“History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”
-Ronald Reagan

Comment:

Weakness invites attack. Statistics show that mugging victims are more likely to be shorter, frailer and more defenseless than the average person – which is why mugging victims are typically older people, women, slightly-built men, children, the physically handicapped, foreigners, or outsiders of some sort. And why victims of harassment in the work place are usually employees with fewer options to negotiate or leave (such as older men and women, divorced women or single mothers, or junior employees/contract workers (men and women).

Fundamentally this is a type of mob behavior. The establishment beats up on the outsider; the corporation hunts down the lone whistle blower; the church burns the the isolated dissenter – (though a group of dissenters might quickly become another church); carnivores prey on the deer that is wounded or separated from the pack.