Playground Politics

A recurring character has started appearing in my blog essays recently, an anonymous phantom known only as “my co-worker.” This nameless entity keeps cropping up in discussions of recent events, a monster that, like No-Face in Spirited Away, gets its taint on everything it touches. I realized I’ve used the words “my co-worker” with liturgical consistency, but no context. Perhaps it’s time I acknowledge, to myself if nobody else, that this is only one guy.

One man, let’s call him Jack, keeps repeating racist stereotypes, Fox News talking points, and any stock justification for protecting the status quo. And I keep treating him like a hapless but misguided Everyman, whom I could potentially sway with facts and reason. But listening to him repeat shopworn stereotypes about Black people this week, I realized Jack was controlling the discussion, and everyone else was squelching their objections to avoid drawing his petulant ire.

And I realized where I’ve seen this behavior before: on elementary school playgrounds. Jack is, in the classic sense, a schoolyard bully. We all knew this kid: he says inflammatory things without justification, picks fights, and out-and-out lies, as tools to establish dominance. Because he knows nobody will take the initiative to stand up against him. Instead, we all acquiesce, because it’s easier to go along to get along. We simply prefer peace to honesty.

Unfortunately, if your childhood was anything like mine, you were well into adulthood before you realized the truth: nobody really liked this kid. Many people pretended to be this guy’s friend, because they thought they could avoid his wrath. Others, like me, tended to join counter-conformist cliques which had little in common, except opposition to the bully. These cliques, however, tended to dissipate quickly, when the bully tempted our leaders and most prominent members away.

Bullies, from grade-school playgrounds to capitalist offices, set the tone around them by being noisy, gregarious, and threatening. Those who earn bullies’ trust, however fleeting, get the feeling of insidership while the leader attacks anyone outside his circle. Everyone else lives in constant fear. Nobody particularly agrees with this kid; we just find ways to live with him. If everyone else found ways to ally with friends and colleagues, the bully would have nobody left.

We adults recognize the bully dynamic when watching children. Perhaps because kids lack subtlety, or because we have the older outsider’s perspective, the schoolyard bully tactic is easy to recognize. But we often miss that dynamic when it reproduces itself in adult groups, like workplaces, because the bully no longer threatens to punch weaker kids. He just mocks, shames, and humiliates people who disagree. He often does this through proxies, like dumping on poor minorities.

Realizing this about Jack, I also realized how influential the bullying mentality becomes in adult politics. Donald Trump is a classic bully: he molly-coddles those who stoke his ego, then when these allies show the slightest modicum of independent thought, turns on them violently. Consider how Omarosa, James Mattis, or John Bolton went from being trusted advisors to being called stupid, crazy, or untrustworthy, often within mere days. Exactly like the jerk on the swingset.

Most important, bullies successfully get people to act against their own self-preservation. Just like I watched bullies’ grade-school allies punch weaker kids to avoid getting punched themselves, or everyone nod about Jack’s anti-welfare rants to avoid his active and malicious scorn, allies acquiesce to Trump’s sudden, capricious shifts. Consider how quickly many American conservatives went, last week, from hating to embracing masks when Trump was photographed wearing one. It’s exactly the same schoolyard bully dynamic.

I’m not the first to notice that American politics has become captured by one personality, like one bully captures the playground. The Republican Party has effectively become the Donald Trump party, beholden to his whims, even when he contravenes longstanding conservative values. The Democratic Party, meanwhile, has become the big-tent party, expected to coast to a poorly contested victory on the back of anti-Trump sentiment. The opposition is unified by vague hatred of the bully.

Nor is this unique. Trump, Boris Johnson, Jair Bolsanaro, and Vladimir Putin, all threaten shame, humiliation, or in Putin’s case, death, upon those who disagree. Wealthy and powerful people, or in Jack’s case those who aspire to become wealthy and powerful, appease the bullies’ whims to remain among the inside circle. And it works, for a while. My workplace has become a microcosm of effective bullying tactics. But this only reflects our outside world today.