I am a warrior, and not by choice.
When I was seven, I started getting bullied by older kids. Being that I was tall for my age, bullies saw me as a soft target. They would beat me up and call me names.
I didn't fight back because I was told through teachers, numerous PSA commercials, and a whole slew of school materials that fighting was wrong, and I should always avoid it. I was told to tell a teacher, or an adult, about a bully so that they could deal with the bully themselves.
Boy, was I naïve.
There were a few times I didn't listen to all of the adults, because they had refused to control the bullies. Of all those times, I can tell you about a bully named Dan. He was my babysitter's kid.
Dan would beat me up all the time because he knew I wouldn't fight back. His parents knew about it, but they didn't do anything to him. He would call me names and I'd tell on him, only to be told, "Don't be a tattle tale". Yet if he told his parents on me for saying something back, I'd be scolded. Dan was probably aware that the double standard existed, because before long, words turned into physical violence.
Dan beat me up all the time, and his parents did nothing. I would constantly be crying over the abuse he gave me and they didn't say anything. So finally, I had enough.
One day, I got into an argument with Dan and I knew he was going to come at me, like he always does. Except this time, I wasn't going to let him beat me. I was ready.
Sure enough, after the argument got heated, he came charging at me, ready for battle. I put my right foot back, and hit him in the face with a hard right fist in the mouth.
That son of a bitch dropped like a sack of potatoes. One fucking punch to the face, and he was screaming, crying to his mom.
I chipped the shitbag's tooth, or so his mom told me.
The mom, who had long allowed for her kid to bully me, went apeshit on me. It didn't matter that for well over a year, he had bullied me. He beat me into dust. She did nothing then. Now, she was yelling and spanking (yes, spanking) me.
If I had known then what I know now as an adult, I would have called her out on her bullshit and hypocrisy. I would have told her that she deserved an ass beating too, and I was ready to deliver. Yet as an eight year old child, all I knew was that I was in trouble.
I stood up to my bully, and I was paying the price.
In my subconscious mind, I learned that you will be punished for defending yourself. People are coming to hurt you, nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. That was just one of many bullies that I had similar experiences with until I was twelve.
Another one was with a different Dan. That Dan would beat me up after school in the sixth grade routinely. After I finally took enough abuse from him, I went to the assistant principal.
I told her the whole story about how Dan would bully me as soon as I got off the bus. That he would hit me. That he would hurt me and knock the wind out of my stomach for no reason. When I asked her what she would do about it, she very pointedly told me that she would do nothing.
Why? Because Dan worked in the school office. He was the "teacher's pet". Aside from whooping my ass on a daily basis, he was a model student. Because of that, the assistant principal didn't give a shit that he was a bully. He had a free license to beat me up, and there was nothing that the authority figures would do about it.
In those years, I had many bullies. Adults did nothing to defend me from them, but they always told me the same lie: If you fight the bully, you're just as bad as they are.
I was stupid enough to believe it.
"Don't fight the bully, or you're as bad as he is", is the worst fucking piece of advice I had ever received as a child.
Then seventh grade happened.
I was in an office meeting with my school counselor for the third time, dealing with bullies. I don't remember the name of my counselor, but he was a good man. The past two times, he pulled the bullies into his office and scared them enough to not physically bully me anymore (emotionally, he had no control over). But by the third time, he was exasperated.
It was at that moment, he gave me the best advice I had ever received from an adult:
"You're going to get in trouble for it, but you have to HIT BACK."
That was his advice. I might get in trouble for it. The adults won't protect me from the bullies when they try to beat me, but I have to fight, and be ready for the punishment that comes from defending myself.
As an adult now, I really, really wish that it hadn't taken me his permission to do so, but as a kid, it was all it took to truly wake my ass up. He put a real truth in my brain that has always been in my mind since:
People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you will be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.
I had a strange confidence after that. If anyone had decided to talk shit to me, I'd tell them to fight me. Most refused because I was a giant. No longer a gentle, pacifist giant. A giant ready to tear their limbs off.
Eighth grade was another story. I spent half of my time in In School Suspension because I was taking shit from nobody. Bullies didn't touch me because I was ready to fight. Most of my time in In School Suspension was because some bully decided to verbally abuse me, and I responded by knocking his head off.
In high school, I started doing karate. I was no longer just the guy you didn't want to fuck with, but I was protecting other bullied kids. Sure, there were some bullies that tried to mess with me emotionally, but once I said, "YOU WANT TO SING IT, OR BRING IT?!", they would back down real quick. Real fucking quick.
To this day, I remember the worst advice that was given to me by adults: Don't fight the bullies, or you're as bad as they are.
I always keep in the back of my mind the best advice that I got from my seventh grade counselor:
People are coming to hurt you. Nobody is going to help you, and you'll be punished for defending yourself. Fight anyway.
Yeah, I became a warrior. Not by choice, but because my options were either to fight, or be crushed.
I kept that advice from the counselor in the back of my mind long after high school, when I joined the Army as a result of another group of bullies attacking us on 9/11.
That bring us to today.
Last week, there were bullies gathered by the hundreds that marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. Those disgusting bullies, that screamed evil things like, "Jews will not replace us", "Blood and soil", and eventually rammed a car into a crowd of people that were protesting such bullying.
As it was in my childhood, the "authority figure" that was supposed to denounce such bullying instead blamed "many sides", except there isn't many sides. There's only three sides; the bullies, those that they're bulling, and those that aren't bullied but fight on behalf of the bullied. I've been on the both of the latter parts. The "adult" that's supposed to condemn the bullies instead enabled them.
He gave the same bullshit speech that I heard many times in my youth. That speech is a lie.
"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is."
"If you fight the Nazi, you're the real Nazi."
Yeah, I've heard that speech before. That same, lying speech that adults told me to keep me from defending myself as a kid is now being spewed forth by the supposed president of the United States. The same bullshit that I was told by adults when I was defending my friends from bullies.
If politics is like high school, our "president" is the new assistant principal. The one that won't attack the real bullies because they're the teacher's pet. They're the ones that got him elected. He doesn't want to punish them.
"If you fight the bully, you're as bad as he is" is a lie. Bullies don't respond to kind pleas for you to stop hurting them. They don't respond to reason. They don't respond to acts of kindness. They only will stop bullying you when punch them into the face so hard that they have a chipped tooth and go crying to their mom. And then, and only then, they'll stop when you tell their mom, "WHAT?! YOU WANT SOME OF THIS? COME AT ME! I'LL BREAK YOUR TOOTH, TOO!"
So as it went then, so it goes now. The fascists are coming to hurt America, nobody is coming to protect us, and we will be punished for defending ourselves. Fight anyway.
