No One Wins In A Debate With An Abusive Bully
A few years ago, I was interviewing a domestic violence survivor when she made an unexpected comment. Quietly and with something akin to shame in her voice, she told me that she found her partner’s emotional and verbal abuse more harmful than when he slapped or punched her.
The physical violence, at least, had a beginning and an end. Bruises and cuts healed. But the psychological abuse — the taunting, the lying, her partner’s penchant for aggressively denying events that clearly happened, his constant humiliating attacks on her character — it left her on edge, unable to get her footing.
I’ve heard this many times since. Emotional and verbal abuse can corrode a person, undermining their very sense of self. It is nearly impossible to try to reason with someone employing these tactics, as the goal is to make the person on the receiving end feel crazed and confused.
Advocates will generally tell victims of such abuse to disengage and detach. Walk away. No one wins in an argument with an abusive bully. An abuser will goad you into their game and force you on the defense, where you will end up quibbling over absurd claims that have no basis in reality.
So what to do with the president of the United States of America who uses similar tactics against his opponent on the national stage? In the first presidential debate on Tuesday, Donald Trump exhibited all the classic signs of verbal abuse. He bullied, interrupted, smeared and tried to intimidate Joe Biden, while lying about his own record and framing himself as the misunderstood hero, the true victim.
Of course, this behavior is not shocking. Trump did the same thing in his primary debates in 2015 (remember the litany of derogatory names he shelled out to his opponents?), and then in the presidential debates with Hillary Clinton.
The day after the very first presidential debate of 2016, I wrote about how Trump’s behavior was deeply familiar to domestic violence victims. The exact same article...
