Being a very smart kid in a very rural town, I got bullied a lot when I was younger. Pushed around, told to “move out of my seat”, and all those other wonderful things the supposedly tough boys did to assert dominance over those they considered inferior. Worse, of course, was the way I received the same treatment from adults, specifically teachers and school administrators. In every case, I understand now, the root cause was fear. The bully fears being ridiculed, so he ridicules in turn. Scared of the idea that someone will mock him for his limited intelligence, he does the same to those who have plenty to spare. The psychology just doesn’t change.
A bully is a bully. Even if that bully happens to be the leader of a Western nation.
Justin Trudeau is, to put it simply, no better than the men, women, and boys who bullied me as a child. His behaviors are the same, his actions merely on a different scale because of his influence. Above all, his thinking is the same. He expects to get his way, for the lowly nerds to do as he says and cower before him like they always have.
Bullying is all about control. It’s about proving that you have power over another. When that power is taken away, the bully realizes he’s left with nothing. His threats become hollow, and increasingly shrill, their rising violence matched only by their rising impotence.
The best way to put that fear into a bully is by not complying. Too often, our children today are taught that the only response to bullying is to “tell a teacher”. Many schools level harsher suspensions for self-defense than for the actual attack, as an attempt to further inculcate a sense of helplessness before shows of power. And we’re now seeing cases of students fighting back against the teachers bullying them, defying the unconscionable and increasingly illegal mask mandates; the teachers’ response in one California case was to barricade the students in a room and turn off the heat. Imprisonment and torture, in other words, for the crime of speaking truth to power.
Authority is treated as if it were bestowed by divine right, but that can only go so far. You can only push people so much before they finally reach a breaking point. I reached it on March 12, 2020, and I’m glad to see the wonderful people of Canada letting it be known that they have at last done the same.
Trudeau is nothing but a bully. Now that the people have stood up to him, he has nothing. His power derives, as in any liberal democracy, directly from the consent of the governed. Yes, he can command the police and the military of Canada while he remains in power. Using them against his own, however, would seal his fate. History is littered with the names of dictators, all of which we rightfully spit on today: Milosevic, Ceausescu, Allende, Pinochet. One more would be nothing.
But this doesn’t end in Ottawa, or in Coutts or Tofino. This only ends when the entire world is freed from these tyrants. When no human being anywhere on earth is threatened by the requirement to submit to a medical experiment in order to travel, keep a job, or buy food for his family. When no one is looked down upon for wanting to breathe clean air. When over seven billion human beings are free to live their lives as humans, making their own choices, exercising their own free will.
Canada has shown how to stand up to bullies. Kind, polite Canada, the Ned Flanders to America’s Homer Simpson, has displayed the courage needed to send their bullies into hiding. It’s past time the rest of us followed their example.
Sic semper tyrannis.