The Conservative Cave

PCIntern (29,173 posts)

So

PCIntern (29,173 posts)

So I'm going to tell a story I've never told before to anyone

When I was in my late 20’s and into my early 30’s I was active in an international dental organization that was both philanthropic and anti-discriminatory and was renowned at the time for being so. I was one of approximately 90 so-called international officers who represented geographic regions which were apportioned in the late 1920’s. My particular area had fallen on some very hard times and as a recent graduate and faculty member of the university from which I had graduated, I felt that we could resurrect our chapters and become strong again.

Now in my region we had some very powerfully political individuals within the organization but who did not join our local chapter, the dues for which were less than $150.00 annually. It was curious: these people within the organization were kingmakers and huge contributors but would not deign to join our local and yet they demanded invitations to all functions and were quite active in the pre-doctoral chapters. As you can imagine, this was somewhat frustrating and I mentioned it at a regional meeting to a few individuals who had demanded to know why our membership rolls were so low.

I no sooner returned home than I received a phone call from this very very connected, powerful individual who was raging mad. He really went after me with the “How dare you’s” and the “you are in no position to question my motives” diatribes. At first I was scared to death and then I remembered a story which I had heard some years before.

When he was finished I said, and I’m only slightly paraphrasing: I fully heard everything you just stated to me and I’m taking it as a threat upon my person. I want you to understand that my work and my position mean everything to me, since I have clawed my way up from poverty, and there is no telling what I am capable of doing when I go into an uncontrolled rage. No telling. So I just want you to understand this at this exact moment.”

Dead silence. After that we both pretended that that never occurred and that we were comrades-in-arms both at the university and within the organization. It was tacitly understood that each of us posed a mutually-assured destruction capability. The delicious irony was that when he died, the editor of the newspaper here was a patient of mine and called me to comment for the obituary. I gave him a lovely tribute which was included in the obit and it must have called all of his assholery buddies and hangers-on that I, who had virtually no significant association with him was one of two people cited in the article.

The story which I had recalled in the middle of the phone conversation concerned a dental student from up North who was at the University of Alabama in the 1970’s. He was called into the Dean’s office and was told that although his grades and laboratory performance was more than satisfactory, it was necessary to dismiss five percent of the class and that unfortunately for him, he would be included. He apparently said to the Dean, “ All my life all I’ve ever wanted was to be a dentist. If I am not going to achieve this I have no reason to go on living and believe me, I will take you and your family with me if that is the case.” He just walked out and guess who was not expelled? This is in fact a true story, I taught with a former faculty member who was a visiting professor there and said that the ripples went throughout the school.

The point of this is that there are always ways to deal with aggressive bullying individuals and since for the most part they threaten terrible consequences, then it is a language which they understand and must needs be used against them. If just one Republican candidate all those years ago on the debate stage really went after Trump hard, this could all have been avoided. But they just stood there smiling while he insulted them, their wives, their parents, and their heritages. It would have taken just one of them to go on a vituperative rant, and he would have been smacked like a fly by a flyswatter. Too little, too late now.

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