A principled stance against bullies

When I was younger, I was taller than most kids my age, skinnier, had a head that took up a good 1/3 of my body, and I was smarter than most and I liked to let everyone around me know that too. As you can imagine, I was bullied relentlessly as a kid. The thing I eventually learned about bullies as I got older is that (1) they don’t grow out of it, it’s a mentality that stays with them into adulthood and (2) the only way to handle a bully is to fight them. Bullies are, by their very nature, anti-social. What they’re doing is seeing how far they can push before they get in trouble or before they get adequate pushback that will stop them. There is no reasoning with a bully – they don’t care about the rules or their actions might hurt someone. That’s the point, to challenge the rules and to hurt someone.

What do you do when bullies take over a government, or at least try to take over a government? Fascist ideology, if it can be called an ideology, is that of the bully. In fact, it’s probably better to call fascism a sociological movement rather than a political movement because it doesn’t really have a political ideology; it’s truly a movement of people, usually men, obsessed with power for the sake of power and who want to put the world under their thumb. However they can best accomplish this task is irrelevant to them, so long as it fills their need to feel powerful by being cruel. When such men take over a government, resisting and eventually removing them is the only option.

Russia is and always has been a nation run by bullies. Ever since the Dutchy of Moscow began to exert its independence from the Golden Horde, Moscow has ruled with an iron fist. It has expanded into territories under different justifications, but all to quench an imperial thirst. Its borders have grown and retracted, but at its core its remained an empire, a bully to its neighbors. Under Putin it’s had dreams of Empire once again, of expanding its influence and its borders and “restoring” the glory of the Russian Empire at its height. Not before its fall in 1914, but before its remaking into the USSR. Never before and not since has Russia enjoyed that much influence on a global stage.

Putin’s whole project has been to restore the Russian Empire, aka the USSR. His invasion into Ukraine was supposed to be an easy thing – after all, a bully never expects resistance. After Ukraine he likely would have turned to Moldova and then the Baltic states, with Poland and Romania next. In all likelihood, he’s still going to attack the Baltic states and Poland in the next 1-3 years. A bully is never satisfied and a bully only understands violence. The idea of becoming an economic superpower, taking care of his citizens, and wooing his neighbors is beyond him. That’s too much work and effort and bullies are lazy. It’s why they turn to violence – violence, if you’re the victor, is the easy way.

And so he invaded Ukraine, expecting the people to just lay over and join. Instead, he ran into the stone heart of the average Ukrainian. Ukraine offered up fierce resistance to a level that even critics and skeptics of Russia were shocked at the level of success Ukraine had in their defense. Yet, since the beginning people have been saying that if Ukraine wants peace they should negotiate. Those cries are growing louder and now they come from the United States government.

The US government, a newly elected government full of bullies. Of course they side with Putin, they see the world the exact same way he sees the world. They have the same zero-sum view of everything, of every interaction being of winners and losers with no in-between or compromise. They view what Putin is doing with Ukraine and think, “Well, yeah, that makes sense. That’s what we plan on doing with the territory we want.” A bully pushes and other bullies watch, and if they see no resistance then they’ll also start to push.

Cowering to Putin, giving up, surrendering, seeking peace, all of these things would only embolden Putin. These aren’t just lines on a map, there are people living on that land. If land is given up, it’s not just the mineral rights that are given up, it’s the people. That is what drives Ukrainians, knowing that if Russia wins, if Russia gets their way it will mean the enslavement of innocent Ukrainians in the east. Ukraine is being invaded, of course they could have “peace” if they surrendered, but what kind of peace would that be?

Ultimately, we live in a world that has lost all sense of principle. This is why the bullies have won, because it takes principled people to stand up to bullies. Instead, we’ve elected managers and pragmatists who even if they have principles won’t stand on them. For decades we’ve watched Democrats take half-measures in both foreign and domestic policy, attempting to appease everyone. They’ve attempted to appease the bullies rather than fight the bullies, and all that did was embolden them and allow them to grow.

In foreign policy, the Obama administration had its famous “reset” with Russia. Rather than recognizing and treating Russia as a threat then and there, they took half-measures. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and later involved itself in Syria, the Obama administration took half-measures (really, took no measures). They didn’t stand on principle, they stood on “fear of escalation.” The only thing the “reset” did with Russia was empower the bullies to continue to bully their neighbors.

When Trump caused the January 6 coup attempt, when Musk got into bed with Russia, when it was obvious to everyone that leaders in the former administration needed to be in prison our leadership didn’t stand up to the bullies and instead took half-measures. Their fear of standing on their principles has resulted in them having no principles, and now the bullies are in charge.

Ukraine, on the other hand, is standing on her principles. For once we’re witnessing leadership not engage in compromise and half-measures, but wholly and fully committing to the principled stance. Damn the consequences, full speed ahead. This obtuseness in the face of tyranny is baked into our shared global culture. How many famous last stands are there that we look at and admire, that when all hope was lost men and women stood their ground and fought their fight because they believed in what they believed? Ukraine is another in those lines of stories, of people and nations that refused to give up no matter the odds.

Will Ukraine win? Will their principles win out? I don’t know. You don’t stand on principles because you think you’ll win; you stand on principles because they’re your principles. Without principles what are you? Think about it. If there is no ground beneath you, if there is no hard stop, if there is no line where you’ll say “enough,” then what separates you from a Concentration Camp guard? What separates you from any number of the faceless and nameless people who’ve taken part in systems of oppression over the years? You can judge them all you want, but without principles you’re no different. A person of principle doesn’t ask, “Will I win,” instead they know where their line is and they take their stand when it’s reached.

Ukraine’s line is their freedom and autonomy. Russia pushed against that line and Ukraine is – rightly – standing up and refusing to back down. That is how you respond to bullies. If the rest of the world had responded in kind, if the rest of the world had stood on their principles instead of compromising them, then Russia would have already lost. But the rest of the world didn’t, and instead the world got worse.

Now, standing for your principles is going to come with costs greater than they would have a decade ago. Standing up to Russia now comes with greater consequences. Standing up to the bullies in the US government now comes with greater consequences. This is the nature of things, when these bullies arise, that if you do not deal with them quickly and harshly they will grow in power. You’ll have to deal with them at some point, and the longer you wait the more consequential and damaging it will be when you do finally have to deal with them.

Yet, deal with them we must. And the only way to do that is to stand on principles and refuse to engage in half-measures in our own lives. While we must compromise at times, we must have a hard line, a hill upon which we’re ready to die. Whether we win or lose, we must fight. That is what Ukraine has learned, and the rest of Europe will learn it soon enough as well.