When Strength Turns Into Hardness

Why Watching Pam Bondi on February 11, 2025 Changed Something for Me

I have lived in the United States for 43 years.

When I moved here from Finland, I carried with me a belief about this country that felt sure: we could disagree fiercely and still treat each other with basic decency.

That belief shaped how I voted.
How I campaigned.
How I showed up in civic life.

I did not agree with Pam Bondi politically.

But sadly I admired her.

She was prepared. Sharp. Commanding. A woman who had carved out power in rooms that were — and still are — not always welcoming to women. I remember feeling a quiet kind of pride: Look at her, you go girl show girl power in action.

And I am embarrassed now by how easily I equated toughness with integrity.

Because what I watched on February 11 made my stomach turn.

During testimony involving women who were abused as children by Jeffrey Epstein, Pam Bondi remained seated with her back turned toward the victims in the room. She was urged to turn around and address them.

She did not.

That wasn’t a stumble.
That wasn’t a slip.
That was a choice.

And when you hold national power, your choices in moments like that matter more than your words.

Turning your back in a room like that is not strength.

It is a statement.

And the message felt cold.

If you have seen the clip, you know what I mean.
If you haven’t, I encourage you to watch it — and judge for yourself.

The optics were unmistakable.

And what she chose to show in that moment was not leadership.

It was hardness.

Not courage.
Not conviction.

Hardness.

And that matters.

This Didn’t Happen Overnight

This cultural shift did not begin with one hearing.

For nearly a decade, the tone of American politics has been deteriorating.

An 18-year-old voter in 2024 was 10 years old when Donald Trump first took office.

Ten years old.

Those are formative years. That is when you absorb what leadership looks like, what authority sounds like, how power behaves.

They saw rallies built on ridicule. They saw mockery rewarded. They saw humiliation framed as dominance. Politics became entertainment. Social media and algorithms amplified the loudest, sharpest, angriest voices. A pandemic disrupted social development at exactly the wrong time.

We should not be surprised that many now equate hardness with strength.

That does not make them bad.

It means they were influenced by what was modeled.

And when someone like Bondi — once steady, once disciplined — adopts that same emotional detachment, it confirms how deep the shift has gone.

I Saw It Here in Manatee Too

During my 2024 campaign, I saw a version of this erosion locally.

At one public panel, a Republican candidate refused to sit next to me because I am a Democrat. He questioned the organizer — with me standing right there — about why he had been placed beside me.

Sit next to me.

If someone cannot share a table with someone who disagrees with them, how are they planning to govern a county filled with people who disagree with them?

Another candidate refused to take a photo with me. I was taking photos with every candidate so that, whoever won, I could publicly congratulate them with grace.

They declined.

They both won.

I congratulated them anyway — without a photo.

Because that’s what adults in a democracy do.

Those weren’t dramatic moments.

But they were revealing.

Political disagreement had crossed a line — from difference to discomfort, from debate to avoidance, from disagreement to something closer to disgust.

And that is not healthy.

This Is Where My Faith Complicates It

This part sits heavy with me.

I was raised Evangelical Lutheran.

Not loudly. Not theatrically. But deeply. Church was about humility, service, mercy, kindness, and remembering that you are no better than the next person.

The Bible I grew up learning did not glorify dominance.
It did not reward humiliation.
It did not teach us to turn our backs on people who were hurting.

It taught compassion.

It taught mercy.

It taught restraint.

So when I see public figures loudly proclaim their faith — and then model behavior that contradicts its most basic principles — I don’t just disagree politically.

I feel a deeper unease.

Because either those values matter, or they don’t.

You cannot claim Scripture and then treat empathy as weakness.

That contradiction corrodes trust faster than disagreement ever could.

This Is Why Elections Matter

This is not just about policy.

It is about tone.

About what kind of behavior we elevate.

About what we teach the next generation leadership looks like.

If we continue rewarding hardness without humanity, we will keep cultivating hardness without humanity.

If we keep calling bullying “strength,” we will normalize cruelty.

That is not partisan.

That is cultural.

A Conversation We Need to Have

If you are a parent — or a grandparent — maybe this is the moment to ask a different kind of question:

What did leadership look like when we were young adults?
What did strength sound like?
Was it loud?
Was it humiliating?
Or was it measured? Thoughtful? Grounded in empathy?

We cannot rewind the last decade.

But we can decide what we normalize next.

If we want something better — something steadier, kinder, more humane — then we have to start modeling it.

Not just in words, but in actions.

Not just on big stages, but in small ones too.

I didn’t leave Finland 43 years ago to watch America redefine cruelty as strength.

And I’m not applauding it now.

Sources

• February 11 hearing clip referenced in this piece:

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