This is What Happens

Ever since the holidays I have noticed that the groups I joined on LinkedIn about bullying have been very silent.  This includes me.  I haven’t posted on my blog for about the same time period.  This is shameful and I apologize.

I will admit that I got disheartened when I found that my second “Samurai Cop: The Bully and Me” class did not have a single participant registered.  Not one.  The first class had the same result, not one person registered.

Apathy.  This is what the bully depends on.  As long as we do nothing they will thrive.  We must be prepared.  We must train ourselves to spot the bullies’ behaviors and root them out before they can do damage.  We must let them know that we, the good people, are watching and we are going to be diligent.  We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it any longer.

The time to decide what to do about a bully is not when he or she comes up to you and confronts you with whatever cave dweller agenda they may have.  We must train proactively so that we know what to do before the bully has a chance to initiate a confrontation.

I have trained for 20 years as martial artist in order to be ready for the eventual physical confrontation that may appear.  You know what?  It hasn’t happened.  I have come close a couple of times, but the bully has always backed down. Why?  Because I was ready.  The bullies always know when something is not quite right.  When they run the risk of being hurt they will usually find an exit if they have been given an honorable way out.  Bullies may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer but they are not dull either.

We have to be ready for them and the sooner we can spot their errant behaviors the sooner we can correct them and put them on the proper path.  Some bullies cannot be saved, some have something wrong with their personalities.  But, I believe the vast majority of them if shown the error of their ways and given a better more enlightened path will choose that path.  After all, it has been shown that career criminals often make less money over their lifetime than if they had worked at an entry level job at a fast food restaurant all their lives.

In the following list are news headlines taken from the web over the last three years.  This is what happens when we are not diligent.  The dates are the days of the posting and not necessarily the day of the crime.

• 5/2/09 - Luis Ramirez Killers Found Not Guilty After Beating Mexican Immigrant To Death
• 9/24/09 - Teen Derrion Albert Attacked, Beaten to Death in Melee
• 10/08/09 - Cops Try to Make Sense of Deadly Skinhead Machete Attack
• 10/14/09 - Teens Who Burned Boy May Be Tried as Adults
• 3/18/10 - 'Text Rage' Leads to Alleged Brutal Teen Beating
• 7/23/10 - Authorities arrest third teen in Summit fatal beating
• 8/9/10 - Stockton police arrest 4 teens in 14-year-old's beating death
• 11/5/10 - Teen Pleads Guilty in Homeless Man's Beating Death
• 11/10/10 - Bobby Tillman Update: Suspects in Ga. Teen Beating Death Speak Out
• 11/11/10 - Men shouted slurs as they beat musician, which family says makes it a hate crime.
•  3/15/11 - Party crashers beat teen to death in Queens after yelling anti-gay slurs

In each of these headlines the suspects are teenagers or very young adults and the victims in most of the cases are also teenagers or very young adults.  If some of these youths had been caught stealing lunch money and corrected.  If some of these youths had been shown a better way to their actions or shown the ultimate futility of the behaviors they might not have become the monsters they now are and their victims might still be alive.

We have to redouble our efforts and try again.  We must not fail.   We cannot fail again.  If we do fail, we must stand up again and try again and never give up.  Because this is what happens.  This is what evil depends upon.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke)