Bullying? Safe spaces? Man-up and punch their teeth out!

While I was never a bully and in fact I often ended up uniting the nerds and outcasts under my wing…I still find that in truth, the bullies made me who I am today.  Their senseless hostility made me a better person.  While I hated them at the time, looking back, I worry for whom I might have become had it not been for them and their actions.  I don’t mean to encourage bullying, as I mentioned, I was bullied myself…nor am I defending the jerks in life…but I am saying that bullies made me learn to stand up for myself and for others.  They taught me to be a man.  To quote Captain Kirk, “I need my pain…it’s who I am.”  I think we are becoming a society of whiners and cowards.  As I say, I don’t condone bullying…but when we shelter people from every tiny little thing, we do them a disservice to an extent.  If people commit suicide because something insulted them, that leans toward a larger psychological problem with the person.  It is NOT normal to kill yourself or others over a simple insult or bullying episode.  I think a lot of this over-protectionism is what’s leading to the higher levels of suicide and mental breakdowns.  People are sheltered continually and so when they encounter a bully, they can’t handle it and end up doing something drastically stupid to themselves or others.  We also restrict our youth these days with fighting.  Back in my day you could punch an a-hole in the face and solve your bully problem.  Today if kids do that, they get cuffed and thrown in jail for it, and so they fear retaliating.  But getting your teeth knocked out is the best cure for a bully…and being the one who knocked them out is the cure for self-doubt and a great builder of confidence.  I had a fight once that I completely lost and the bully still left me alone and even ended up respecting me.  Bullies are odd like that. I highly respect those who are trying to stomp out bullying, but I remain an old-school proponent.  I don’t think “safe spaces” and bullsquash like that is doing anything to solve the problem and the mentality it pushes may in fact be leading to the problem all that much more.  I know that comes as a shock to many, but that doesn’t make it any less the truth.  Sometimes, we need to experience things…painful or not…hurtful or not.  That pain is what makes who we become.  I can remember fights in school.  The teachers knew who the bullies were and they’d always let us go out for a minute or two before breaking us up.  Lessons were learned.  Living a sheltered existence turns us into a bunch of p*ssies who can’t handle the simplest of chaos without peeing our pants.  Saddam Hussein was a bully.  He was also the only man in history to maintain a firm grasp and control of the nation of Iraq.  Same can be said for Ghadafi in Libya.  Bullies, sadly, have a place in society.  We can hate them, that’s okay…and we should, most assuredly have the right to punch their teeth out if they f*ck with us…but to eradicate all forms of combative behavior only makes us weaker as a species.  We thrive our best when we are faced with obstacles.  Peace out…[drops mike and exits stage left]