We Live in an Age of Public Bullying; What Can We Do About It?
Bullies, starting with super-bully Trump, need to “get some of their own medicine.”
Professor Emeritus Roddey Reid could have retired from the University of California San Diego to a life of deserved leisure. Instead, he has just published a handbook on "Political Intimidation and Public Bullying," which is increasingly dominating government, business, and civil society.
A guest this week on my radio show and podcast, Professor Reid was followed by Professor of Law Robert Fellmeth from the University of San Diego, a leading critic of unbridled anonymous speech fostered by Silicon Valley companies to boost profits.
Reid argues, Newt Gingrich launched this political onslaught in 1994 when he took over the GOP, led the Republicans to victory and became house speaker. “To be clear,” Reid continues, “political intimidation and public bullying are forms of psychological and physical political violence… meant to injure, humiliate, isolate, coerce, and even destroy opponents and entire communities.” These interviews should spark a civic rebellion.
The political intimidation operates in both open sight—from the belligerent bully-in-chief Donald Trump, and in the shadows with serious anonymous threats to members of Congress, judges, and their families. Combined, this viciousness has meant the difference in razor-thin votes in Congress. For example, the violent-talking, unfit secretary of defense being confirmed by the Senate. Other Trump nominees, who are also staggeringly inexperienced, totally obeisant to Trump’s wrecking of America in daily violation of the Constitution and federal laws, have also squeaked through Senate confirmation votes.
Political bullies focus on the weak, vulnerable, and powerless. You don’t see Trump going after and cutting programs servicing big-time corporate welfare kings through subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
Reid is systemic and illustrative in his fast-paced book titled Confronting Political Intimidation and Bullying–privately published to make it very up to date through August 2025. In his last chapter, he conveys 13 strategies for citizens to use locally in response.
Cumulatively, this mass “callout” could descend upon Congress and state legislatures for a more systemic regulatory agenda.
Such legislative activity in Sacramento, California is already taking place to deal with the central delivery mode of such bullying—ANONYMITY—according to Professor Fellmeth. A long-time advocate of curbing the dangers of internet anonymity, including to children. Fellmeth urges a decisive ban on most anonymous assaults, leaving open some exceptions for whistleblowers and others with a need to protect their privacy and self-defense. To accomplish this selectivity has to involve regulation of the Silicon Valley profiteers and electric child molesters, led by the duplicitous Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of META. His major declared mission is to drive people from reality and live their lives in his virtual reality. A quick safeguard is to require anonymous speech to be pursued by law enforcement when it embodies physical threats and deliberate psychological torture. Naming and prosecuting the perpetrator will serve as deterrent to other potential anonymous predators.
Moreover, Fellmeth, who has written several articles on AI’s rapidly intensifying damage to youngsters, wants a regulation mandating identifying AI creations as such to forewarn the public. (See Professor Fellmeth’s article: "AI is already harming our children. Are California lawmakers going to do something?" January 30, 2025).
Bullies, starting with super-bully Trump, need to “get some of their own medicine.” That means those attacked with nicknames need to counter with nicknames, rebutting phony allegations and revealing the brutal impacts of their bullying on innocent people and families in both red and blue states by the vicious and cruel Trumpsters. Otherwise, the “Big Lies” without rebuttals become soliloquies, and therefore believable to millions of people and influence millions of susceptible voters. (See our prescient and useable book Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All.)
Political bullies focus on the weak, vulnerable, and powerless. You don’t see Trump going after and cutting programs servicing big-time corporate welfare kings through subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts in the hundreds of billions of dollars annually.
His latest vindictive cuts—some boomeranging against his own desired policies—were outlined in a recent Washington Post feature by lead reporter Hannah Natanson. His latest “firings”—suspended by a federal district judge in California–targeted services for students with disabilities, inspectors who check the defects of federal housing, and employees who help regulate hazardous waste and pollution, according to the Post. Frothing at the mouth, Trump called those fired “people that the Democrats want,” as if conservative Trump voters and their families want to breath and otherwise be exposed to dangerous pollutants. The same flailing dismissals will strike what the Post described “as vulnerable Americans–school children, low-income families, homeless people, and senior citizens.” Trump is steered by the seriously hateful Russell Vought, the White House Budget chief and preparer of the Heritage Foundation’s notorious Project 2025 blueprint for Trump’s fascist dictatorship. It doesn’t matter that these and previous firings, without cause, are illegal in numerous ways. After all, didn’t Trump tell you in July 2019 that “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as President”?
Here is an illustration of the institutionally insane wielding of the axe by indiscriminate haters that is hurting Trump voters and families alongside their Democratic counterparts. Trump and Vought want to layoff “workers with top secret clearance responsible for monitoring and protecting the United States from biological, chemical, and nuclear threats.” Earlier Trump and Vought drastically cut federal health scientists, safety regulators, and critical benefit dispensers in the tens of thousands.
Another instance of mindlessly cutting federal support for slammed hard-pressed community colleges, the recipient of lavish praise by Trump over the years for their job training curricula.
He is betraying Trump voters, with regular treachery! It is time for the people to say, “Donald Trump, you are fired.” (See my May 2, 2025 column: “YOU’RE FIRED!”–GROWING MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE REJECTING TRUMP)
You can listen to these interviews on radio stations in central cities or by visiting RalphNaderRadioHour.com.
