Bullies by Proxy

In the darker moments of the soul, and I know many like me have felt the same, I am overcome with pessimism motivated by the apparent tolerance, advocacy even, of the worst form of oppressive power. People seem drawn to power hungry leaders who, if one is at all observant, clearly have no interest in the people over whom they rule, but are simply anxious, grasping, selfish souls who strive to overcome their own desperate feelings of inadequacy by controlling others and everything in their possible purview. Our own Prime Minister, for example. One need not be particularly astute in political terms to understand that he would do anything to gain and hold on to power for the sole purpose of aggrandizing his warped and childlike ego which is profoundly weak because the man has no soul and no humanity. And thus he surrounds himself with spiritually small and intellectually miniscule men who, like himself, have not the empathy to reach out to others. They cannot fight for the vulnerable or console the down-trodden because they are themselves so desperately weak and wounded that they rail against the defenseless or those at risk as though they might raise themselves up to the level of powerful ‘MEN,’ when it really just demonstrates their pathetic limitations. Real human, and humane, strength is demonstrated not by our ability for bluster and bullying, but by our ability to put our own egos aside and take ourselves down to the level of the weak and vulnerable and raise them up.  

And yet angry and aggressive people, who feel that they are superior to others, or secretly suspect that they aren’t even equal to the rest, seem to like to have bullies for their representatives because they are ersatz images of themselves. Thus average conservative voters can be bullies by proxy. This political fact troubles and depresses me more than any other.

Oh, that the free would stamp the impious name

Of KING into the dust! or write it there,

So that this blot upon the page of fame

Were as a serpent’s path, which the light air

Erases, and the flat sands close behind!

 

               - Shelley