Austerity, bullies and broken spirits

Maria, a 32 year-old unemployed Greek woman (L) and an unidentified man, also unemployed man, sit on benches in Athens Syntagma (Constitution) Square. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis

Cruelty comes in many forms, whether it's exacted at the hand of a high school bully or in a nation's capitol.

This weekend, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is still on defense over the cruelty he exhibited as a student:

Romney and several schoolmates held down classmate John Lauber and cut off his bleached blond hair after seeking him out in his dorm room at their boarding school in the wealthy Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills, Mich. The Post said Lauber was "perpetually teased for his non-conformity and presumed homosexuality" and that he screamed for help as Romney held him down. The paper recounted another incident in which Romney shouted "atta girl" to a different student at the all-boys' school who, years later, came out as gay.

To Mitt Romney, a forcible haircut is just a "prank." For anyone that has ever been the victim of or witnessed an act of bullying, that haircut is symbolic of so much more.

Across the Atlantic in Europe, a different type of haircut has been debated. The Greek debt crisis is a catastrophic confluence of events. Internal mismanagement and external economic forces have resulted in a recession the depths of which a modern country has never seen. Private creditors (mainly banks) have grudgingly agreed to take a haircut of up to 78% of their debt, but only after they secured a recapitalization plan and only after an agreement was made to use bailout funds almost exclusively to shore up European banks instead of for assistance for the Greek people (read more about that tragedy here and here).

While the Greek government was used essentially as a pass-through to shore up the European banking system against a sovereign Greek default, Greek citizens watched as their social safety net was set on fire:

Greece, one of three eurozone nations to need an international bailout, has cut spending on just about everything it can ' public sector salaries, pensions, education, health care and defense. As a result, unemployment has soared to over 21 percent, fueling social unrest that has sometimes turned deadly. In the last two years, riots have erupted frequently and the country's near-daily strikes and demonstrations have shut down schools, airports, train stations, ferries and harmed medical services.

If you ever wondered what Social Darwinism looks like, that's it.

Social Darwinism is executed on the back of severe austerity measures like those seen across Europe and those sought by Romney and his party. It is the ultimate bullying tactic. It is using the brute strength of elected power (usually paid for by wealthy campaign contributors) to grab weakened middle class and impoverished families by the shoulders and slam them against the wall just to see what change might shake out of their pockets.

What Mitt Romney and the modern Republican Party seek, however, goes disturbingly beyond beating up on the middle class. They're not just content with squeezing families, cutting their Medicare or Social Security and listening to the clink-clink-clink as change, dreams and futures fall to the floor. No, Romney and the GOP are so cruel and so callous, their entire economic policy is premised upon the act of picking up that change and putting it in their own bloated pockets.

President Obama's campaign could hope for no better metaphor-in-real-life example of the 2012 "moving forward" vs. "going back" dynamic than Romney's bullying. As Markos has pointed out, the key takeaway from this is that Mitt Romney hasn't changed. He is still the same bully, except this time the target isn't a gay kid with shaggy blonde hair, it's the 99% of Americans who can't afford car elevators and multi-million dollar "tear down" beach houses. This time, it's not a pair of scissors or his fists he'll use to break them down. It's severe austerity.

From his policies, it's clear Mitt Romney can't get beyond his schoolyard mentality of bullying for fun. The only difference is that now it's for profit, though that probably only makes it more fun for Romney and the wealthy corporate interests he represents.

The wave of pain and suffering sweeping across Europe should serve as a cautionary tale for politicians in the United States like Romney who are focused solely on austerity over pro-growth policies. Last week, a battered Greek electorate went to the polls and up-ended the political system by demolishing the country's two main political and pro-austerity parties. Anti-austerity Francois Hollande was elected to power in France.

Citizens don't want to be victimized by bullies with slick suits, fat checkbooks and millions in TV ads.

A wave of anti-austerity backlash is mounting. Iit will reach America's shores soon enough. Mitt Romney's problem is that it well might get here before the 2012 election.

[Contributing Editor Georgia Logothetis also serves as Managing Director of the Hellenic American Leadership Council]