertainty into decades of political advantage.

Mind the spittle in the reaction from neocon zealots and pundits. Judging from their rabid responses, the post-nine eleven fallout unfolded in way that merits absolutely no criticism. How dare you, Mr. Krugman, tamper our sanctimonious revery.

Former War Secretary... that is, Secrtary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld went so far as to tweet canceling his subscription to the Times. "[R]epugnant..." he sniffed in objection to Krugman's piece. All very telling reactions from people who heaved and cheered the loudest for our military to invade a country that was a bystander when New York City and the Pentagon were attacked. Not a whisper or wince of regret for the one hundred thousand-plus Iraqi civillian fatalities; our dead, maimed and tormented soldiers; 'renditioning' and torturing innocent civilians; our nation's reputation worldwide, a tattoo-quality disgrace. Really, Mr. Rumsfeld, you certainly know 'repugnant' when you see it.

The indifference shown by Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the global catastrophe they set in motion, illustrates the dual-sided dimension of shame. One side is the regret, or at the very least second thoughts, felt by a person with a developed moral sense. He apologizes profusely for accidentally shooting his friend during a hunting trip, for instance.

The other side to shame is that of a deeply wounded dignity. Usually the unfortunate soul who, as a child, endures mistreatment or outright physical harm, receives the message from the tormentor what the debased value of his or her dignity is. Later on in life the person has one of two choices: engage the memory of the assaulted dignity or pretend that it never happened.

For the pretenders it's a life-long commitment to keep that memory locked away. To serve that effort, the denier may commit some act of hostility or torment against another person who does not deserve such mistreatment. Further, the pretender fails or refuses to acknowledge the impact his or her hurtful actions have upon other people. Otherwise the tormentor risks rousing his or her own memory of suffering.

Paul Krugman advocated the shame of a healthy, engaged conscience. Such an awareness does not indulge in games of pretend or denial. By writing about our nation's severe shortcomings, he reminded his detractors of their own pummeled dignities--and, inevitably it seems, they excoriated him for that.