Dilemma for Democrats, Mainstream Media and Universities : How to Deal with Bullies
Here’s the current dilemma for Democrats, mainstream media and university administrators : How to deal with bullies in government and in Right Wing propaganda networks.
A mainstream media outlet had five of their employees killed this week and others wounded.
Part of the context surrounding this is that President Trump has repeatedly bashed the media and called them the enemy of the people.
Also, this happened the day after Right Wing provacateur Milo Yiannopoulos called for shooting of journalists.
A recent New Yorker article, written before the shooting happened, describes how University of California at Berkeley administrators spent almost three million dollars in order to allow Yiannopoulos to speak on their campus and to protect him, in order to try to do the right thing about the issue of free speech on campuses. I wonder if they are having second thoughts now.
I also wonder if some folks in media are having second thoughts now about how they handled the 2016 election coverage. Mainstream media is sometimes unintentionally complicit in their own destruction by Right Wing propagandists.
There has been a lot of criticism from mainstream media, from the Right and from some Democratic politicians themselves, about supposed “incivility” on the part of Democrats, even while the Republican administration does things that are far worse than being incivil.
Now some Democratic politicians and media folks are rethinking this question of civility. For example, Hillary Clinton is warming up to the idea of forgetting about “civility” when dealing with bullies who take children away from their parents.
Here’s how NOT to deal with this: We don’t need to bash Trump supporters who fell for Republican propaganda. We don’t need to label them as irredeemably evil or stupid. Many of them are neither. In fact, there are a lot of propaganda points that are believed by most Democrats and mainstream media. Propaganda can work on anyone.
Bashing people is the most common way mistakes are dealt with on social media and in many other public spaces now. But, except in extreme cases where someone has done something they really ought to lose their job for, bashing creates more problems than it solves.
If we bashing mistake makers harshly, that tends to make them more defensive. It makes it harder for them to recover and to admit they’ve made a mistake or gotten conned. It also destroys needed connections to the community that individuals and institutions will need if they are going to recover and go on to act constructively.
Mainstream media outlet owners and their staffs don’t need to experience paralyzing shame or despair. Neither do university administrators or the organizers of the Democratic party. They just need to become aware now of what is happening. All of us in the U.S. have been very naïve about propaganda and con artistry. In fact that is one of the
12 Lessons We Can Learn from the Time of Trump
We all make mistakes. What is important is that we learn from them. Bashing or punishing people harshly for mistakes interferes with learning.
So how CAN citizens, Democrats, mainstream media folks and university administrators deal with political bullies, going forward?
The writings of cognitive linguist George Lakoff, may be helpful. His models of politics come from models of parenting. He’s @GeorgeLakoff on Twitter. We might also use elementary school principals who are successful at dealing with bullies, as models.
How would a Republican using the Strict Father morality that is favored by Republicans, deal with a bully? Probably too harshly.
How would a Democrat using the Nurturant Parent model deal with bullies? Perhaps too compassionately — not harshly enough to be effective.
Below are some strategies that we may consider for dealing with political bullies in government and in Right Wing propaganda networks. These strategies are for use by institutions such as the Democratic party, media and universities — not for use on an individual level. Individuals can help though, by pressuring institutions to act constructively and powerfully.
On social media, at the individual level, we can just block political bullies. In real life, we can usually refuse to engage with them. However, institutions are often forced to engage with them in one way or another.
Here are the strategies.
Turn the Other Cheek.
Wrong. While there may be some context in which this works, one can easily see that the effects of doing so in current politics are not good. Just as a parent or school principal is not going to stop a bully from harming siblings or classmates by turning the other cheek, it won’t work in politics either.
Look at the origin of this. It comes from the Christian Bible. And yet what do the Christian Right Republicans do to Democrats who are simply asking to be treated fairly? The strategy of the Christian Right Republicans and their leaders is not Turn the Other Cheek, but Go for the Jugular — e.g. voter suppression, gerrymandering, stealing a Supreme Court seat, spreading lies about Obama and Clinton, putting babies in cages. The people from whose Bible the Turn the Other Cheek rule originated, don’t even follow it. There’s no reason why anyone else should.
Go for the Jugular takes full advantage of the opponents’ weaknesses. Republicans have taken advantage of the public’s naivete about propaganda and con artistry. Almost all Americans, including mainstream media journalists and university administrators, are naive about these matters. We have a lot to learn. Those of us who have the time and interest need to start reading and studying the subject intensively. Here are two books, as just a start in that direction.
I’ve summarized some of the information from this book — the parts on propaganda during the 2016 election — in the essay below.
Of course, a lot more information has come out about Cambridge Analytica since the book was written.
Here’s the second book, Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. It will help you to understand con artists. Most con artists are not psychopaths, but the behaviors are the same or similar.
Golden Rule
This isn’t quite as bad as Turn the Other Cheek, but it still doesn’t work with bullies. Treating a bully as kindly as you would want to be treated is obviously not going to work, for the same reasons why Turn the Other Cheek won’t work. There’s also the reason that this strategy keeps bullies from suffering any consequences for their actions. With this strategy, the victims would bear all the consequences.
If we are going to have any rules, laws, or norms at all, that means we are going to treat law breakers differently than we treat people who abide by the law.
Scorched Earth
This is pretty much the same as the Go for the Jugular strategy. It’s “a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy.” The term is used metaphorically in some non-military situations.
This is very extreme. We don’t want to destroy everything around us. We don‘t want to be so harsh that it will be impossible to later get to a phase of cooperation.
There is one aspect of the Go For the Jugular strategy that could be used though. That is, we should be aware of Republicans’ weaknesses. We may find situations in which we can use these weaknesses against them, to help the nation or to defend the targets of bullies.
Tit for Tat
This is a method that has been proven to work in some contexts. Basically, you first cooperate. Then you match your opponents’ last move. This method has promise. In some situations, doing to Republicans what they have done to Democrats e.g. blocking a SCOTUS nominee, makes sense to me.
In others instances though, it would not apply, at least not in the specific sense. For example, it would obviously be going to a crazy extreme to respond to the GOP president putting babies in cages, by putting the babies of Republican officials in cages. Still, something generally like this could work, in that when Republicans act harshly competitive, we can respond with some competitive action, rather than with a cooperative action.
Fair but Not as Cruel as the Bully
I think this is usually the optimal strategy. There are disagreements on how to actually carry it out though.
When the Washington D.C Little Red Hen restaurant owner asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave, was that right? Right Wingers refused to bake cakes for gay weddings and then had that enshrined into law, so it’s fair play.
Are Maxine Waters’ suggestions just right or going too far? Of course, we want outcomes that are as constructive as possible.
Here are some interesting ideas on how Democrats could start playing hardball, from conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin. She has turned against the Republican party because of of her strong disapproval of Trump’s actions.
