I’ve been sitting on this idea for a week now, waiting for a night when I don’t feel like talking about myself. I wrote the notes for it in a sudden influx of insight, which is the sort of thing I should do more often. Let inspiration move me, that is.

I am pondering turning this into an article for Cracked if I can find the time. It seems like their kind of thing. They do stuff this serious, and I can make anything funny.

Anyhow, here are my five rules of all forms of abuse.

1. Abuse is about one thing and one thing only : anger. All abusers abuse as a way of venting their anger on someone and thus achieving a measure of relief from it. And that relief is a powerful drug. It is the primary reward of the entire cycle of abuse. The abuser craves this release like an addict, and that’s why you can’t believe them when they say they will change. Because…

2. Abusers need to abuse. It’s a vital part of their coping mechanisms. For them, abusing others is as much of a need as hunger or companionship. The anger builds up in them until they absolutely must lash out at someone. However, they are clever predators, and know that by default, people will not put up with that shit. So they have to maintain the fiction that it is possible to avoid their wrath. This fiction is vital not just to protect others (and themselves) from the knowledge that they are sick people who do terrible things because it makes them feel good, but it allows them to…

3. Believe themselves to be the aggrieved party. This is true of all forms of abuser. The only way they can rationalize their need to victimize people is to see themselves as the victim and imagine that they are acting in self-defense against a world out to hurt them. No matter how obvious it is that they are the aggressor, they will always place the blame on their victims for provoking their ire. It is the only way they can live with the knowledge of what they do and why. To them, the fact that this pattern keeps repeating is all the proof they need that they are constantly the victim of other people’s incompetence, malice, stupidity, evil natures, or any other crime that places the blame squarely on the victim. That is why it is important to remember that…

4. It’s never about what it’s about. No matter how much they insist it is and no matter how patently absurd the claim is, they will insist that they are so angry because of whatever minor thing their rage seized upon as an excuse to vent. Whether it’s a parent freaking out over socks on their kids’ bedroom floor, an abusive husband flipping out because there isn’t enough sauce on his steak, or a rude customer making a huge deal over the fries not being crispy enough when they are the same as they have always been, the actual issue at hand is completely irrelevant. It is merely the opportunity, and the more degenerate the abuser, the less excuse they need to explode and the less credible they become, which of course only makes them angrier. As does the knowledge that..

5. All abusers are cowards. Without a single exception. That’s why they have to pick victims who are, in fact, the least threatening people around. If abusers were merely aggressive by nature, they would pick on targets that can fight back. But no, they are stone cold cowards, and therefore have to find targets who they feel absolutely safe abusing without any fear of retaliation whatsoever. That’s why bosses pick on underlings, adults pick on children, and bullies pick on nerds. This invariably leads to the extraordinary injustice of violence (be it physical or verbal) being visited upon the people who least deserve it.

If you want to know what’s really wrong with the world, that’s it. It’s why the rich pick on the poor, why the self-righteous rail against “sinners”, why racists blame other races for all their ills, why religious intolerance externalizes blame of the pain they inflict upon themselves on other sects, why customer service has become a dirty word because of the abusive customers, why people send messages and leave comments calling other people horrible names and exhorting said people to kill themselves, you name it.

It’s all just cowards victimizing the people with the least capacity to fight back. And all because these wimps are too cowardly to turn their anger towards its real source. What is really making them mad might be their boss, their spouse, their life, their regrets, you name it. But actually confronting these things is too scary for them. So they abuse.

And it’s truly disgusting to imagine that they can somehow justify this to themselves. What an appalling weakness of character! What a nauseating lack of honor!

There’s a very simple test to see if you might be an abuser : are you angry a lot? Like, more than twice a day for more than four days a week? Because that is not normal. And I am not talking about getting mad about something on the news or getting angry for a little while when you spill your coffee. I am talking about the kind of mad that leads to getting mad at the people in your life, whether that’s some kid working at Starbucks or your spouse or anyone in between.

Normal people, people who do not need to get that mad, either fix the problem or get used to it. Anger is meant to be a call to action, after all. The fight response. And an alarm system that goes off all the time is a clear indication that something is wrong somewhere in the system.

And just remember, abuse is not always obvious. For ever ball of screaming rage, there’s a passive aggressive person who abuses through undermining comments delivered as though there are kindly meant nuggets of harmless advice, and another person who abuses and control by being difficult to deal with, and yet another that abuses people by constantly playing the recriminating victim.

No matter how subtle or indirect a form it takes, though, it is always fundamentally the same thing :

Cowards taking their anger out on people who feel “safe” to them.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.