Bullies Are Nothing Without Enablers
The grandiose bully's reality distortion only works insofar as there are enough shameless sycophants to play along.
By Ryan McGreal.
482 words. Approximately a 1 to 3 minute read.
Posted September 18, 2020 in Blog.
The more I observe, listen and reflect, the more closely I'm drawn toward the conclusion that toxic bullies themselves aren't the problem, so much as their networks of enablers.
By enablers, I don't mean their victims, the people who have been manipulated or traumatized into serving as their narcissistic supply. I mean the people who understand what the toxic bullies are and take up the work of reality distortion, normalization and gaslighting anyway.
The enablers see an opportunity to advance their own agenda or get closer to power or punish people they consider enemies. They see the toxic bully as a springboard for their own ambition, or as a useful distraction from their own activities.
They are likely to hold the toxic bully in contempt, even as they flatter him and pander to him in their own manipulation of his ego to redirect his bullying elsewhere while using him.
(This story is as old as time. Every Lear has his Regan and Goneril. And every Cordelia pays the price for her integrity before being eventually vindicated, usually far too late to prevent needless suffering.)
Where, after all, would Trump be without Pence and McConnell, DeVos and Pompeo, Conway and Huckasands, McEnany and Caputo, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam?
The grandiose bully's reality distortion only works insofar as there are enough shameless sycophants to play along that the truth gets wrestled to a draw and humble people of principle get bogged down questioning their own sanity.
Maybe the emperor really is wearing respondent garments. Maybe it really is selfish to want a safer street. Maybe 2 + 2 really does equal 5.
Without enablers, the bully is just another obvious troll, easily ignored. Buttressed by an array of opportunistic enablers, however, the bully becomes the heroic star of his own legend, beloved by his closed and impenetrable feedback loop of followers.
In many ways, bullies are rightly objects of pity, trapped in their inability to empathize, so insecure that dissent feels like an existential threat. Of course they project their insecurities onto their dissenters, whom they dismiss as malcontents, snowflakes and, yes, bullies.
So the victims of abuse are mislabeled as abusers and blamed for their own victimhood, and defenders of the victims are mislabeled as aggressors and troublemakers who need to be suppressed.
Ultimately, fascism is just bullying on the national playground. Media manipulation is just industrial-strength gaslighting. Human psychology plays out at every scale.
Every bully needs his gang of sycophants for his power. He needs bystanders to keep silent for fear of reprisal. He needs authorities to look the other way (or, even better, normalize the bullying with their own actions). He needs his enablers.
I don't know what this says about how to deal more effectively with toxic people. Somehow, enough people need the courage to feel safe asserting what they know in their guts to be true: that the emperor is standing there in his drawers like a damned fool.