BULLIES usually start small, from schoolyard taunts to college hazing, but they could grow in strides at the workplace and, finally, into autocratic officialdom.
Bullies are particularly wicked in the global theatre, morphing into cartoonish dictators, tyrannising citizens and commanding invading armies against weaker nations.
Even so-called benevolent nations become bullies when they slap unfair trade sanctions against smaller trading nations to stymie feared competition or shield satellite states from what they perceive as international justice.
Bullying is still an active human construct, domineering within marauding mobs, clashing cultures, contrasting persuasions, divergent political ideologies and discordant religious sectarianism.
The end result is always the same in the degree of savagery: the intimidation, oppression, imprisonment, assault, bombing and killing of peoples, groups or nations who are different, anaemic or plain defiant.
Bullying victims tend to be the wretches of the Earth: indigenous people, ethnic and religious minorities and small, developing nations.
The bully's psychology, whatever foibles they have, doesn't justify their dastardliness.
Why bully? Exploiting power and dominance over victims, bullies perceive threats (Israel's genocide against Palestinians or the Russian invasion of Ukraine), desire power (by every known dictator) or are hooked on sadism (by the same dictators).
In the digital era, bullying has metastasised so terribly that victims, out of sheer anguish, have been compelled to end their lives.
We have our own tragic story: hounded online for her unpopular views, A. Rajeswary, a 30-year-old activist and social media influencer, resorted to suicide, triggering a police clampdown on the alleged cyberbullies. The tech behemoths' contingencies to stop cyberbullying have been inadequate, given the persistence of the mental opressors.
While bullying victims can walk away and ignore hurtful epithets, that's impossible when the bullies stalk their victims.
Victims learn instructive techniques to deflect their tormentors but that, too, proves impossible when the bullies possess big, devastating weapons and bombs.
The only defence left is for victims, online and offline, to gang up, beef up their mental tenacity, hold their nerves and push back.
Most bullies, being actual cowards, will capitulate but many, bolstered by a shadowy government machinery or organised crime, will step up the terrorising and violence.
Civilised people draw a red line between harsh words and demonic deeds. But in the end, victims' personal fortitude, with backing from friends and family, helps plenty.
We would love if ever a fantasy hero like Batman or John Rambo comes to a bullying victim's aid but the Palestinians, historically the world's most bullied victims, are still waiting, perhaps in vain.
But we do have a real-life model in the late Nelson Mandela, arguably the ultimate bullied individual who resisted, survived and overcame apartheid's evil atrocity to triumph as a revered global leader.
Mandela's gallant methods taught us a treasured lesson: bullies, as contemptible human thrash, will inevitably be swept aside.