"Presto, you're an instant victim!"

From Oregon Muse: Teen-aged attention whore and religious scold St. Greta Thunberg claims she "likely" has the coronavirus WuFlu. She wasn't tested for it, nor was she hospitalized or even examined by a doctor. She just diagnosed herself, self-quarantined, and then took the opportunity to piously lecture the rest of us sinners about the need to stay at home.

And speaking of attention whores, TDS deranged "comedienne" Kathy Griffin is complaining that she's in a coronavirus "isolation ward" with 'unbearably painful symptoms' but they're refusing to test her for the coronavirus. Because Trump. She's obviously lying her ass off and her claims have been thoroughly demolished already.

So perhaps a coronavirus infection is becoming a new thing that allows the unscrupulous to claim victim status. It's a particularly easy one to claim, because you don't to do anything or look a certain way, you just claim that you have it and hey presto, you're an instant victim. The only question is where it should be placed in the Grievance Hierarchy. I'm thinking above "womyn" but below "gay." But views may differ on this.

Note: Greta is apparently all better now. What a relief. We can now look forward to many more years of her sanctimonious sermons.

"Clinging to the victimhood narrative with a political death grip!"

"When any of us cling to victimhood, we give away our power. Our power to solve our problems and to better oursleves...the old fashioned way, through hard work. The modern Democratic Party has abandoned the optimism and idealism of JFK and Moynihan. Now they pedal non-stop anger and resentment. In one decade they have gone from hope and change to hate and rage."

Would a good parent try to convince her child that he is a victim?

Hitting a grand slam in the victimhood World Series

In Town Hall, Kurt Schlichter writes,

...it’s the liberal elite that actually imagines that we buy into the same bizarre constellation of racial weirdness that dominates their clique. They rank and rate everyone by their perceived position in the grand hierarchy of grievances. Warren gets 5 victim points for being a girl, and 20 points for being an Indian. If she only dug chicks, wore a burka, and had a limp, she would hit a grand slam in the victimhood World Series.

It’s all just so weird, basing your self-image on who your grandmother was. And in the Commie Squaw’s case, it’s her great-great-great-great-great-great grandma. It's even creepier basing your views of others on the same meaningless criteria.

But how are we supposed to react? Are we supposed to take them seriously? Nah. We look at people for who they are. Some guy used to call our criteria for evaluating others “the content of their character,” but our alleged betters now dismiss that crazy talk as the ravings of some Christian kook mansplaining away his privilege. We live in the real world, where this nuttiness doesn’t fly, as opposed to an elite that lives in the institutional nuthouses of academia, the media, and the Democrat Party where this nonsense is their secular religion. With them, it’s a constant struggle of the unoppressed oppressed bickering over the spoils of victimhood.

Read more here.

There is always a choice!

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks traveled to Toronto to spend some time with Jordan Peterson.

Making a series of programmes for the BBC on morality in the twenty-first century, I felt I had to travel to Toronto to have a conversation with a man I had not met before, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Recently he has recently become an iconic intellectual for millions of young people, as well as a figure of caricature and abuse by others who should know better.[1] The vast popularity of his podcasts – hours long and formidably intellectual – suggests that he has been saying something that many people feel a need to hear and are not adequately hearing from other contemporary voices.

During our conversation, there was a moment of searing intensity. Peterson was talking about his daughter Mikhaila. At the age of six, she was found to be suffering from severe polyarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Thirty-seven of her joints were affected. During her childhood and teen years, she had to have a hip replacement, then an ankle replacement. She was in acute, incessant pain. Describing her ordeal, Peterson’s voice was wavering on the verge of tears. Then he said:

Peterson: "One of the things we were very careful about and talked with her a lot about was to not allow herself to regard herself as a victim. And man, she had reason to regard herself as a victim … [but] as soon as you see yourself as a victim … that breeds thoughts of anger and revenge – and that takes you to a place that's psychologically as terrible as the physiological place. And to her great credit I would say this is part of what allowed her to emerge from this because she did eventually figure out what was wrong with her, and by all appearances fix it by about 90%. It’s unstable but it’s way better because of the fact that she didn't allow herself to become existentially enraged by her condition … People have every reason to construe themselves as victims. Their lives are characterised by suffering and betrayal. Those are ineradicable experiences. [The question is] what's the right attitude to take to that – anger or rejection, resentment, hostility, murderousness? That’s the story of Cain and Abel, [and] that's not good. That leads to Hell."

But how is this possible? How can you be a victim and yet not see yourself as a victim without being guilty of denial, or deliberate forgetfulness, or wishful thinking?

...The answer is that uniquely – this is what makes us Homo sapiens – in any given situation we can look back or we can look forward. We can ask: “Why did this happen?” That involves looking back for some cause in the past. Or we can ask, “What then shall I do?” This involves looking forward, trying to work out some future destination given that this is our starting point.

There is a massive difference between the two. I can’t change the past. But I can change the future. Looking back, I see myself as an object acted on by forces largely beyond my control. Looking forward, I see myself as a subject, a choosing moral agent, deciding which path to take from here to where I want eventually to be.

Both are legitimate ways of thinking, but one leads to resentment, bitterness, rage and a desire for revenge. The other leads to challenge, courage, strength of will and self-control. That for me is what Mikhaila Peterson and the Holocaust survivors represent: the triumph of choice over fate.

...Jeremiah kept saying, in so many words, that God will not save us from our enemies until we save ourselves from our own lesser selves.

“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse.” That was Moses’ insistent message in the last month of his life. There is always a choice. As Viktor Frankl said, even in Auschwitz there was one freedom they could not take away from us: the freedom to choose how to respond. Victimhood focuses us on a past we can’t change. Choice focuses us on a future we can change, liberating us from being held captive by our resentments, and summoning us to what Emmanuel Levinas called Difficile Liberte, “difficult freedom.”

Hence the life-changing idea: Never define yourself as a victim. You cannot change your past but you can change your future. There is always a choice, and by exercising the strength to choose, we can rise above fate.

Read more here.

Why I like Ace of Spades

Here are some paragraphs Ace wrote today.

...society has unduly valorized victimhood, making it very easy to become special through the very easy expedient of claiming someone said something mean to you. Not only does this encourage victimhood hoaxing -- people are economical and seek the shortest and easiest path to anything, including attention and social value -- but it discourages the older, much harder methods by which people claimed social value, namely, stupid things as Old As the Constitution like working hard, achieving things due to effort and risk, cultivating virtue instead of just advertising fake virtue

...Why does a white racist killer somehow create an obligation in me to examine how my own internalized "white supremacy" might be part and parcel of the attack, whereas the terrorism committed by an Islamist is definitely not cause for any self-reflection within the Muslim community about how their own hatreds and ideas of Islamic Supremacy might have something to do with the latest jihadi rampage?

Why the two standards, media?

And why are the standards becoming even more divergent -- why is it now considered journalistically unethical to even report that a jihadist attack was carried out by a jihadist, or that a rape by an illegal immigrant of a 14-year-old girl even happened at all?

Fake News isn't just the made-up news CNN cranks out daily -- it's the real news it refuses to mention.

...The story of the JCC bomb threats had Profound Political and Cultural Implication when it was assumed by the media to be the work of someone from the other party. Literally, from the Party of The Others, the Otherized, the Strangers, the Foreign Invaders.

Now that we find the caller was calling from inside the house of progressivism, there's simply no story here at all.

Read more here.

The allure of victimhood

Jesse James writes,

A rational person cannot explain how an individual can chant ‘Love Trumps Hate’ while burning things in the street or beating someone half to death for their political views. An addict is more than capable of that about face without a second thought.

What could hundreds of thousands of people of every race, color and creed be addicted to? Victimhood. We have grown up understanding that being a victim in the statist sense of the word means you are not responsible for any and all actions you do.

...It’s an admittedly alluring concept, a life of consequence-free living. It’s not real, but don’t tell poor Bernie that. What happens when you aren’t a victim, however? The obvious answer is to invent a debilitating something, wave your affliction around and now you’re in business. We used to admire people for excelling in a field or a discipline. The millennials have taken that same approach to victimhood and what we watched in Portland was the Victimhood Olympics.

...Our focus should be on what the Victims Inc. employees are trying to obtain. The nonsense made up to get there is unimportant, but rather, what is the goal? If you look closely, the goal is that of all statists, ‘revolutionaries,’ progressives and whatever other flag they fly. Coercion. Do what I say, give me your stuff. I want no accountability, you may have no voice or contrary opinion, and I am entitled up to and including your very life if I am displeased with you.

Read more here.

Stop collecting grievances!

Sarah Hoyt has some things to say about people who see themselves as victims.

If you find that you are tied up in a pool of hate, and can’t achieve anything, it’s not the society, cupcake. It’s you. Obsessing about how people discriminate against you for x or y has become your reason to live, a form of OCD that comes with the bonus of never having to admit you failed/didn’t try hard enough, and never having to make any effort to do anything.

You’re not living in a white supremacy or a patriarchy or any of the bullshit you’ve been telling yourself. (I can give you places to go to experience those, if you wish.) You’re living inside your head, and you’ve allowed it to become a really bad place.

I have a friend who is male and very short. He said for many years he obsessed on the few funny remarks people made about it, and spent time imagining other remarks that were never voice. And he was miserable, and couldn’t function.

I found the same as an immigrant. Yep, one of my jobs blatantly discriminated against me. Yep, other people probably thought things about me that made no sense. BUT I only started achieving when I stopped obsessing on what they might be thinking/saying behind my back and decided that biggoted or not, they were assholes, and the best course of action was to ignore them and do what I wanted to do.

Since then I haven’t found that discrimination impairs my life at all. My friend reports similar results.

Get out of your corner and stop collecting grievances. Embrace true diversity, which includes many, many kinds of assholes.

Free yourself, and then let’s worry about the real problem cultures. Like the ones where women, gays (and yes) other races and religions are at risk for their lives.

The rest is just stupid little games for silly little girls, even those who happen to be male.

Read more here.

In Colorado it all started in our neighborhoods

Here is the entirely false major story on Drudge this morning:

FURY AS COLORADO HAS NO PRIMARY OR CAUCUS; CRUZ CELEBRATES VOTERLESS VICTORY.

For years many of us have been lamenting the obvious leftward bias of the mainstream media. We were happy to see the rise of news media sources on the right, such as Breitbart and Drudge. Now, however we see those two sites as being even more biased in a different direction! Face it: we all have our preferences. The best sites will tell you up front what those preferences are.

All of the candidates had the opportunity to educate themselves on the rules of each state. One candidate, Ted Cruz, did that. In Colorado it all started on March 1 with precinct caucuses. In the suburban community of Parker, where I live, those caucuses were held at a high school. It is a sprawling campus, with parking lots surrounding the school on all sides. Many thousands of cars were already there when I arrived. Democrats were using the classrooms on the lower level, and Republicans used classrooms on the main floor.

25 people from my neighborhood were in my classroom. We were allotted four delegates and four alternates who we would pick to represent us at the county assembly on March 19. Seven people came up to the front, wrote their names on the blackboard, told us a little about themselves, and who was their preferred candidate. From those seven, we chose four delegates to the county assembly, plus three alternates. Before the caucus was concluded, one of the people who was elected as a delegate to the county assembly asked for a show of hands from each of us to indicate who we were supporting. He wanted this because he knew there was a possibility of some candidates dropping out before the county assembly. 13 of us raised our hands for Cruz, 8 for Rubio, and 4 for Trump.

At the county assembly the delegates selected individuals to attend Congressional district conventions, which were held on April 2, 7, and 8th. At those conventions, delegates were selected to attend the state convention. Cruz won all of the delegates at each of the Congressional conventions. The state convention was held last Saturday, April 9. Only one candidate attended that convention, Ted Cruz. His campaign clearly showed who their delegates were, and they were elected to go to Cleveland in July as Cruz delegates at least on the first ballot.

Today Donald Trump has come out whining that the process was crooked. Sour grapes do not taste good, folks. This is the man who assured us he was going to surround himself with the "best people." He has not done that here in Colorado. Cruz did. Cruz won fair and square. Trump says the people of Colorado did not have a chance to vote. That is a lie. Complicated, yes it was complicated. We need leaders who can understand complexities.

Now Trump has hired a guy named Paul Manafort, who says Cruz is winning by using Gestapo tactics, "scorched earth" tactics. That is a monstrous lie. Trump adds that the delegates are all being bribed. Another monstrous lie.
Can we end the cult of victimhood now once and for all?

Kristina Cook sent me this Facebook message, and I thank her for correcting me:

Hi, Robert! Thanks for writing that up. I love the line, "We need leaders who can understand complexities." BEAUTIFUL!!!
One correction to your blog post: "At the county assembly the delegates selected individuals to attend Congressional district conventions, which were held on April 2, 7, and 8th. At those conventions, delegates were selected to attend the state convention."
The delegates chosen at the Congressional District level go to national as representatives of their CD - not to state.

Trump's campaign contemplates playing the victim card in Colorado

One internet site is providing links to coverage of today's Colorado Republican state convnetion. Complete Colorado is providing links to stories coming out of the convention.

One of those links was to ABC News, which is reporting that

Donald Trump's campaign says they are "of course" thinking about challenging the seating of the Colorado delegation at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland after several ballot irregularities and delegate number mix-ups at state meetings this weekend.

A senior Trump aide said in a text message the campaign is "documenting everything" on the ground in Colorado and considering trying to block the Colorado delegation from participating at the national convention, where the ultimate Republican nominee will be picked.

One alternate delegate's number from the Trump campaign's preferred slate was not on the scantron ballot -- instead another delegate’s number was listed twice.

The Trump campaign also blames the Colorado Republican Party for several ballot numbers that did not match the correct names on the Trump preferred delegate slate.

ABC's Katherine Faulders provides this photo where #379 --a Trump alternate-- is not listed on CO ballot. #378 listed twice.


ABC's Ryan Struyk provides information that five people were on the ballot twice.

None of the names were on any candidate's official slates, but two were bound to Cruz, one to Trump and two unpledged.

However, Struyk and Faulder write,

...Correcting the errors would be unlikely to tip the scales in Trump's favor, as Cruz holds the lion's share of support among local party leaders in the room.

Read more here.

Victims who don't seem like actual victims

Jim Geraghty writes in National Review,

...Maybe I’m a cynic, but I keep running across “victims” who don’t seem like actual victims.

...Promoting personal responsibility is hard enough without political leaders who keep rushing to the cameras to tell Americans that nothing is ever their fault; it’s always the work of these nefarious sinister, powerful forces.

Is there any sign that Americans have learned the right lessons from the Obama years? Doesn’t it seem like we’re hungrier than ever for new scapegoats?

Read more here.

Cyberrhea and other ills affecting our society

Victor Davis Hanson writes at Pajamas Media,

We live in an expanding culture of victimhood fueled by identity politics. Americans are supposedly saved from themselves by a new hipster generation of Silicon Valley zillionaires, socially aware techies, progressive government bureaucrats, crusading liberal journalists, and cranky, mostly irrelevant academics. So why do they not address the need for politically correct self-policing? Here are five examples of how postmodern do-gooders could help the nation in 2016.

iPhone-induced Mayhem

The left believes a corporation or business is ultimately financially responsible for the unanticipated consequences of using its product. Smoke too many cigarettes and the tobacco companies are sued for knowingly having tar and nicotine in their products. We go after fast food and super-sized drinks for inundating unaware Americans with trans fats and processed sugar. Design flaws earn auto companies billions of dollars in recalls and fines.

But why do we ignore smart-phone companies? Studies supposedly reveal that texting or net surfing while driving is a greater impairment than is driving while under the influence.

...Shouldn’t a benevolent government agency in 2016—in the fashion that it regulates less-lethal handguns—go after iPhones to block their use while the user is in motion? Cannot Obama’s consumer protection bureaucrats put an “automatic motion shut-off app” on every smart phone? In one day last week, a vagrant with shopping cart walked into my bumper at a crosswalk while texting, a young woman slammed on her brakes in front of me during a bottleneck while texting, and a driver went off the road into the gravel. Again, all were texting. How about a microchip to turn these gadgets off once they are in motion? Wouldn’t that remedy be as humane and socially aware as trigger locks on new handguns? Could we register lethal iPhones?

The Diabetes Pandemic

One in three Californians admitted to the hospital for any reason is found to have type 2 diabetes. Obesity is a state plague. The poor and Latinos as well have obesity rates of 40% and suffer from skyrocketing type 2 diabetes—often requiring kidney dialysis (there are two such clinics now in my hometown). Undocumented immigrants arriving from Mexico (which has the highest obesity rates—70% of the population—in the world) are especially at risk—and discover that the America diet is no different from what caused the pandemic in Mexico.

The national health implications seem to rival those of the AIDS epidemic. Millions of the country’s residents are at risk for a mostly preventable disease that can be avoided or arrested by diet and exercise.

...Why, then, is there not a California public health campaign in Spanish and English to warn residents and Latinos especially of their greater risks? We talk loosely of the “Latino” vote as politicians pander to it by supporting sanctuary cities and open borders. Would it not be more humane to campaign on a public health crusade analogous to the AIDS efforts in the 1980s and 1990s? Why the relative silence about this pandemic that is zeroing in on an entire population?

Cyberrhea

Can you go to a website without an ad materializing or being redirected to a buy-something page? Have you noticed that if you buy snow gloves, Big Brother’s IP-address-sniffing ads for snow boots soon pop up on your news page? Check the weather once from your zip code, and suddenly you are told that you should subscribe to the Weather Channel. The blare of 1950s TV is nothing compared to your computer screen.

Why is it hard to stay on a news site but impossible to get off an ad page? Out of nowhere voices chime in about a buying a new phone. Videos jump in hyping the latest cable drama. Ads once on the margins now sneak into the middle of the screen—all this from the new generations that don’t wear flattops or wear wing-tips and square ties. What happened to their promises that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”? If they can cool the planet and lower the seas, and make half the graduating class valedictorians, surely the Masters of the Universe can stop the contamination of the Internet by 24/7 schlock selling?

Break Up White America

Have an ethnic boost of something other than “white,” and the road to victimhood and with it an edge in admissions and employment is supposedly enhanced. But in our multiracial and mixed-up culture, what is “white” other than a crude and inexact rubric that somehow includes darker Greeks and Armenians, but not lily-white Ted Cruzes?

Is Barack Obama more a “black man” than my authentically black Punjabi neighbor? So why not junk “white,” and let so-called whites, as others, fragment to rediscover their own sometimes distant ethnic identities?

...If the usage of just “Latino” or “black” is OK identification, without even the need for hyphenation, why not return to IDs like "Czech" or "Polish"?

...Barack Hussein Obama was no big deal when for a while he was Barry Dunham.

With exoticism comes advantage.

Cultural Disassociation

...If we are going to take stock of our pathologies and start an inventory of which culture is to blame for making us unhappy, then let us start with those foods, drugs, and practices that do the most damage. Yes, we can!

Read more here.

Cultural victimhood: the Leftist rules victims must follow

Kevin Williamson writes in National Review,

...The price of enjoying the special status associated with cultural victimhood is mandatory conformity with the self-appointed progressive advocates who tell others what to think about you and tell you what to think about you, too.

That is one of the reasons why the Left works so tirelessly to destroy prominent conservatives who are not white men, savaging the likes of Clarence Thomas and Nikki Haley. That is why the success of immigrants from India and Nigeria so scandalizes these so-called progressives: These immigrants aren’t going along with the game, which insists that we pretend that this is an oppressive, abusive, racist society that hates blacks and the foreign-born even as its armed forces salute a black man with a Kenyan father.

Read more here.

A politically correct fake world

Remember five-year-old Sophie who rushed to the Popemobile to hand the Pope a letter telling him her parents were worried about being deported? Victor Davis Hanson reveals at PJ Media that the whole thing was planned by a group advocating full legal rights for illegal immigrants.

Using a 5-year-old girl under the false pretenses of a spontaneous outburst of emotion seems about as authentic as deliberately conflating legal immigration — the United States accepts more immigrants than does any other nation — with illegal immigrants who deliberately and knowingly break federal law to enter the U.S.

And remember 14-year-old victim hero Ahmed Mohammed

whose plight with local school authorities earned him global commiseration — and invitations to visit almost everyone from Barack Obama in the White House and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook to the United Nations. How did teenager Ahmed become an international celebrity?

He supposedly spontaneously brought a “clock” to school that he had built from scratch. Soon after, Ahmed was alleged by his supposedly dim-witted school to have instead brought in something that appeared to look like, or perhaps even sound like, a bomb. After questioning, the young Edison was expelled — purportedly because he was presumed guilty as a son of Sudanese immigrants and a Muslim. Was Ahmed another innocent child victimized by the oppressive forces of traditional racist America?

Again, hardly. Almost everything that Ahmed and his family have alleged is being proved first fantasy, and, second, a likely set-up. One, his “clock” was no brilliant invention. Ahmed just took the plastic case cover off an old 1986 digital alarm clock and reinserted the insides into a pencil box — something any teenager could do, but probably would see no need to.

Then there was Columbia University’s “mattress girl,” Emma Sulkowicz. The Freudian-named coed spent an entire school year dragging a mattress around campus — as if it were emblematic of the university’s weak response to her allegations that she was once raped during a hook-up with another student, Paul Nungesser. Sulkowicz broke school rules by packing her mattress into the Columbia graduation ceremony, again winning her national attention as a truth-teller about the sexually oppressive atmosphere on campuses that endangers young women. Yet so far there has been no evidence that Sulkowicz, as she has alleged, was battered in the face, forcibly sodomized, and almost strangled to death. In fact, Nungesser, the accused, has so far been exonerated and is now suing Columbia for acquiescing to Suklowicz’s apparently constructed charges of savagery.

...Americans rarely work in the mines, plough behind a horse, or labor in a sweatshop for 12 hours a day. Twenty-first-century life is monotonously good. A victim like Mattress Girl is a product of an affluent, leisured postmodern America that can apparently subsidize such tomfoolery in a way never quite true of the last 2,500 centuries of Western civilization.

The fact that so often charges of religious prejudice, racism, and sexism under scrutiny break down and prove melodramatic, if not outright fabrications, suggests that there is a perception by the victims, at least, that there are not quite enough naturally occurring bigots to go around without having to invent some.

...There are careerist advantages to becoming a victim of religious, racial, or sexual prejudice. Ahmed Mohamed is now a global rock star; Mattress Girl is a leftist icon. No one much cares that “hands up; don’t shoot” was a complete myth.

...Life, it turns out, is something more than a career, a race, a sex, or a religion, but so often plays out according to an individual’s own decisions and efforts — and for most it is an anonymous and often disappointing struggle without anyone to blame for our outcomes but ourselves.

Apparently that crushing reality persuades some to seek a refuge from responsibility for their own fates by writing a false racist message, or constructing a fake racial identity, or concocting a savage and brutal frat rapist, or conjuring up a cadre of premodern Texan bigots masquerading as school officials who would destroy our next Steve Jobs simply because he is a Muslim.

Yet a politically correct fake world is still a fake world, and noble lies remain lies — nothing more, nothing else.

Competing for status as victims or as defenders of victims.

Jonathan Haidt writes at righteousmind.com,

I just read the most extraordinary paper by two sociologists — Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning — explaining why concerns about microaggressions have erupted on many American college campuses in just the past few years. In brief: We’re beginning a second transition of moral cultures. The first major transition happened in the 18th and 19th centuries when most Western societies moved away from cultures of honor (where people must earn honor and must therefore avenge insults on their own) to cultures of dignity in which people are assumed to have dignity and don’t need to earn it. They foreswear violence, turn to courts or administrative bodies to respond to major transgressions, and for minor transgressions they either ignore them or attempt to resolve them by social means. There’s no more dueling.

Campbell and Manning describe how this culture of dignity is now giving way to a new culture of victimhood in which people are encouraged to respond to even the slightest unintentional offense, as in an honor culture. But they must not obtain redress on their own; they must appeal for help to powerful others or administrative bodies, to whom they must make the case that they have been victimized. It is the very presence of such administrative bodies, within a culture that is highly egalitarian and diverse (i.e., many college campuses) that gives rise to intense efforts to identify oneself as a fragile and aggrieved victim.

...as progress is made toward a more equal and humane society, it takes a smaller and smaller offense to trigger a high level of outrage. The goalposts shift, allowing participants to maintain a constant level of anger and constant level of perceived victimization.

...Some colleges have lowered the bar so far that an innocent question, motivated by curiosity, such as “where are you from” is now branded as an act of aggression.

...[This is the great tragedy: the culture of victimization rewards people for taking on a personal identity as one who is damaged, weak, and aggrieved. This is a recipe for failure — and constant litigation — after students graduate from college and attempt to enter the workforce]

...Because of their belief in the value of personal bravery and capability, people socialized into a culture of honor will often shun reliance on law or any other authority even when it is available, refusing to lower their standing by depending on another to handle their affairs (Cooney 1998:122–129). But historically, as state authority has expanded and reliance on the law has increased, honor culture has given way to something else: a culture of dignity. [p. 712-713]

...The prevailing culture in the modern West is one whose moral code is nearly the exact opposite of that of an honor culture. Rather than honor, a status based primarily on public opinion, people are said to have dignity, a kind of inherent worth that cannot be alienated by others (Berger 1970; see also Leung and Cohen 2011).

...We can expect political polarization to get steadily worse in the coming decades as this moral culture of victimhood spreads.

Read more here.

Victimhood isn't the only response

In his USA Today column Glenn Reynolds writes about the actions of three American young men on the high speed train in Europe:

The purpose of terror is to terrorize. But responding appropriately has the opposite effect. The response of British businessman Chris Norman, who helped subdue the attacker, illustrates this: “Norman said his first reaction was to hide," The Fiscal Times reported. "But after he saw the Americans fighting the attacker, he said he went to help them.”

Fear is contagious. But so is courage. People should respond not like a herd of sheep but like a pack of wolves. When the follow-up report on the 2001 attacks came out, J.B. Schramm noted in The Washington Post that "on Sept. 11, 2001, American citizens saved the government, not the other way around.” Intelligence agencies failed. Air defense systems failed. But: “Requiring less time than it took the White House to gather intelligence and issue an attack order (which was in fact not acted on), American citizens gathered information from national media and relayed that information to citizens aboard the flight, who organized themselves and effectively carried out a counterattack against the terrorists, foiling their plans. Armed with television and cellphones, quick-thinking, courageous citizens who were fed information by loved ones probably saved the White House or Congress from devastation.”

Nonetheless, when the government reacted, the money went into enriching and strengthening those bureaucracies instead of, as Schramm urged, educating and training American citizens. Perhaps this latest incident will serve as a reminder that there is another way. At the very least, it should remind citizens that while you can’t rely on the government to be everywhere you are, you yourself are always there.

Read more here.

What is feminism in the 21st century?

Victimhood trumps fact, argument, and debate. Feminism is a weapon to intimidate anyone who fails to toe the party line. Near total disregard for the concerns of male students. A host of asymmetrical and unjust policies and practices have been put in place on university campuses.

The Great Society Summer of 2014

Roger L. Simon writes that we are in the Great Society Summer:

But, you say, this was a white-on-black crime. An o-fay cop offed a brother. (Never mind that brothers can butcher brothers like it’s going out of style, this pig had white-skin privilege.) Well, yes, and we don’t yet know the circumstances, but even accepting the narrative of, say, the Huffington Post that the cop was the reincarnation of Bull Connor and that the “youth” was a “gentle giant” on the way to a contract with PBS as the next Mr. Rogers, the event is basically a charade. Everyone knows we’ve seen it before and everyone knows we’ll see it again. In fact, many parties don’t want it to go away. The beat must go on. It has to go on or their very personalities will disintegrate. And I will tell you why — what caused it.

The Great Society. There, I’ve said it. The Great Society, which I voted for and supported from the bottom of my heart, is the villain behind Ferguson. Ferguson is the Great Society writ large because the Great Society convinced, and then reassured, black people that they were victims, taught them that being a victim and playing a victim was the way to go always and forever. And then it repeated the point ad infinitum from its debut in 1964 until now — a conveniently easy to compute fifty years — as it all became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Great Society and similar policies screwed black people to the wall. It was racist to the core without knowing it. Nobody used the N-word. In fact, it was forbidden, unless you were Dr. Dre or somebody. But it did its job without the word and did it better for being in disguise. Those misbegotten kids running around Ferguson high on reefer and wasting their lives screaming at cops are the product of all this. Stop it already. No one has said this better than Jason Riley, author of Please Stop Helping Us. Listen to Jason if you want to end Fergusons.

Please read more here.

I don't know about how it is where you live, but where I am in Colorado, nobody cares what your skin color is. They just want to know if you are a decent human being who can do the job.

The real problem is not girls being characterized as being bossy, but the continued emasculation of men!

Matt Walsh weighs in on the "Ban Bossy" controversy.

Hmmm. Could it be that girls are called bossy when they’re… well, bossy?

Could it be that boys are also called bossy for the same reason?

Indeed, through my investigation of the etymology of this word, I have not found even one slight bit of evidence to support the idea that “bossy” is or ever was an insult used exclusively against females.

And it’s patently foolish to pretend that males are always admired for their assertiveness. On the contrary, often people like Ms. Sandberg will call them “angry,” “chauvinistic,” “paternalistic,” “abusive,” “hostile.” The real problem is the precise opposite of what Ban Bossy supposes. The real problem is the continued emasculation of men, and the dedicated effort to eradicate every aggressive tendency in boys, even to the point of psychiatric medication.

Besides, do these women have any proof that assertive girls are more likely to be unfairly labeled as bossy, while assertive boys are more likely to be lauded as leaders? Of course not.

This is a maneuver right out of page 1 in the Progressive Playbook. It’s a very simple play, really.

It goes like this: make things up.

Want to prove your point? Easy, just come up with a thing that you want to be true, and pretend that is true. Then, when someone comes along and says, “hey, that isn’t true,” just call them sexist or racist. See? Simple as pie.

If you're a victim, be sure to act like one in this judge's courtroom!

They found the guy's semen on her bed, but she didn't act like a victim, so the judge ordered a new trial. The girl has Downs Syndrome.