The Perfect Bully’s Manual

From the government office to your doorstep: a satire on impunity, abuse of power and coercion when the law becomes a decorative suggestion.

THE PERFECT BULLY’S MANUAL

(Definitive Uncensored Edition): From the government office to your doorstep

By Dr. Nelson Jorge Mosco Castellano

Congratulations!!!

We live in the golden age of the bully with credentials, the criminal with an immunity card, and the certified guarantee of an irrecoverable victim.

Gone are the days of settling things with arguments, laws or, God forbid, a minimum of respect for one’s fellow bully.

Today the golden rule is simple: whoever shouts the loudest governs; whoever muscles you around has privileges; and whoever robs you with ideological backing ends up in the society pages and becomes the role model for pre-delinquent youth.

Welcome to the fascinating and pathetic zoo of institutionalized and street-level bullying, where freedom is a dirty word and the law is merely a decorative suggestion.

The state diving suit: Immunity for the bully with an office

Trying to convince a bully, with or without a tie, that rules exist is like explaining quantum physics to a paving stone. But don’t worry, they are not alone: they have the State’s bullying apparatus behind them.

That gigantic mass ceases to be a tool of social organization and becomes an armored diving suit.

Down there, in the mud of reality, ordinary mortals pay taxes, regularize building works, obey traffic lights, stand in line, pay taxes, and endure inflation, informality and unemployment.

But up there, floating in their bubble of privilege, the untouchables use power to trample over any right that gets in their way, stepping all over other people’s lives.

The funniest part? They do it with a hand on their heart, swearing they are doing it “for the defenseless”, while leaving you so defenseless that the only thing that can save you is learning to run barefoot.

The franchise of shouting: From the union office to the stands

The beauty of this model is that bullying talent is inclusive, federal, genderless, and spans every area of public and private life:

That illustrious owner of a political power base who assumes, with complete naturalness, that he can remain bolted to the desks of the companies he controls while adding their salaries to that of the regulator. And when the law, annoyingly and impertinently, requires him to choose between public office and his hefty private salaries, he acts “out of pure contrariness”: he takes off his hat as formal director, yet finds a way to hire his own companies from the State, laughing at constitutional incompatibilities with the grace of a spoiled child whose pacifier has been taken away.

In this same human type we find the one who decides to pay tribute to the leader by investing public debt in a ranch through sheer emotional drive. Then it turns out that agrarian reform reaches barely six comrades; no matter, just 32.5 million dollars remain tied up there, but stubbornness has triumphed.

The postmodern union leader: That high-fashion labor specimen who negotiates directly over the political corpse of the Secretary of the Presidency, the Minister and the Deputy Labor Minister, whom he uses as human paperweights.

After four months of systematic extortion against those who make their living from the Port, he wrings out more than he ever dared ask for at the start, refusing any easing of pressure; the great day of the forced signing arrives… and he does not show up.

The reason for his tantrum? An unforgivable affront: they dared force him to stop stopping, and demanded a labor-peace clause!

A humiliation that, judging by his body language, he is already announcing he will stick where the sun doesn’t shine within a month or two.

The “business” barra brava of vehicle security: That marvelous quasi-sporting mafia that floats above criminal law like cork on water, and receives tender official apologies for committing abuses against other people’s property, neatly classified as “their businesses”.

Experts at taking such good care of your car that they end up hoarding it in installments, piece by piece, while you enjoy cheering for your favorite team.

Or the one who expands the product line beyond the classic coffee and popcorn, adding chemical substances designed exclusively so that you can celebrate happily even when your team loses five-nil.

The parking attendant with a fixed fee: That urban sovereign who collects money despite the Mayor himself, leaving the old loose coins behind in favor of mandatory and extortionate minimum rates, because he knows perfectly well that if you do not pay the ransom, your vehicle will soon be crying out for a body shop.

The “owner” of the sidewalk: The marginal figure with a letter of marque who pitches his tent right at the entrance to your garage or lays his cardboard bed at the door of your building (as long as it is not under Blanquita’s window).

Calling the police or MIDES is a sterile exercise guaranteed to raise your blood pressure: the bunker is dismantled and returns exactly twelve minutes later with dogs and belongings, claiming “vulnerability rights”, ready to smash the window – left or right, depending on artistic mood – of your vehicle, because they hold a permanent license to impose an antisocial kind of justice.

Waking up late: What if the “saviors” of human rights owned the circus?

But of course, so much pressure eventually gets even the most patient person’s balls inflated (soccer balls, obviously). And that is when society, with the perceptiveness of a pregnant asphalt snail, begins to connect the dots.

Suddenly, one ordinary day, a wild idea crosses the ordinary citizen’s mind: the people who say they are coming to free us from the bullies are the very same people renting impunity to the bullies!

They discover, wearing the expression of people who have just woken up, that they cover for them, applaud them, finance them, recruit them for mobilizing purposes and, to make matters worse, use them as a doormat in every election. What an astonishing surprise!

The challenge: Do you dare stop bowing your head?

Getting out of this swamp does not require a hero’s card, but something far rarer: dignity without anesthesia.

It requires sending the bully of the day, and whoever shelters him, straight to the recycling bin, whether he wears the presidential sash, signs contracts under the table, runs whatever union he runs, collects extortion money on the corner or occupies whichever sidewalk he pleases.

The million-dollar question, the one that keeps bouncing around in your head, is very simple:

How long are you going to keep applauding the same system that charges you a toll to reach your own home without stepping in excrement, smashes your car window if you do not pay, owns your Port and your money, and then demands that you apologize for having interrupted the business of the bully of the day?

Impunity and privilege
Institutionalized coercion
Citizen versus power

Continue reading in Global Order and Geopolitics