Advocacy groups and even documentaries tell us America is in a bullying crisis — but I wonder if we aren’t in a sissy crisis, instead.
I remember being bullied when I was a kid, but no one considered it a crisis then. I just did the healthy thing and put a hard shell around my feelings while developing a seething bitterness toward the world.
Has bullying really gotten worse? Maybe kids have just gotten sissier.
It probably started with making kids wear bike helmets. Next, scientists put feathers on dinosaurs. Now vampires, instead of being murderous monsters, are sparkling and caring about their girlfriends’ feelings. Everything is sissier; it has to be affecting our kids.
We’re far removed from the days when children entertained themselves by shooting each other in the face with BB guns; childhood is now all about safety, being attuned to our emotions and avoiding peanut allergies.
This isn’t good for the country. Think: When Elvis was drafted, he at least looked capable of holding a rifle; you can’t say the same about Justin Bieber.
What will happen when we have a whole generation who grew up without learning how to deal with bullies? Iran or North Korea will yell at us, and we’ll cry, “Take some of our nuclear weapons! Just stop being mean to us!”
We’ll be just like Europe.
But how can we maintain the right amount of bullying? I’m doing a lot of volunteer work, making fun of kids I see and their stupid clothing and awful music. (Is it just me, or are kids getting fatter?) But we probably need the government to step in.
A new Department of Bullying can determine the precise amount of bullying children need for proper development and send government agents to dispense it. If we’re too cash strapped for a new agency, we can probably just make it part of an agency that already has lots of experience in bullying, like the IRS (or the TSA, but that would probably be too creepy).
There would be nothing too sinister about it; the government would just create and store files on all our children that outline their fears and weaknesses and then use that to publicly belittle them in controlled classroom settings. We need to make sure our kids will be properly toughened for future challenges.
We spend much of our adult lives getting bullied by the government anyway; now kids will get used to it early in life.
Then a generation raised to be tough may even be able to deal with normal childhood problems without making it a national crisis.
Frank J. Fleming is a political humorist.