Why Liberals Love Being Victims to So Much
Nobody holds on to a grievance like a liberal
When I was in my mid-teens and found out that the United States fought a war with Britain, I immediately formed a strong dislike for them. My attitude was, “You fought a war with my country? Then you’re my enemy.”
Of course, as I got older, wiser, and learned more about history, I realized that time didn’t freeze and stop after the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. We fought together with the British in WWI and WWII, and they were our strongest ally during the Cold War. So, my opinion of the British changed.
This came back to me recently because so many Japanese people really went out of their way to wish the United States a happy 250th anniversary:
The reaction to this seemed to be heartfelt gratitude and thank yous from American conservatives, while Third Worlders, liberals, and Chinese accounts basically yowled the equivalent of, “How can you say nice things about America when they nuked you in WWII?”
Of course, we did nuke Japan in WWII, and they could choose to hate us because of that just as we could choose to detest the Japanese because of Pearl Harbor, the way our prisoners of war were treated, and the fact that they dragged us into a war that cost a lot of American lives.
On the other hand, America and Japan have been friends for something like 75 years at this point. Both countries seem to like and respect each other’s culture. We have helped them out with things like Operation Tomodachi after an earthquake, tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear crisis there, and they’re responsible for the famous cherry trees we have in DC:
What’s more important? What happened in WWII or 75 years of friendship and respect?
That depends on the lens you view the world through, doesn’t it? If you want to focus on what matters today, you focus on friendship, shared values, and reasons for both nations to get along.
On the other hand, if you’re all about victimhood and nursing grievances, no matter which side you’re on, you focus on all the ugliness of WWII.
Liberals are very much trapped in the second way of thinking.
In fact, if you listened to the things many of them were saying on X about America’s 250th birthday, you’d almost certainly get the opinion that they like America less than the Japanese do:
Alicia Keys is the perfect one to end on because she’s so typical of the kind of complaints that liberals have:
Here’s a woman who became a famous singer in America and is worth 150 million dollars. If we were coming up with a list of the richest people in all of human history, she’d be in the top 1%. She’s one of the most fortunate, privileged people to have ever walked planet Earth, yet what is she doing on the 250th anniversary of America? Talking about how great the country must be to have given her these opportunities? Noting that she wouldn’t have been as successful anywhere else? Talking about her gratitude for being in such a great nation?
No, instead she’s whining about how bad it is here for women and trying to convince people women don’t have equal rights. What rights are those that women don’t have? Nobody seems to be able to give a good answer to that question.
This is just how liberals are now. It’s their nature.
“I’m a victim. Feel sorry for me! Everything is terrible here because I don’t like something! Nothing is anyone’s fault except the people I don’t like, who have it too easy! I’ve got it so hard! I like that group of people, so they have it hard, too! Everyone is oppressing us! There’s nothing good here because I want something and I don’t have it and not enough people are falling all over themselves to acknowledge how tough people like me have it! Wah! Wah! Wah!”
It’s so tiresome and tedious to listen to the Left’s obsessive and incredibly hypocritical focus on victimhood. Because it’s all self-serving. You get victimized by a liberal or some group liberals treat like brain-damaged puppies who can’t be held responsible for peeing the rug, and they care nothing about your problems. In fact, you deserved it because they don’t care about people like you, and people they don’t care about are always the oppressor somehow, never the victim, even when they’re getting stabbed, having their business burned down, or having some left-wing pervert sexually harassing them in a women’s locker room.
There’s no gratitude from liberals, no helping people learn to better themselves, no appreciation of America, all because those things run counter to their entire being. They’re focused on explaining why the patriarchy is responsible for them wasting 180k on an art degree from an Ivy League school or why white people made them end up in jail for robbing houses or how it’s not fair that they have to pay rent because all housing should be free.
If the only tool you have in life is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. If everything in your life revolves around victimhood, you have to explain why you’re losing, even if you’re winning. In fact, it goes double if you’re winning, because you don’t want the other people who think like you and aren’t as successful to decide to blame you for all their failures in life.
That’s why black liberals are still talking about slavery and white Democrats never shut up about the historical sins of America, even though if you look closely, you’ll find they’re responsible for most of them.
Liberals always have to live the famous meme…
…because if they tell the truth, which is that America is a great country, you have more opportunity here than anywhere else on the planet, and that many of the things liberals complain about are imaginary, not serious problems or not things the government should be involved in, it creates all kinds of issues if you’re a liberal.
Other liberals are going to be angry at you for “invalidating their struggle” by noting most problems in life are self-created. It also raises questions like, “If we just need to keep doing the things that made America great to keep it great, then what do we need liberals for?” Next thing you know, you’re actually saying we should hold everyone to the same standard and that if illegals didn’t want to get deported, they shouldn’t have come here illegally in the first place. You can’t be a good liberal if you abandon victimhood and start telling people to take personal responsibility.
Take away the victimhood complex, and you take away liberalism.
Well said. From day one of the tiresome silly writings of two lazy ass layabouts, Marx and Engles, leftism in general has been infused with petulant jealousy of the innovators, creators, and producers so that today, your typical leftist cares more about what happened and happens elsewhere in the world than to their next door neighbor. It’s all so insufferable, but that’s what communist indoctrination gets you.
Completely agree with you about our relationship with the Japanese, but I would humbly add one caveat: just as with bad jokes after catastrophic events, there is such a thing as "Too soon, dude."
In the 1980s--I think it must have been around the 40th anniversary of the end of the War, so maybe 1985--the Smithsonian, in its infinite wisdom, planned a retrospective on the Pacific War, on the theme (natch) that we were the aggressors who provoked the Japanese into war, and that the Japanese were merely--I'm not making this up--"attempting to protect their national culture."
As you might guess there was just a smidge--perhaps I should say, a skosh?--of pushback from the veterans' community, at a time when many of those who had been in the Pacific were still alive.
Much Sturm und Drang, and eventually the Smithsonian rather sulkily backed off.
Interestingly, at about the same time there was a lot of Franco-German kissy-face going on, as part of which the French--natch--were dissing the Americans. This prompted the great Michel Sardou to write and perform a beautiful and deeply moving song, "Les 'Ricains" ("The 'Murricans") to admonish the post-War generation for having forgotten their own past.
So I do think it's reasonable to have a "cooling-off period" before you can truly be friends.
How long does it have to be? Unknown. But I would expect that a generation--30 years--would be the minimum.
Certainly my own memory of US reconciliation with the People's Republic of Vietnam is that it took about that long.