Will Bullying Work?

In a little over a week we will have as president a bully.

It is his main characteristic and it has worked at times during his life as often the benefits of siding with him outweighed the general dislike of his tactics.

Now of course if you are on the bullies side things look a bit different, and in the world of New York construction you had to look tough in order not to be bullied yourself.

Now there have been bullies on the world stage before and they have had mixed results.

The most notable of course was Hitler who went a bit too far in his bullying leading of course to his ultimate destruction. However, had he not invaded Poland in 1939 what would history have to say about him.

Consider Stalin, another bully who sided with Hitler in that invasion only to have to deal with those consequences himself.  He never lost power and while history considers him a ruthless dictator he died of natural causes.

Now generally most dictators are in fact bullies but we do have examples of bullies in democratic countries, although not fully in control.  I would argue that to some extent, Winston Churchill had bullying characteristics which helped Britain win the war but led to his ultimate election defeat.

Bullies actually can serve a purpose at times of national crisis where everyone needs to get on board.  Not actually being in such a crisis is what leads to potential issues where opposition is almost certain to arise.

I am not in favor of many of the things proposed by the incoming administration such as backtracking on health care, demonizing immigrants, reneging on international agreements and increasing the deficit to benefit the rich while reducing social security and Medicare. 

The situation we have is potentially favorable to some or all of those policies getting through so we can only hope that certain members of the republican party see the dangers and respond.  They will be bullied to conform. 

Don't know if they are smart enough or brave enough to respond appropriately.