Xarker Manifesto: Victimization

On victimization

1. The worst thing that liberalism ever did for American culture was to elevate the status of "victim" to a level at which it has become almost universally coveted. This occurred when we allowed victimization to be interpreted as a free pass for unlimited self-righteousness and wretchedly bad behavior.
2. Modern American culture can be viewed, cynically, as a messy scrum in which a variety of groups, most of which are doing quite well, compete to have their victimized status validated by others.
3. The press and the larger media are complicit in this sorry development.
4. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Cult of Victimization reached its left-wing apex with "politically correct" intellectual group-think. Once identified, it began to recede.
5. The right-wing now claims victimized status via the oppression of The Liberal Media, Hollywood, "activist judges," intellectuals, homosexuals and non-Judeo-Christian religions.
   
6. The Rhetoric of Victimization has justified absurd levels of rudeness, and this occurs not only on the political/cultural scale, but also at the level of interpersonal relationships.
   
7. The real losers in the victimization craze? Actual victims.

Editor's Note: The original Xarker Manifesto was published on this site on June 29, 2005. Subsequent changes and additions appear with a date attached.

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