By Julie D. Griffin
May God himself give comfort to the parents of young Bailey O’Neill whose sadness and tears we pray fill up the ocean with enough compassion to make America look at why parents send boys who do not know how to keep their hands to themselves to school at all. The memories of the boy child, his darling and fair face looking out from his photos, it is not likely that some masked visionary illusion would do much to break the grief that must take a natural course. Little Bailey O’Neill, who died on Monday, March 3, 2013 after a series of seizures which began due to a head injury inflicted upon him by pre-meditated violence at the hands of the two boys, the life and the unknown destiny of Bailey O’Neill, remains forever gone. A Nobel Peace Prize writer and scholar with the perfect cure for cancer, or a great evangelist who may had begat the course of a great reformation, a whole world at loss therefore, and regardless of the plan for his life, more than just a face on the internet, Bailey O’Neill represents a serious loss of a valuable, and precious human life just begun. Film artists who wanted to show the world the kind of parenting going on today, began to make films which they likely hoped to use to convict the adults in charge to stop bullies or groups from such evil collaboration before the insanity led to the attempted or eventual murder of a child. The 2012, The Bully Project, a type of independent documentary film directed by Lee Hirsch, depicts the horrifying daily lives of many children harassed by a group of children who seem more at home with demons than they do a modern civilization. The children filmed, who practiced hitting and pushing and verbally abusing a lone or isolated child, fully aware of the rolling camera, showed no shame or remorse for such cruel behavior. They seemed not to care at all. They appeared as if born without a conscience.
A group, or team who gang up on one individual, the social terror the team uses to further isolate, intimidate, and push around, verbally harass, and take personal items from a victim or mark a territorial claim, those who follow a vicious path clearly enjoy such evil. A me first, and you last attitude often accompanies twisted motives behind the push to push down and control a peaceful individual. The victim, often just as young Bailey O’Neill, has no discourse of escape when grown adults where he attended school refuse to step in and stop the bully after the first incident of abuse. The old-fashioned advice of just ignore them does not apply to those intentional on the crime. Leaving the location, although sometimes necessary, is not always an option. Also, giving away or leaving a territorial area without actively punishing or perhaps a permanent removal of the bullies, only gives positive reinforcement to the bullies. If schools were to begin to remove bullies by group, parents forced to look at what kind of social behavior they teach or convey at home or at school, some might learn to take the child from the process of bully to saint. Even government agencies who began investigating the sad atrocities surrounding the murders of such children, found that most adults who knew such abuse was going on and even long-term, chose a turned head, and made a conscience decision to say nothing. Some even lied and said it was the other child, fully knowing that the aggressive bully behavior of their very own child pushed another child to either practice self-defense for life survival or to make a run for their life. Those who encourage such a bully to lie about a true or hidden attitude, and then penalize those victims who actually try to protect themselves, or encourage others to look away, do not reward or do themselves a favor at all.
“Commonly labeled as peer victimization or peer harassment, school bullying is defined as repeated physical, verbal or psychological abuse of victims by perpetrators who intend to cause them harm.” 1 The 2011 official government report on the definition and the problem of bullying, not too unlike what many battered and fatally battered women experience as well, even common sense indicates what many of the creators of the cinematic version of the profile of such abusers find out during the process of the research of the bully documentary. Pretty much the same thing all the way around. Until confronted, or until you stand up to the abuser, mirror the behavior back and put up a blockade to get the behavior stopped, the behavior goes on and on and on unchecked. A silent secret. And everybody suffers.
A nation with such advanced access to a higher consciousness of social resource, and with so much more capacity for contentment and peace has no excuse for encouraging violence ~ A government forced to create the perfect human clone via the petrie dish, what if America goes the way of the China child birth restriction laws, or the way of Future Shock just in order to keep some semblance of civilized order in order to raise adults who respect each other, who don’t want to plow down the boundaries of others and take what is not theirs to take, and who learn to give back to the world, what a sad statement about our nation, let alone the world of today.
In The Ring With Red Rose Ropes, an old episode of Night Gallery about a fighter who does not feel like a champion until he puts a man on the operating table who dies, the ghost of the man comes to his hotel room and says, “Champion huh.” In short, if that’s what makes you feel like a champion in life, how sad. The man suddenly finds himself the guest of a hotel room, which he locked up inside of does not recall checking into. “Kidnapping is a very serious charge,” ironically complains the champ to Miss Blanco. The champion begins to fear her extremely large and much more herculean husband who now comes downstairs, much the same way those he beat down feared him, and tells the champion (bully) that he must give her mate a private match in his own ring before leaving his home. A ring surrounded with a burning ring of fire.
Meryl Streep sang a song in the film musical, Mama Mia, some of the words, “Winner takes all,” fully realizing that the man she loves views falling in love as a game of competition, as opposed to a rite of love. During the scene of his tumult, the champion of the fight challenge experiences the great fear and anxiety of the other and the opposite of intimidation. “He’s never been beaten,” Miss Blanco wakes up the man to warn him to lose, as if for his own safety. And the moral of the story is that the champion who believes that he has won it all, does lose in the end, by winning. The champion confronted, and without a group to back him up, the prospect of fighting someone five to ten sizes his size and strength, terrifies him. “Winner take all, Jim,” the wife tells the champion after her husband alive since his first 1800 fight dies. In short, if he does not keep up this fight with other fighters and win the fight each single time, he will not live eternal, but die instead immediately. The greatest truth inside of every bully. Deep down inside is the biggest loser. A secondary problem exists today, as a contrast to top film critic classic independent film, Killer Of Sheep, 1977 graduate film student, Charles Burnett used a semi-narration style to depict a man living in a ghetto who wants to change his life and stop violence.
The average bully of today however, a middle class white male who truly believes his way of thinking about violence normal, and a non-violent approach to life old-fashioned and passé ~ The very bully of most murders of bullied children today, the boy next door, who may or may not eat apple pie on the way to his next crime advance. But, he is definitely not helping a little old lady across the street to safety in his private hours. Some of the government studies on the facts, and the exogenesis of the documentary film industry to explode past myths about who really is committing such acts, and murder most definitely a high crime, do not fully consider the dark rite of bullying, nothing short of beating and battering another human being, a complete violation of civil rights, although still, it is a crime.
Young Bailey O’Neill, a young boy who left alone at school just long enough to suffer the head injuries, was not alone alright. He had company. Company whose evil, these two boys not only learned, but enjoyed the behavior of a violent act. For any adult who has ever battled a group of grade school bullies as a child, this truth they know by first-hand eyewitness account ~ The bully seems to get some kind of constantly unsatisfied satisfaction out of hurting a person who they know does not have the capacity, or the power, and often even the desire to fight them back, let alone on an equal footing. No student who ever won their battle over a group of bullies sat around and spent hours going over every psychological excuse for the bad or even criminal behavior of a bully. This just perpetuates the problem. It is only when a group bigger than the group of bullies comes along and teaches the group perpetrators by means of a more legal force if necessary, what a boundary looks like, that they finally stop the cruelty. It is sad when a nation promotes the underlying layer of and glorifies the criminal as good, as a way of life. It is amazing how many bullies, even secret and cunning bullies throughout time saw the light, and even wanted more of the sanity of the good sunshine as a broken, poor and humble man. In the meantime, it is up to America to do everything they can to make sure that if they spot a young Bailey O' Neill getting pushed around, to step in and do everything they can to make sure, that the bully who once practiced violence in the shade of a dark peace, does not receive the comfort to practice it anymore. Protect the child. Call the authorities. Make a report. But, whatever you do, don't stop until you know that child is safe.
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