As a pediatrician, I not infrequently try to help children who have been bullied. I’ve learned that the bully on the schoolyard — just like bullies at work, or in government — depend on the work of flying monkeys to maintain their power.

It’s weirdly appropriate during this Halloween season that the image of these fearsome but feckless creations of the imagination of Frank Baum seem to be filling the desolate skies of our tottering democracy as Election Day approaches. The latest, of course, is the Lord of Retail himself, Jeff Bezos, as well as the spineless publisher of The Los Angeles Times, Patrick Soon-Shiong. Both of them, despite their billions, are cowed like small schoolchildren by the vengeful bully who boasts daily of the violent revenge he will take on his enemies if he again wins the presidency — so they killed The Washington Post’s and LA Times’ endorsements of Kamala Harris at the last minute.

I’ve always found these flying monkeys, or enablers, as loathsome as the bullies themselves — maybe even more so. Bullies often come from a place of self-loathing, and abusive backgrounds. Their inner emptiness leads them to portray a facade of macho, even as they try to emulate even bigger bullies, whether it be the real leaders of the gangs, Viktor Orban, or Vladimir Putin.

The enablers, or hatchet men like the Christian nationalists, or Elon Musk, and now Bezos, portray themselves as virtuous, innocent bystanders. But they cynically back the bully for their own ulterior motives — whether it be greed, vengeance, arrogance, fear, or any one of a basket of ulterior motives, while pretending to care for the victims.

And the bully depends on these hatchet men, as well as his millions of victims who are his targets, whether it be helpless Haitian immigrants fleeing misery that is at least in part the result of U.S policy, LGBTQI folks, reporters, Asians, Muslims, Mexicans, African Americans, disabled people, wounded veterans, liberals, women, Jews, or all immigrants — even though the bully running again for president has depended on them to clean and care for his homes, build his empire, and in the case of two of his wives, bear him children.

Those of us who care for children, whether in schools or in health care, suggest strict rules against bullying, and policies fostering kindness and empathy.

It’s of course a bitter irony that as Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and their army of Christian nationalist followers plan to turn American democracy into a Christian theocracy, they ignore the primary tenets of Christianity. As Jesus says: Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind (Peter 3:8).

The billionaire monkeys are the true atheists when it comes to the principles of any of our country’s major religions.

When Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, retired four-star Gen. John Kelly, and other former White House staffers called the former president a fascist and admirer of Hitler (as well as a con man, predator and bully), they did not talk about those who made Adolf Hitler’s rise to power possible. They were Hitler’s own flying monkeys, those prominent companies like Ford Motor Co., Volkswagen, Deutsche Bank, IG Farben, Krupp, and Siemens.

The accomplices to our own would-be führer are Elon Musk — the owner of Tesla, Twitter, Space X, and PayPal — as well as the heirs to the Mellon Fortune, the owners of World Wrestling Entertainment and the New York Stock Exchange, and numerous billionaire oil and gas exploration company CEOs, hotel, real estate and casino magnates, high-stakes gamblers, horse racers, crypto currency moguls, and now, the owner of Amazon.

Child health professionals teach that to stop a bully takes a determined, courageous and principled stand by those students who form the great silent majority. For this country, stopping a bully takes Americans who care for each other and the earth which sustains us — those of us for whom the Founding Fathers and millions of soldiers, civil rights activists, and honest citizens have risked their lives.

It takes a critical mass of principled bystander citizens to stand up to these flying monkeys and the bully who pulls their puppet strings.

And by the way, as Dana Milbank pointed out in the The Washington Post on Oct. 28, it won’t hurt Bezos a bit if everyone starts canceling their subscriptions; but if millions of us find alternatives to Amazon, Whole Foods, and Amazon Prime, maybe he’d notice.

Dr. David Gottsegen of Belchertown is a physician at Holyoke Pediatric Associates.