Associated Press and AFP photos
Meet the new “victims”: Stupid-white-male supporters Sarah Palin-Quayle and Carrie Prejean, who this past week was fired as Miss California, are now “victims,” as are all stupid white men in the United States of Amnesia. Sexy brainiac blogger Glenn Greenwald recently penetratingly wrote of these Nouveau Victimes, “the only victims they ever see are themselves, the only unfairness they recognize is to their own group, the only perspective they are capable of understanding is the tribalistic ones drummed into their heads from birth.”
My broad definition of the word “politics” is “the use of power.”
When power is abused, as it so often is in politics (as in life in general), I get pretty fucking pissed off. (Yes, eight long years of the unrelenting abuse of power by the Bush regime, which began with the stolen presidential election of 2000, had me fairly perpetually pissed off for years on end. See, I’d actually bought all of the bullshit that I had been taught as a budding Gen-Xer, such as that we actually have democracy and fairness and the rule of law here in the United States of America.)
Perhaps nothing pisses me off like the claims of groups that historically have wielded a disproportionate amount of power that they now somehow are “victims.”
Jews and Zionists (and again, Zionists are Jews but not all Jews are Zionists, I recognize) are perhaps the best at this — screaming “victim” when, in fact, they are ridiculously politically powerful.
I have written about this at some length recently (here and here), so I won’t repeat myself, but I will quote sexy gay brainiac blogger Glenn Greenwald (who, from his surname, I gather, is Jewish), who recently took up the topic of faux victimization in a post he titled “Tribalistic Self-Absorption” (the links are Greenwald’s):
The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: “I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X — my group — is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly.” This claim persists — indeed, is often intensified — even when Group X is clearly the strongest, most privileged and most favored group.
So intense is their need for self-victimization — so inebriating is their self-absorption and so lacking are they in any capacity for empathy — that, for all the noise and rhetoric, the arguments they make virtually always have this tribalistic self-absorption at its core.
Last week, Charles Krauthammer accused President Obama of treating every country in the world so well — except for one, the one for which Krauthammer bears great love and affection and with which he was taught from childhood to identify:
President Obama repeatedly insists that American foreign policy be conducted with modesty and humility. Above all, there will be no more “dictating” to other countries…. An admirable sentiment. It applies to everyone — Iran, Russia, Cuba, Syria, even Venezuela. Except Israel. Israel is ordered to freeze all settlement activity.
The U.S. transfers tens of billions of dollars to Israel — more than any other country in the world. We demand that no country in the Middle East have nuclear weapons — except Israel. We fuel Israel’s wars with weapons transfers, ensure it is the most militarily powerful country in its region, and loyally protect it from U.N. sanctions using our veto power.
It’s virtually impossible to imagine one country that is more favorably treated by another than the various forms of largesse Israel receives from the U.S. But no matter. In Krauthammer’s eyes, the opposite is true: the U.S. treats every country fairly except Israel. That’s the country that, to him, is singled out for unfavorable treatment by the U.S….
I don’t know how much these “victims” truly believe that they are victims and how much they knowingly are misrepresenting themselves as victims, with the aim of at least maintaining the disproportionate amount of political power that they’ve already had, if not gaining even more.
Perhaps more ridiculous than the Zionists’ claims of victimhood are the claims of the stupid white men that they are “victims.”
Stupid white men (presumably heterosexual, “Christian” and overwhelmingly Repugnican) have controlled this nation thoroughly up until very recently. As do the “victimized” Zionists and Jews, stupid white men still have far more power than is proportionate to their actual numbers.
And Barack Obama, although he is the first half-white and half-black president, hardly is going to usher in the anti-whitey revolution that so many of the NRA-card-carrying talk-radio listeners seem to have believed is coming.
Indeed, if Obama didn’t act even whiter than the typical white guy, he never would have made it to the White House. The White House. He is an acceptable black guy, you see; he is “articulate” and “clean,” as Vice President Joe Biden infamously called him before Biden became vice president.
The “victimization” of stupid white men most recently has come in the form of Sonia Sotomayor, candidate for U.S. Supreme Court justice.
During her judicial career Sotomayor has made comments like this one: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better [judicial] conclusion [than would a white male judge, presumably].”
The likes of baby-boomer blowhard Rush Limbaugh, whom the largest number of people in a recent national Gallup poll identified as the apparent leader of the Repugnican Party, immediately jumped upon Sotomayor as a “racist” for such comments of hers as the one above.
Now, for more than two centuries in the United States of Amnesia, stupid white men never had to talk about their race or their possession of penises, because it was just a fucking given that if you were going to hold high political office in the nation, such as U.S. senator or U.S. Supreme Court justice, you had to be a white man. It was well understood and therefore there was no need to talk about it, that’s how entrenched white-male power was (and still is, although to a lessening extent, thank Goddess).
For Sotomayor, who presumably does not possess a penis and who is not white, life in the United States of America no doubt has been different than it has for the stupid white man. It does not make Sotomayor “racist” for talking about her minority experience as an American.
An I agree with Sotomayor 200 percent that the United States of America, which is teetering on the brink of collapse after the stupid white men have run it into the fucking ground, sure could use the wisdom and the perspective of other groups, such as women, non-whites and non-heterosexuals, to recover from the mess in which the stupid white men have mired it.
Stupid white men and their supporters, drunk and blind with power, aren’t fit to be behind the wheel, being drunk and blind. The sober vision of others is what the nation sorely needs now.
But the Zionists and the stupid white men aren’t the only “victims.”
Heterosexuals also are victims, too.
Carrie Prejean, who has a promising career in porn ahead of her, this past week was dumped as Miss California because, according to the Miss California USA organization, she was violating her contractual agreements by making unauthorized appearances (such as to deliver her anti-gay sentiments) and by refusing to make requested appearances.
But no, Prejean has blamed her overdue ousting on gays, whom her Taliban-style “Christianity” has taught her to hate.
Reminds me of how the Nazis blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews. (And the Nazis persecuted and murdered gays, too.)
That was one of the actual “arguments” that I saw as the wingnuts were arguing for the anti-gay Proposition 8 here in California: that allowing legalized same-sex marriage actually violates their rights.
The “argument” is that if I believe that an historically oppressed minority group should be kept down — if that is my “Christian” belief — then it is a violation of my religious freedom if the oppressed groups that I believe should continue to be oppressed no longer are oppressed.
Yes, before the November vote I saw pro-Prop 8 signs that actually asserted that to allow same-sex marriage violates the First-Amendment rights (including freedom of speech and freedom of religion) of those who oppose it. There is no more fundamental American right than the right to hate and to feel superior to another group, right?
No, it’s quite simple: If your religious beliefs preclude same-sex marriage, then do not marry someone of your own sex. But keep your fucking backasswards, Taliban-like religious beliefs to yourfuckingself. Keep your toxic spiritual sludge off of the rest of us, who have the right to be free from your toxic waste.
I suppose that those white-supremacist “Christians” who believe that mixed-race marriage is wrong, according to the Old Testament, are having their First-Amendment rights violated because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that no state can outlaw mixed-race marriage. So let’s outlaw mixed-race marriage again in order to placate the members of the American Taliban!
Yes, let’s turn the United States of America into a Taliban-like theocracy, shall we? That’s exactly what the wingnut “Christians” want.
Speaking of whom, there also is Repugnican presidential wannabe Sarah Palin-Quayle out there constantly claiming victimhood, because apparently the way to show strength is to claim perpetually that you are a victim.
Palin-Quayle’s latest “victimization” is at the hand of late-night television talk-show host David Letterman, who, Palin-Quayle asserts, should apologize to all women because Letterman made some joke about one of her daughters.
No, the one who should apologize to all of the women of the United States of America — and of the world — is Palin-Quayle, who has set the women’s movement back by at least decades by supporting the stupid white male system that oppresses women.
Palin-Quayle’s backasswards “Christo”fascist ideology threatens the typical American woman far more than does a joke by a late-night TV talk-show host. Further, Palin-Quayle and her ilk are a threat to freedom and democracy — to real freedom and democracy, not “freedom” and “democracy” as they define it, such as by stolen presidential elections, illegally spying on American citizens, illegally detaining — and torturing and even killing — individuals, and launching bogus wars for war profiteers (such as Dick Cheney’s Halliburton) and for the Israel-first lobby.
You know, if these historical oppressors truly want to be the victims now, how about those of us who have been historically oppressed by them — we women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals, non-Christians, et. al. — not make them into fucking liars and start really victimizing them?
*With apologies to those who actually speak French. I think that I have that correct, but I am not sure…
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