Triumph of the Bully
They don't have to beat you into submission. They just have to exhaust you.
When he won the fight, he said that I must apologize for not being on his side.
I was tired, so I gave in.Then he demanded that I never criticize him again.
I was tired, so I gave in.Then he said that not criticizing him wasn't enough and that I must praise him.
I was tired, so I gave in.Then he said not only must I praise him, but I must also worship him in all my thoughts and deeds.
I was tired, so I gave in.Then he said my acquiescence wasn't worshipful enough; he could tell I harbored ill thoughts, that it was an offense to him that I continued to exist, and I was a disease who had to be eliminated.
I was tired, so I gave in.
We tend to think bullies win through brute force. But more often, they win through attrition. They don’t need to break your bones if they can wear down your will. They don’t need to convince you — just exhaust you.
That’s the strategy behind every authoritarian regime that survives beyond its bloody beginning. Not just fear, but fatigue. Make resistance costly. Make it tedious. Make truth slippery, arguments circular, apologies mandatory, and praise compulsory. Keep people dancing just fast enough that they forget they’re not allowed to stop. Eventually, they stop resisting not because they believe — but because they’re tired.
Cults operate on the same mechanics. Love-bomb you, isolate you, bury you in rituals and corrections, until the line between devotion and depletion disappears. Constantly robbing you of sleep—there’s a strategy behind that.
Domestic abuse works this way, too. In relationships, it's often not the screaming that breaks a person — it's the drip-drip-drip of walking on eggshells, the constant recalibration of what’s "normal," until the victim no longer trusts their own instincts. Beyond the violence, it's a whole other form of torture. Mental torture. Designed to exhaust you.
Authoritarianism, cult dynamics, and personal abuse share more DNA than we like to admit. They all rely on psychological warfare — not to destroy opposition, but to drain it. If you can keep someone on the back foot long enough, you don't need to push them. They’ll fall on their own.
The test is to learn from bullies — to resist, to recharge, and to outlast them. It may take time, but bullies eventually exhaust themselves, too.