It is unreasonable to expect victims of bullies to fight back.
Bullies, who are actually cowards, intentionally select victims who they know will not fight back. They're very good, really, at making those selections. That's why it's up to the rest of us, who won't be selected as a victim, to stand up and act as defenders.
Donald Trump, for example, chose the Prime Minister of Montenegro to shove aside to put himself in the spotlight. Most people, including myself, had no idea who the person he shoved was. It turns out that he was the least of those in that group, a rank newcomer to NATO, who was basically defenseless against Trump's rudeness and bully-boy behavior.
Montenegro? Until I did a Wikipedia search, I really didn't know a damned thing about Montenegro, except where in Europe it is located. That Prime Minister, a national leader, is virtually unknown to most people, and Trump took advantage of that in choosing the victim of his boorish surge to the front of the group for a photo op. He was the victim of the bully, Trump. We don't know him, so we more or less ignored him in response to the lousy trick Trump pulled.
In the schoolyard, the workplace, and everywhere else, when bullies select a victim for their self-centered power trip, we shouldn't ask ourselves whether we know or care about the victim. That is not the point. We should, instead, step in and prevent the bullying behavior, as a group who witnessed it. It is not the victim, but the bully who needs attention at that moment. In stopping the behavior, we support the victim in a material way. We must speak up and speak out against bullies and their behavior, individually and as a group. That is the only way it really ends.
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