The two 'fatal flaws lurking in American leftist politics': a humble attempt to help Jordan Peterson with his challenge

But people will legitimately ask, where is the harm? Where is the bloodshed?

Prof. Peterson, you think the situation is bad in higher education. But it's much worse in lower education, because college students engage in bullying much less than younger kids, and are much less likely to turn to the school authorities for help with their social problems than are their younger counterparts.

I expect you may not be aware of it, but the anti-bullying psychology, created by left-thinking university psychology professors, is the ultimate in political correctness, turning every one of us into a potential bully or victim, or, to use your preferred language, oppressor or oppressed.

Thanks to the successful political activism of the anti-bullying field, schools are now required to function as totalitarian police establishments responsible for children's interpersonal relationships 24/7. School staff need to do double duty as security guards, detectives and judges, treating any complaint of subjective harm as a serious crime needing thorough investigation, interrogation, adjudication, reporting and punishing. Rather than eliminating bullying, these laws have led to a growing epidemic of bullying and intensified hostilities among students, parents, teachers and administrators. Today is the most stressful time in history to be a school administrator, as they can face lawsuits for failing to accomplish the impossible (research has shown that the most highly regarded anti-bullying programs barely cause a dent in the problem, yet schools are supposed to know how to get stop all children from being bullied.) Just today, the news reported that a Pennsylvania court awarded a student $500,000 dollars(link is external)because the school district could not stop fellow students from ridiculing her "gender-nonconformist presentation" – in all three schools she attended! Half a million dollars! American dollars, not Canadian! For a mere $500, I could have taught the girl how to stop being bullied, but now we, the taxpayers, have to fork out half-a-million bucks because schools can't force all children to respect nonconformist gender presentation. In actuality, the schools' attempts to stop the bullying made the bullying escalate.

Almost all school shootings are committed by victims of bullying. These kids are consumed with anger, hatred and desire for revenge. Anti-bullying policies were intended to reduce the frequency of these horrific massacres. Instead, mass shootings happen with tragic and increased frequency. Should this surprise us? Ever since preschool, students have been taught to think of anyone who upsets them as an evil bully that deserves to be hated and eliminated from society. Even adults have taken to blaming bullies as justification for committing murder(link is external).

Source: Powell books/fair use

Have you seen the German film, The Lives of Others(link is external), about life under the East German totalitarian police state? The underlying political theme is the high rate of suicideresulting from government surveillance of citizen's social lives.

Many children who take their own lives do so because they can no longer tolerate being bullied. Anti-bullying policies are intended to prevent suicides by victims of bullying. Instead, the suicide rate has skyrocketedamong kids – tripling among girls – during the same period schools have been officially combatting bullying. Why? For two reasons.

What happens when kids are taught that words can scar them forever or kill them? They become more upset when they are insulted, which unwittingly fuels the bullying, so they get insulted even more.

Second, schools have been informing children that they must tell the school authorities when they are bullied. What happens when kids get the school authorities to investigate the bullying complaint? Hostilities immediately escalate, as each side and their parents try to convince the school that they are right and the other is wrong, and the informer becomes known as a snitch, which can be a social death sentence. If the child is lucky, the school authorities will succeed in making the bullying stop. But too often, the bullying spirals out of control, even leading to serious violence. The victim of the bullying, feeling betrayed by the school's false promise to make the bullying stop, may eventually despair and decide to put a permanent end to their suffering (and occasionally, to the suffering of schoolmates and teachers).

Promoting truth

Prof. Peterson, you are a great advocate of Truth; truth sets us free.