Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society by Charles Derber & Yale Magrass

Author:Charles Derber & Yale Magrass [Derber, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780700622641
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Published: 2016-05-02T22:00:00+00:00

Movies such as American Sniper are intended to encourage the public, the sheep, to become sheepdogs or, if that’s not possible, at least be grateful to the sheepdogs for protecting them from the wolves.

The question remains: who is the bully? Put another way, how do we distinguish the sheepdogs from the wolves? The military has found outlets throughout civilian society to drive home its values and answers. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we continually heard the mantra, “Support the Troops.” You can drive down highways and see posters with that slogan, along with American and MIA-POW flags, yellow ribbons, and the names of veteran and dead soldiers hanging from the overpasses. The Boy Scouts organization features “The Ballad of the Green Berets” on its website and offers merit badges in firing rifles and shotguns (although it now requires Eagle Scouts to earn a merit badge in environmental science or sustainability). At major sports events such as the World Series or the Super Bowl, there is a call for a pause to honor the troops, as color guards from each of the armed services carry the flags of their branches onto the field. The entire stadium is expected to stand for the singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as fighter planes fly overhead. The message is clear: soldiers sacrificed for our country and therefore are worthy of unquestioned admiration and support. Time in the military is referred to as “service,” something inherently unselfish. If you support the troops, you do not wonder if the cause for which they joined this killing, bullying institution was necessary, moral, just, or good for most of Americans or most of humanity. If they have sacrificed, it must be good, and we cannot allow their sacrifice to be in vain.

Of course, this campaign is an effort to discredit any potential antiwar movement and to make protestors seem like unappreciative bullies who want to impose their un-American agenda on the rest of the country—individuals who hold in contempt their country’s values and institutions, especially its military. Stories abound about veterans returning from Vietnam being bullied and spat upon. Some veterans did feel shunned, both by protestors who saw them as “baby killers” and by self-described patriots who saw them as weak cowards who lost a war. However, according to Lembcke, there are no documented cases of Vietnam veterans being spat upon.63

In reality, most of those involved in the peace movement tried to make a sharp distinction between the wars along with the institutions, values, and leaders who promoted those conflicts, on the one side, and soldiers and veterans as individuals who were seduced and bullied by the warlords, on the other. The protestors may not have supported the cause for which the troops were dying and being sacrificed, but they sympathized with them as victims.

The “bravery” of the warlords is epitomized by Lord Farquaad in the animated film Shrek: as he is about to send out knights to slay a dragon holding the fair maiden and

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