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Have you ever respected a Bully? We've all been the little guy at least once. We've all at least seen a bully picking on someone else, but does the bully ever get any real respect? Are we confusing hateful fear with respect? In my experience, no one likes the bully. No respects them. In fact, in my experience bullies eventually get what they have coming. The reality is that everyone hates the bully and can't wait until he/she is brought down to their size. The GOP is obsessed with being the bully and demanding respect while waving their big (proverbial) stick. This Smack Down, red neck bar fight foreign policy has proven to be a disaster through out the Bush years. Every country in the world sees us as the bully because we defied the UN and preemptively attacked Iraq using a fabricated WMD excuse. Everyone knew our "evidence" was BS and it turns out THEY WERE ALL RIGHT!!! The GOP had us renaming our fries and kisses, while they knew it was all BS. NO ONE RESPECTS A BULLY!

My uncle Yannis was a puny little guy growing up in a family of large Spartans. He would have been thrown from the cliff as a baby in the old days. He used to get picked on by a 22 year old high school bully and his two side kicks. They used to love stealing his lunch and eating it in front of him. One day he had enough and little did the bullies know about the extent of his ruthlessness and sense of humor. He went home and decided to make a "special lunch" for the next day. He picked up a little horse manure, as most people actually lived on farms just a generation or so ago, and he took it into his dad's shop. There he squeezed it in the vice into thin little patties that looked just like roast beef except bugs were still crawling through it. He dressed up his "roast beef" with all the fixin's and then moved on to the side dishes. He utilized his hay fever problem by hacking on each potato chip and drying them on the radiator. He would then flip them and repeat. That takes care of 2 out of 3, so he takes an orange and carefully slices through the skin with a razor, squeezes out the juice, and calls his buddies to tell them to meet him in the boys room in the morning. After soaking the orange in the urinal, he packs it all up in a brown paper bag labeled HS for Horse $hit.

Sure enough it didn't take long for the bullies to find little Yannis' lunch, but for the first time all year, the shop teacher came back and caught the bullies with Yannis' lunch. When the teacher went to return it, he realized that it was labeled HS and not YT. He determined that it must be Harlem Sprague's lunch, who was a "mentally challenged" kid. Yannis felt awful because Harlem would have probably eaten the lunch without knowing plus he ate lunch during 3rd period and my uncle ate at 2nd period, so he wouldn't get to see it. Yannis tells his teacher what he did and low and behold his teacher gives back the lunch and leaves. It didn't take long for the bullies to find the lunch again and sure enough the big guy got the sandwich and comes out of the paint room and tells my uncle, "Hey, I got your sandwich" and proceeds to shove half the sandwich in his mouth. He was so dumb that it took about three or four chews before he realized what he was eating and he immediately started hurling. One of the side kicks comes out of the paint room with an empty bag of chips and starts hurling too, as he just knew something had to be wrong. The orange was a bit over the top and obvious, so the littlest bully got lucky. Yannis ran all the way hope barely able to catch his breath from laughing so hard. He went to school the next day prepared to get the beating of a lifetime, but instead the bully said, "You alright. I ain't never had no one make me eat $hit before and I don't want to know what else you got." Yannis earned respect through outwitting his opponent, not waving a big stick. His bravery of facing the guys the next day also earned respect. The respect he earned from all the kids that got picked on was even greater. Not because he was bigger and more intimidating, because he used his ruthlessness at an appropriate time for an appropriate reason. He never got picked on at that school again.

This story has been told so many times that many of us have wondered how true it was. At my uncle's high school reunion a voice from behind said, "I don't want none of your sandwich, man." My aunt just died as she actually got to meet the guy who ate the chips.

Whether we like it or not, the rest of the world sees us as this bully and some see 9-11 as the Horse $hit sandwich. Al Qaeda has earned respect from some folks for what they've done and we can't earn respect back from these people by acting more like a bully than before. We are in two countries full of people respecting Al Qaeda more than us where we know we can't win a conventional war, so we must win the respect war. We can't do this acting like red necks, we need to use our wit! Simpletons who can't understand how to deal with other people without losing their tempers and their social skills will never get it. Bullies never win in the end!