Human nature dictates that people do whatever they can to protect their self-esteem. Accordingly, a common method of such protection is an unwillingness to accept responsibility for one’s actions and to cultivate “It’s not my fault” excuses for inadequacy.
Yet, in believing the “deck is stacked” against positive change, failure is rationalized, and favorable outcomes are rarely expected or consistently earned.
But unknown to many, an unexpected source has reinforced and even initiated such a hopeless and helpless dead-end prescription by addicting constituents to toxic rationalizations for problems, creating a sense of impotence to enact positive change, and paradoxically harming the very supporters it claims to champion.
That Cult of Victimhood is the Democratic Party.
This connection between Democrat tropes and bad outcomes is beyond doubt. Just as “fanning the flames” of exaggerated oppression leads to despair and despair incites frustration, powerlessness, and rage, “understandable” protests, rioting, and criminality often follow.
And as any honestly thinking boss, teacher, parent, or prosecutor surely knows, when questionable justifications, however well-meaning, are routinely made for bad behavior, those crippling and self-defeating actions become status quo obstacles harming all in their wake.
Direct from the Democrat playbook, an ever-larger list of explanations for supporters’ adversity grows yearly. Especially for those of color, justifications for poverty and even criminality include Wall Street, the rich, conservatives, Republicans, capitalism, systemic racism, white privilege, white entitlement, and, of course, Donald Trump.
The history of our nation does include ugly examples of racial injustice — undeniably so.
Yet currently, anyone even slightly challenging those blanket rationalizations for every minority hardship is immediately vilified as racist (if white) or as an Uncle Tom (if black). So, realizing this, silence remains, and hopelessness endures.
Upon reflection, it’s no mystery why progressive leaders and the mainstream media offer victimhood as the excuse du jour for constituent hardship.
It’s like the proverbial service station owner throwing nails on the road, where profits are generated by creating a manufactured need for tire repair.
Likewise, apologists for bad behavior generate dependency by offering excuses rather than solutions, pointing fingers rather than urging accountability, and selfishly benefitting as sanctimonious saviors of the “oppressed.”
Yet perhaps the biggest injustice of all is that the great majority of honest, hard-working, and responsible people of color are often painted with the same negative brush as those lacking those traits by internalizing a blame game.
And with equality under the law already a given, it is this “guilt by association” subliminal, often hidden, and resistant to legal correction, racially based discrimination that holds minorities back from even-handed opportunities in jobs, housing, and school admissions.
So, instilled with victimhood, every minority crime committed, every family fragmented, every school dropout documented, and every unsatisfiable call for more entitlements fuels the very prejudice harming all nonwhites regardless of behavior. That is, while such generalizations are clearly immoral, when classical conditioning unconsciously links adverse actions of a few to entire groups they superficially mirror, discriminatory outcomes are all but certain.
It is for that reason, if no others, that the overwhelming majority of law-abiding, accountable, industrious, and patriotic minorities unfairly viewed should at least question their support for the Democrat Party. And with the recent election results, they are beginning to do exactly that.
In fact, compared to Trump’s results in 2020, black voting support doubled from 8 percent to 16 percent, and Latino backing rose by 8 percent. Such an increase in conservative voting preference among those minorities was further mirrored by gender, in that black men more than doubled their vote for Trump, and almost half of Latino males voted for him as well.
In comparison, black women increased their support for Trump by 4 percent and Latinas by 7 percent.
Such numbers are clear evidence that if the Democrat Party is to reverse its recent electoral failures, it must exchange its omnipresent victimhood message for a doctrine of empowerment whereby the only way to fully overcome racial injustice is to foster greater personal responsibility, not overstated oppression, as the single most important key to overcoming life’s inevitable obstacles.
For as hard as it is to accept, there is only one way to purge the negative perceptions that still limit opportunities for minorities. That is to continue to reject the poison-pen message of ubiquitous victimization.
Only when those negative stereotypes are inevitably replaced by those more positive will all benefit. And for that reason, exposing the Democrat Party as the Cult of Victimhood is not an example of racism or Uncle Tom-ism. It is precisely the opposite.
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