Bullies

From "Narcissists, NPD and the serial bully" at BullyOnline.org:

The serial bully displays behaviour congruent with many of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Characterised by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity and self-importance, need for admiration, and lack of empathy, people with narcissistic personality disorder overestimate their abilities and inflate their accomplishments, often appearing boastful and pretentious, whilst correspondingly underestimating and devaluing the achievements and accomplishments of others.

Read the rest here.

Adult bullies do basically the same thing that child bullies do. Child bullies pick on littler kids. As in the old cliche, if the victim punches the bully in the nose though, he goes running home crying to Mamma. That isn't just a cliche: it is true.

Likewise adult bullies pick on those, who for some reason or other, are most easily hurt and can't or won't fight back.

All too often, any effort to fight back is condemned by by the bystanders, who thus are complicit in the abuse, because they are supressing the only thing that can stop it.

I often wonder why the bystanders do this. Are they just that brain dead? Do they really not see that the right to self preservation by fighting back is the most basic human right there is? That if someone is hitting you, you have a moral obligation to make him stop, by hitting back? That if someone pulls a gun on you, you have a moral obligation to shoot him if necessary to defend yourself? Yes, that's right: you have not just the right but the moral obligation to protect yourself by making a bully stop.

Or are the bystanders just pretending to be brain dead? Are they just pretending to not know any better? Are they just siding with the bully so he doesn't get mad at them. Him they FEAR, because he's abusive and mean. The victim they needn't fear, so the victim is the one they attack.

Which is it?

PS
For those who would cite Dr. Martin Luther King and Ghandi, I must point out that either one or both of them said their tactics of non-self-defense would work only as an appeal to a society with a conscience. But that against an enemy without conscience (a bully), you had to just come to blows with him and bloody him for hurting you.

Dr. King was appealing to American society, and Ghandi was appealing to British society, both of which had a conscience. This WAS the smart way to lead their people. That prevented their enemies from suckering blacks and Indians into anger and fury that would backfire, frigtening whites and losing them the sympathy they had among most whites. It WAS the winning strategy in that case. But can you imagine where their methods would have gotten them under Adolph Hitler? Bullies abuse BECAUSE you don't fight back! Otherwise they wouldn't have the guts to.

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