Care and Feeding of Bullies
Odd Company -- March 10, 2025
Dear Friends, Family, Neighbors, and Those of You I Don’t Yet Know —
Welcome to the fourth anniversary edition of Odd Company. Feeling curious, maybe because I’m thinking of embarking on a compassion refresher course, tonight I looked back over all the past issues of this newsletter. First, I was surprised to discover that I’ve been writing it since March of 2021. Hard to imagine, but at that time the word “Substack” was unknown to most people. Odd Company was one of the first. I don’t know exactly how many issues I’ve written at this point. But I think it’s around 120. Time flies when you’re having fun. Thank you, dear readers, for joining me on the journey!
Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve abandoned some of my regular news reading because…sheesh…it’s such a firehose. The sheer volume becomes a distraction from the big story, which is, in my view, the President Who Would Be King. To wit, I’ve signed up with a group called The Raging Grannies, who recently marched, dressed in bright colors and carrying big signs, from the Tesla dealership to Tesla headquarters here, a couple of miles up a major thoroughfare. I haven’t actually done anything so far except sign up, but I’m looking forward to joining my weathered compatriots in public protest.
Meanwhile, I’ve been reading a…how to characterize it…magical book: Roland in Moonlight, by David Bentley Hart. Hart’s Wikipedia entry says he’s “an American philosopher, theologian, essayist, cultural commentator, fiction author, and religious studies scholar.” Hart was first introduced to me as the author of a well-regarded translation of the New Testament (which I haven’t read yet). Roland in Moonlight is about a dog who speaks, at odd intervals, about subjects as wide-ranging as fairies and theory of mind. Part of the allure of this book is that it’s impossible to tell how much of it is fiction and how much is memoir. But don’t we all wish we personally knew a dog (or a cat) who spoke to us now and then about past lives and the sorts of things only a dog (or a cat) can perceive?
In the last issue of Odd Company, I talked about how to have civilized conversations with people whose opinions differ from our own. And, eventually, how to agree to disagree, and then compromise in order to address problems of mutual concern without one party feeling dragged along and oppressed by the other party. If one can make sense of that. It’s possible to do it (compromise, that is), and I think Mr. Trump and the United States Congress will eventually learn how. Obdurate optimist that I am.
But then there’s this. The other day, I (and many other Americans) watched as our President and our Vice President took turns berating and humiliating the President of Ukraine in the Oval Office, of all places, while Trump’s cabinet looked on, seemingly wishing they were someplace else. I later heard that if one watches the entire 50-minute meeting, it looks a little less embarrassing. For tonight’s purposes, I’m just considering the last 10 minutes, which is the clip most of us saw.
What should a person who believes in compassion do in such a situation? I mean, a situation in which someone is being bullied? This is kind of where the rubber of compassion meets the road. Almost everyone has had some personal experience with a bully (or bullies). Speaking as an author of books for kids, I can tell you bullies and how to deal with them is a topic that never grows old. Compassion is all well and good, but how does it work when you’re dealing with people who get a thrill out of hurting others? If somebody steals your hat, puts it on their head and says it’s theirs, and then demands you swear it isn’t yours anymore, on pain of being made to eat grass, what should you do?
The short answer is, stand your ground. If you can muster the courage to do it, look them straight in the eye and say, “I’d like my hat back.” Most bullies will back down once they realize you’re not easy to push around. When dealing with bullies, there is always some risk that you’ll have to take a drubbing if you stand up for yourself. The President of Ukraine stood his ground, and he certainly took a drubbing. In the process, he made the most powerful people in America look like bratty children. And it now seems likely he’s going to get his hat back, though he may have to pick it up and dust it off.
But now it’s high time to say good-night and get this issue of Odd Company — and myself — put to bed. Tonight’s music is a favorite song of mine, one I learned in school as did all of my contemporaries. This arrangement, sung and played by David Crosby and Graham Nash, has a wistfulness that seems well suited to these times. Let’s take it as a reminder that we all love America, though we may not agree on how to show it.
Till next time, give your dog a scratch behind the ears, and ask him if there’s anything he’d like to tell you.