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Pick up any anti-bullying literature and you will find, somewhere within it, a call to arms for bystanders.
You will even find suggestions for how they might intervene.
The limitations of these overtures seem glaringly apparent in the face of Donald Trump's ongoing success. Trump mocks, belittles and sneers--with impunity-- at those who dare to challenge his ideas for ‘policies,’ point up his inconsistencies, or take offense at the crassness with which he deflects opinions that differ from his own. Trump’s campaign models and all but institutionalizes bullying tactics, and analyzing them is nothing new.
Yet understanding why attempts to curtail his behaviors (a.k.a. ’bystander responses’) are ineffectual shifts the focus of any inquiry into his success. It is one thing to assert the time is right for the rise of fascism or tyranny, another to ask why attempts to stop it seem futile.
Trump’s narcissism explains why he lashes out against those who challenge his grandiose visions, but it does not explain why this grandiosity is championed by increasingly large audiences.
Why there is no accountability, and why those who call for it are humiliated and bullied into silence.
Perhaps, as Andrew Sullivan suggests, it is that Trump has changed the terms of the debate:
“[h]is television tactics, as applied to presidential debates, wiped out rivals used to a different game. And all our reality-TV training has conditioned us to hope he’ll win — or at least stay in the game till the final round. In such a shame-free media environment, the assholes often win. In the end, you support them because they’re assholes.”
This ‘reality-TV audience mindset’ readily segues into a mob mentality.
Trump facilitates this transition, using his straight-talking reality-show persona to incite crowds toward increasingly violent responses.
“His support reflects deep strains of preëxisting disenfranchisement, alienation, and division, but, although Trump gives echo to these passions and has an uncanny genius for harnessing them as his engine, he proposes no coherent remedy, only swagger: there will be blood.”
And even though all candidates rally their supporters / encourage frenzied support and negative campaigning, it the equation of violent responses with the toughness needed to ‘make America strong again’ that is so troubling.
Yet herein lies the key.
Trump’s calls for violence clue us into his positioning of himself as victim.
He—like the rest of his supporters—has suffered the ignominy of America’s decline at the hands of liberal politicians, and he’s just not gonna take it anymore—nor should we.
He is the champion of those who have been bankrupted by the system—financially and morally.
And his call to arms is a rallying of bystanders.
Trump undermines and de-legitimates any challenges to his point of view by grounding the claims of his detractors in corrupt (liberal) politics.
Proponents of these views are the real bullies, having beaten American down with their "tolerances," which are nothing if not weak-minded.
As the champion of the victims, the underdogs, the “average” American citizen, Trump the ‘man of the people,’ the anti-politician, mocks, insults, belittles, and swaggers.
In this reversal, the true ‘bystanders’ are Trump’s supporters, who rally behind the victim-turned-avenger, standing up to the henchmen of the liberal bullies—the liberal press.
His extreme nationalism shows up the ‘guilty’ politicians, who are responsible for the eclipse of ‘this great nation.’
And, were they not guilty, they would not be so ineffectual at standing up to this (presumptive) bully.
Their voices would not be readily silenced, nor his successes so great……
