There is nothing quite so insufferable as the cult of victimhood that has gripped certain segments of our culture. The good news is that the cult seems to be losing its mystique.
Let me be clear: some people have been truly and horribly victimized. In the early 20th Century, the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalinist purges resulted in somewhere between 3 and 12 million deaths in Russia. The Nazis’ concentration camps killed close to 11 million targeted people (Jews, Poles, Soviet prisoners, and others). Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge murdered 2 million people, close to 25 percent of Cambodia’s population, in the late 1970s.
Real victims don’t have to come from such global atrocities, of course. With horrific frequency, we read about children being brutalized by predatory teachers in our public schools. There have been (and continue to be) real people suffering real harm. In many cases, those people demonstrated remarkable resilience, putting their pasts behind them to build successful lives and even movements.
Those are not the “victims” I am discussing. I’m referring instead to the peddlers of political grievance, where the abuse is almost always imaginary but the suffering they cause is real.
In the 21st century, we have come to exalt victimhood. It used to be said that everyone is the hero in their own story, a heuristic for understanding how people justify their actions. Yet over the last two decades, a distressingly large number of Americans seemed to prefer, instead, to frame themselves as victims.
We placed self-created victims on an unearned pedestal.
To be generous, it started nobly. There was a recognition that those who suffered real abuse should have a platform from which to speak out in favor of reforms. Yet, at some point, the cache of being a witness transformed into a lifestyle in which being the target of past slights—real or imagined—became justification for everything from early boarding on an aircraft (with the obligatory emotional-support peacock) to preferential collegiate admissions and lucrative government contracts.
Victimhood, especially if translated into a political cause, morphed into a moral achievement. Entire university programs were designed around grievance studies, though “emotings” is probably a more accurate description of their content.
And, of course, victimhood has been used as a political billy club, short-circuiting criticism of any position held or action taken by the nominal victim.
Fortunately, Americans are showing signs of being wearied by the parade of those well-heeled “victims” demanding worshipful attention.
Extreme victimhood might still garner clicks and likes on social media, but it rarely builds a lasting, healthy movement in the real world. Let’s face it, it is exhausting to be around perpetual whiners who define themselves as losers in life’s lottery.
The United States did not attain the historic status we have as a nation by our forebearers sitting in a circle and whining about the emotionally unavailable grandfathers who launched their family businesses.
There will always be those who prefer to rhetorically snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but woven into the American DNA is a heroic optimism that has propelled us forward.
The American experiment endures not because life is fair, but because Americans have historically chosen to build up our ideals rather than be worn down by grievances. As the voices of performative victimhood become tiresome parodies, the American character has begun to reemerge.
Our aspirations, not our grievances, are what have defined the republic.
America advances when we remember who we are: a people who look forward, who seize opportunity, who turn obstacles into fuel. The future belongs to those who reject the cult of victimhood and choose instead to become the real heroes of their own American stories through their own daily actions.
