By Anthony Cody.

A teacher sees the best and the worst in behavior any given year. And one of the most important jobs we have as teachers is to create a community of learners in our classrooms – teaching students to help one another academically, and also as friends. These two things go together. People learn best when they can take risks, and get supportive feedback on their work.

But some of our students come having learned a different pattern of behavior – that of the bully. The bully lives in fear that he will be seen as weak, and projects that fear onto others. So long as the bully is the strong one, he cannot be made to suffer the humiliations that the weak must endure. So the quest is constant for those to mock, those who can, by their inferiority, prove the bully to be superior. And when this mockery finds a receptive audience, the whole school environment can become toxic.

The US government sponsors this web site that fights bullying. It says that on our school campuses, any form of bullying is unacceptable, and should be dealt with directly by school staff. One presidential candidate would run afoul of this policy.

Donald Trump has emerged as the personification of the American bully.

Trump defines almost every situation as a contest between winners and losers, and nobody is in between. If he is allowed to “make America great again,” he promises “we will win so much we will get sick of winning.” Anyone who opposes him in any way is subject to mockery on whatever basis he can find. There seems to be nothing too crude for him to stoop to using.

When Megyn Kelly asked him tough questions about his treatment of women, he tweeted that she was a “bimbo,” and said “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes. Blood coming out of her wherever.

In fact, he has developed a particular hatred of the press. This week he physically mimicked the disability of a reporter who failed to support his assertion that “thousands” of Arab immigrants were celebrating in the streets after the 9/11 attacks. In October, he referred to reporters as “scum.” At his events, he now keeps reporters in a holding “pen.” Those that stray are threatened with the revocation of their press passes. They must even have permission to use the bathroom. We can only imagine how a President Trump will treat the press.

In August, Trump called Bernie Sanders “weak” because he allowed Black Lives Matter protesters to take the stage during a Seattle rally. Trump recently showed how he preferred such protesters be dealt with. After his supporters kicked and punched a Black Lives Matter protester, Trump said, “maybe he should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”

These relatively small instances of bullying are rather dwarfed by the policies a President Trump would initiate, including the immediate deportation of 11 million Mexican immigrants. He has justified this by saying that many of them are “rapists.” He gives magical power to an enormous wall he will have built, and then force the Mexican people to pay for. He refused to rule out the idea of creating a database where all Muslims would be required to be registered. When a reporter pushed him, he said, “We’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Of the government torturing suspected terrorists, he is all for it. Of waterboarding, he said, “Believe me, it works. And you know what? If it doesn’t work, they deserve it anyway, for what they’re doing.” He even used the threat of terrorists to attempt to frighten the Pope. When CNN reporter Chris Cuomo asked him how he would respond to Pope Francis’ comments critical of the excesses of capitalism, Trump shot back: “I’d say ISIS wants to get you. You know that ISIS wants to go in and take over the Vatican? You have heard that. You know, that’s a dream of theirs, to go into Italy.”

When Trump gets a crowd riled up with this sort of rhetoric, it is a frightening thing. Some students who are watching the Trump campaign may be inspired to emulate this bullying behavior, though this story about student reactions to a Trump rally in Ohio is a bit reassuring. Students who attended the rally were horrified to hear Trump endorse waterboarding. They joined a couple who raised their voices in protest. And they joined them in being unceremoniously shoved out of the event.

Bullying as official government policy is fascism. It is a sorry state of affairs when the leading candidate for the Republican nomination is this sort of character. While I will not vote in the Republican primary, I hope his candidacy is rejected, because even as a candidate, his behavior inspires others to think this is an acceptable way to treat others.