BULLY CULTURE

A familiar strategy in contemporary American culture is to humiliate, demean,  and insult  the people with whom we cannot agree.  Whatever the issues, arguments must be composed around an idea that there are only two possibilities, one right and the other wrong.  In virtually all matters, Americans are taught early that there are two classes of people, the right ones and the wrong ones.  Among poorly educated citizens,  differences are understood to be matters of ethnicity, race, job description, religion, or political party. 

We are not a tolerant people.  We adopt easily anti-whatever-you-are-that-I-am-not posturing to define ourselves in relation to the people we believe are not like us.  Homes, schools and churches are the three primary institutions where young Americans discover who they are, and it is in those environments that Americans learn to define themselves.  Emphasis is on how we are different from “the other”...almost never on shared characteristics and ideologies. Typically, when two people in a marriage decide to split and go separate ways, they turn on each other and try not to say or do anything that enhances the image of “the other.” Whichever party in the petition for divorce can afford to hire the most expensive legal team has the clear advantage.  Candidates for election to public office are expected to portray their opponents, and all of those in the “other” party in terms as demeaning as possible. Money drives elections.  Whoever can spend the most money in a campaign for public office has the advantage... not the person with the most logical plan for doing the work the office demands.

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has demonstrated unwillingness to work together with other members of Congress.  The latest and most blatant and shameless attempt to weaken the administrative branch of our government was a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt.   For the first time in American history Congress imposed a sanction on a sitting member of a president’s cabinet.  The vote followed an acrimonious and politically charged series of accusations by Republicans that the president and his cabinet are determined to weaken American democracy.  Clearly the goal of Republicans in Congress since the election that gave them the majority is to circumvent in every way possible the work of the President and his cabinet.