Tuesday with Another Voice

Today's voice belongs to
Contributing Editor
motomynd

When the minority take power through bullying and incivility: Why are the majority so over-understanding about it?

What do Joan of Arc, born 1412, a 14-year old girl in Pakistan in 2012, and at least half of modern-day Americans, all have in common? They are all victims of societies that for some mysterious and unexplainable reason choose to tolerate minority groups taking control through bullying and brutish behavior, instead of stopping it.
    Since this blog is based in civility and understanding, the bitter irony is that if you are reading this, you are very likely one of the people enabling the problem, rather than someone actively doing your part to resolve it.
    Why is that? Highly-educated and liberal-minded people tend to think in terms of understanding and tolerance, rather than taking confrontational action. To paraphrase Yasser Arafat’s line about freedom fighters and terrorists, “One person’s understanding is another person’s enabling.”

Before we target more modern events, some perspective.
    If you believe the scriptural accounts, Moses came down from Mount Sinai with two stone tablets with Ten Commandments inscribed on them by God. Translators tell us that those rules to live by, for lack of a better term, included “thou shall not kill” and “thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s” property, which meant land, wife, servants, and so on.
    If you believe the further accounts, it was not too many years later that Moses was leading his followers on slash-and-burn raids where they wiped out every man, woman, and child in neighboring villages, and took everything worth having. Some historians today even theorize that Moses was finally killed by his own people because they were fed up with his tyrannical and seemingly psychopathic leadership
    Turn Moses loose today and he would most likely be tried in the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Back then, the majority just got tired of his out-of-control minority rule, and they killed him. The majority often famously did the same in later similar cases with leaders such as Rome’s Julius Caesar, who came to power on the strength of a civil war he helped start, and many others.

Somewhere along the way, however, the majority became over-understanding of the minority, and the latter learned to use this to their advantage. The minority learned how to take control, even though they were often exponentially outnumbered by people who disagreed with them.
    Take Joan of Arc for example. According to historical accounts, “The Maid of Orleans” was simply amazing. She reportedly had a divine vision at age 12 in which God told her to recover her French homeland from English domination during the Hundred Years’ War. While only a teen, she helped lead several military victories that basically saved France from being divided amongst foreign powers. There may be some uncertainty about her actual prowess in battle, but it is believed she took an arrow in the neck and returned to lead her troops to victory, so that seems credential enough.
    Her reward? She was betrayed for money, tried by a religiously fanatical minority in a politically motivated trial, and burned at the stake.
    Why didn’t the majority rise up and save the woman who saved their country? Why didn’t the king she helped put on the throne do something? Those are good questions without good answers. Maybe they were simply over-understanding of the minority?

On the bright side, things have surely changed in the 600 years since, right?
    That brings us to 14-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai. According to the Associated Press, “Malala was targeted by the Taliban for promoting girls' education and criticizing the militant group's behavior when they took over the scenic Swat Valley where she lived.” Because the teen dared to speak out on such issues, Taliban gunmen boarded a bus she was riding home from school, and shot her in the head. A week later she was still alive, but the Taliban vowed to come back and finish her off if she lived.
    So, again, like Joan of Arc, we have an idealistic teenager who dares to take action while adults hide in fear, and her reward is to be attacked by a religiously fanatical minority for political reasons. In Pakistan the Taliban are violent, but they are a minority of the overall population. Why are the majority so over-understanding? Again, a good question without a good answer.

Which brings us to modern Americans. No, we don’t have people burned at the stake for their religious beliefs, and we don’t have students shot on school buses for their political persuasion—thank goodness for that. We do, however, have teens bullied at school to the point they commit suicide, and adults who endure similar situations at work. We used to think of bullying happening mainly at school or on the playground. Now it is such a problem at the adult level there is a Workplace Bullying Institute.
    And we all know the tenor of U.S. politics. For a Republican to win a party nomination they have to pander to the radical right, just as a Democrat has to play to the far left. How did minority factions achieve such power?
    And where do you, the reader, fit in? Are you part of the problem, or the solution? Do you speak up and take action when needed, or do you resort to “slacktivism” and just think positive thoughts instead of taking positive steps?
    According to a 2010 poll conducted by KRC Research in collaboration with global public relations and communications firm Weber Shandwick, two-thirds of Americans believe incivility has become a major problem, and 75% of them think it is going to get worse. In the poll, politics and roads topped the voting for least civil places. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who identified themselves as Democrats think only 22% of elected Republicans are civil, and Republicans think only 20% of elected Democrats are.
    Possibly the most intriguing statistic is that Republicans think only 50% of elected Republicans are civil.
    As for highway incivility, you don’t need statistics to assess that. If you have been driving more than ten years you have seen the quantum change. Tailgating used to be part of the big-city mindset; now if you see another car on a quiet country road it is likely to be a half-second behind you.

So, what is causing the new culture of incivility, and why are people putting up with it? And are you one of the people making it worse by tolerating it?
    Speaking for a generation that remembers a day when someone who punched you knew you had every right to punch them back, some of us wonder if all the over-understanding is the problem. Do bullies being protected by the politically-correct educational system become corrupt adults? Bullies don’t fear a parent’s attorneys; they do fear a broken nose. Do they learn at an early age they can use the system to their advantage and then spend the rest of their lives exploiting it?
    We don’t want to go back to the day of taking dagger in hand to get rid of a tyrannical leader, or settling issues at high noon with six-guns, but it seems time for the majority to make some sort of stand to limit the overly-leveraged and unjustified power being claimed by the minority.
    When someone tailgates you on the highway, you don’t want to slam on the brakes and cause a wreck, but a tap on the pedal to bring on the brake lights could be in order. And when you are cornered at a social event by someone speaking loudly instead of talking sense, you don’t want to start a fight, but politely saying “I’m walking away because I won’t listen to such nonsense” can make your point. And if, unfortunately, your child is the target of a school bully, you don’t want them branded a felon for defending themselves with a weapon, but educating them on how to use some basic self-defense tactics might be better than teaching them to spend a lifetime living in fear and over-understanding.
_______________
Copyright © 2012 by motomynd