Orwell Shows us How Bullies Win the Day

It’s not the bullies' fight that matters. It’s the story told about the fight.

Bullies and suckwads are first and foremost, storytellers

Yesterday we covered bullies and suckwads. Let’s review, shall we?

Bullies need suckwads to help do their bullying for them. To bully from a position of strength one needs an army of suckwads to amplify the bully’s message, insist it’s true, especially if it isn’t. And suckwads need bullies to feel better about themselves, to have a cause they can be passionate about and to join what they think is a winning team.

Now how exactly does a bully build his or her legion of suckwads? How did Donald Trump convince 38% of all Republicans that the 2020 election was stolen - rigged as he likes to say - despite over 60 court rulings rejecting the claim and not one iota of evidence to suggest otherwise?

Similarly, how does Don’s genius buddy, Vladamir Putin, continue to convince a majority of his citizenry that his 190,000 troops in Ukraine are only there to stop the genocide of Russian-speakers at the hands of their Ukrainian oppressors?

Our topic du jour is storytelling, and this being the stock and trade of the successful bully (insomuch as we can describe anything a bully achieves a “success.”)

The art and power of storytelling is well appreciated by any politician or world leader worth his or her salt. The boundaries being pushed in today’s world is the degree of untruthfulness being promulgated, amplified, defended and wielded against the rest of us. It’s one thing to embellish, to be theatrical or persuasive in your storytelling. It is quite another to be an outright liar on the scale that two of the world’s biggest bullies are perpetrating.

On a scale, in fact, with the Battle of the Cowshed.

The Battle of the Cowshed revisited

George Orwell tried to warn us about the weaponization of storytelling and the power of lying in Chapter 7 of his classic 1945 novella, Animal Farm. Entitled “The Battle of the Cowshed,” the chapter paints a pivotal turn of events for our ill-fated animal revolutionary farm experiment.

The facts of the chapter are this: Two farmer neighbors attempt to recapture control of the Jones farm, taken over in the earliest of chapters by the farm’s animals, mostly thanks to the leadership of the smart pigs, the strength and stamina of the soon to be betrayed horse and the pig’s collective ability to enlist all the lesser brained animals, especially the sheep, to the task.

Sadly, the two pigs at the top of the hierarchy have opposite motivations. Napoleon is a bully who craves absolute power. Snowball, by contrast, genuinely believes in the movement he helped start for the purpose of helping all the animals benefit equally in the new order.

Remember, this is not about the fight but the story about the fight. Snowball came up with the brilliant battle tactics that enable the Battle of the Cowshed to be won, the farmers repelled. He was the hero of the day, which is of no use to Napoleon on his quest to rule the farm. So Napoleon retells the story to all the animals, especially to the less knowledgable sheep, in such a way as to ensure that he, Napoleon, is the hero. Naturally in Napoleon’s account, Snowball is disgraced and swiftly removed from the farm’s ruling council.

Meet the two kinds of Suckwads

The sheep in Orwell’s tale are one category of suckwad - uneducated and unaware that they are being played. We perhaps hold a soft spot in our hearts for this type of suckwad. They are not guilty of bad intent. Napoleon’s pig comrads, however, are a different breed of suckwad entirely. They are smart. They know exactly the lie they are messaging to the others and they know precisely why they are promulgating it - for personal gain. They want to live off the hard work of the lesser-brained animals and live more like the lazy humans they replaced in the revolution.

Another pig named Squealer is Napoleon’s masterful mouth piece. He uses his superior storytelling skills to amplify Napoleon’s messaging and help accomplish Napoleon’s aim to consolidate power.

Similar to Squealer, the Orange Tornado had his battery of mouthpieces: Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks, Stephan Miller, Lindsay Graham, Jared Kushner, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani and a whole host of senators, congressmen and lesser known characters. Most of these I put in the same category as the pigs; for their own personal gain they knowingly spread Trump’s litany of untruths, half truths, quarter truths and outright deceits, all to recast history in the light that best served the Orange Tornado.

Putin’s Battle of the Cowshed

Let’s turn our attention and disdain now to the other bully in our crosshairs, the Orange Tornado’s good buddy Vlad. Are we not astounded that while western media shows clear as day what Putin’s cruel and merciless unprovoked war on civilians in Ukraine looks like, Vlad is somehow able to convince a majority of his citizens, saddled with rubles and stocks now worthless, to somehow believe his effort to restore Russia to its prior greatness is all going according to plan?

Like Squealer, Vlad and his oligarchs know the value of strategic storytelling. His “technical military action,” (the word “war” was banned from Russian state media) is intended only to protect Russian-speaking Ukrainians from the genocide being perpetrated by Ukraine, under Western cover. State media purportedly shows Russian soldiers delivering humanitarian assistance to abused Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Supposedly, eastern Ukraine and the independent “statelets” are the only area where Russia’s 190,000 troops have been sent.

Ah, the wonder of state-controlled media (storytelling).

Trump’s Battle of the Cowshed

The Orange Tornado’s cowshed, since Nov. 4, 2020, is the last election. And his story goes something like this: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The New York Times, the Washington Post and even the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal are all wrong about who won that election. These news sources should not be trusted because they have all been infiltrated by the evil deep state liberal elite. Don’t believe what they say about the election, about what my suckwads and I did to try and overturn it, about the January 6 riot and those true patriots who wanted to lynch the vice president, or any other nonsense they report about the totally rigged 2020 election. It’s all fake news. Only my facts, amplified and repeated by my suckwads speak to the truth. For my truth, go to Truth Social, my media platform, make me even richer by doing so.

Last thing

Look. We can go on all day and night about Vlad and the Orange Tornado, but it’s not a pleasant business really, is it? One last final Wrap then on bullies before we take a little pause, allow you to be Wrap-free for a few days, then move on to greener pastures. During that break, we’ll regroup, reconsider, reconnoiter, redevelop, re-engage, re-construe, re-infer and re-enroll in whatever ridiculous re-calculus is recommended.

Our third and final bully Wrap will take on the hardest topic of all: how to defeat a bully! Wish me luck, and spoiler alert: I’ve no f’ing idea. Fortunately, that never stopped me from Wrapping rhapsodic.

And that’s a Wrap.