Victimhood. The condition of having been hurt, damaged, or made to suffer, especially when you want people to feel sorry for you because of this or use it as an excuse for something.
As we go through life, most of us will be the victims of something or someone. It’s one of the unavoidable facts of life.
When this occurs, most of us fight back and refuse to be victims. We find ways around, over or through the problem. We get on with living and work to make things better.
There are, however, those among us who fall prey to perpetual victimhood. I have always felt very sorry for them because they miss out on the great joy and personal satisfaction of overcoming adversity. This is an emotion that they will never experience.
They wrap themselves in the warm and comfortable blanket of victimhood. It excuses them from most of the realities of life. When they are young and they don’t do well in school, it becomes the fault of the teachers, the other students, or the school. When they go out into the adult world where they now lack the skills or the will to compete, they fail. They blame it on the fact that no one would give them the right chance, or they were the wrong religion, or race, or sex, or a hundred other reasons.
They are easy prey to those who will seem to agree with them and tell them that it not their fault, but the fault of the system or society and if they will just follow them they will make it all right. They see it on TV, in school, in newspaper columns and on social media, and they believe it because it makes them feel good about themselves for a change.
They are told that they should be outraged at the treatment they have received at the hands of society, and that they should take to the streets to protest, riot, rob, and burn. That It’s their right to attack the system that has failed them.
Victimhood is not confined to any sector of society. Rich, poor or anywhere in between are all affected. Despots have used these people to rise to power for as long as humans have lived together. We see it happening around the world, and I am sad to say in our own country, a place where many of us thought that we were well past the possibility of that happening.
Capitalism and victimhood are natural enemies, and can never co-exist; socialism and victimhood are close friends; communism and victimhood are the best of friends, and they are in fact, inseparable. The sad truth is that the promises that budding dictators make to bring about equity to the masses are all true. They do in time, fulfill that promise; they bring everyone down to the lowest standard of living except of course themselves their friends and enablers who enjoy only the best.
There is some good news. It appears that more and more Americans are waking up to what has been going on around them for the past many years. They are paying attention to what is happening in their children’s schools and demanding that it change. They are seeing that uncontrolled government spending is causing rapidly rising inflation, and foolish governmental policies are doing great harm and putting us in danger.
Hopefully more people are seeing that the free ride is only a free ride to the bottom.
Born, raised and educated in the Southwest, Jim Dickson served in the U.S. Navy Reserve in Vietnam before a 35-year business career. Retired to St. Helena Island, Dickson and his wife are fiscally conservative, socially moderate and active in Republican politics, though they may not always agree with Republicans. Having lived around the country and traveled around the world, Dickson believes that the United States truly is the land of opportunity.
