A guide to victimhood

Dr. Sanity:

Victimhood has, as is usual these days, been in the news recently. From the pathetic heroic attempts of John ("it was only a joke") Kerry to paint himself a "victim" of the "Republican attack machine" for his ignorant brilliant remarks about US military personnel; to the flying imams ongoing claims of oppression and victimhood as they extort money and publicity suitable compensation from their terrible ordeal even as they deliberately undermine airport security expose the evils of racial profiling and Islamophobia--the victimhood scams opportunities are neverending.

If you have any doubts about the power and sanctity that can be yours if victimhood status cand be officially confered upon you; or of the endless moral benefits of being "oppressed"; just consider that even a mean SOB like Saddam Hussein can be deemed a victim of American oppression--just ask Ramsey Clark how that is done! Or that, for the sake of the Palestinians--the most publicized and creative perpetual victims in all of history-- a group of "experts" are busy right at this very moment trying to prove that the entire world has been bamboozled by a clever Jewish conspiracy regarding the Holocaust! Those darn Jews!

The Holocaust Deniers are particularly noteworthy in the annals of victimhood, and demonstrate a degree of unsurpassable cleverness because they have managed to take the actual victims of a horrific episode in world history and twist that history to turn those real victims into oppressors! Surely one of the most magnificent applications of the new victimhood rules.

In the quasi-religious cult of victimhood that is part of today's leftist dogma, "victimhood" has been identified as the key quality deserving of attention and pity. This is in part because many on the political left have an intense narcissistic need to see themselves as "champions of the oppressed", hence the constant need to find and maintain an oppressed class of people to champion. But it also dovetails nicely into the the Marxist dialectic that underlies that ideology. The world is divided up into two groups, you see: the oppressors (i.e., white, male,heterosexual, Republican, Americans or Israelis) and the oppressed (everyone else).

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There is much more.

Hey, it has made millionaires out of trial lawyers. Hezballah and Hamas have found ways to do "victim offensives" in an attempt to get Israel to stop responding to their egregious conduct. In fact the Palestinians have little to offer in negotiating strategy other than their victim status of which they boast.

It is worth reading the whole thing. Go for it.