by Laura Finley
Victim Status and the Political Right
In all honesty, there is a lot I do not understand about the Right. Although the Left is far from flawless, it strikes me that the Right is full of hypocrisy. They don’t want big government to tell me what to do and not do with my vagina—until they do want exactly that. They want the free market to be uninhibited yet take all manner of funding from interest groups and allot record levels of corporate welfare—and impose ant-free trade tariffs. They don’t want undocumented immigrants until they do want them as laborers. And on, and on…
These hypocrisies are pernicious, but one that really boils my blood is the calling out of the Left as “snowflakes” who simply want to maintain victim status while at the same time fulling embracing victimhood. While this is true of many on the Right, no one embodies that hypocrisy better than Donald Trump.
Calling out the Left is part of the broader attack waged by the Right, and by Trump himself, against so-called political correctness. Labeling the Left as politically correct or as snowflakes merely serves to shut down conversation and dismiss important ideas. As Dana Schwartz wrote in a February 2017 article for GQ, however, “There is not a single political point a liberal can make on the Internet for which ‘You triggered, snowflake?’ cannot be the comeback. Its purpose is dismissing liberalism as something effeminate, and also infantile, an outgrowth of the lessons you were taught in kindergarten. ‘Sharing is caring’? Communism. ‘Feelings are good’? Facts over feelings. ‘Everyone is special and unique’? ‘Shut up, snowflake.’”
The derogatory use of the term snowflake comes, in large part, from the film Fight Club, an adaptation of the 1996 Chuck Pahluniak novel of the same name. In it, the narrator joins an underground men’s fighting club, where members repeat the mantra, “You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” Men’s rights activists, bodybuilding forums, and the political Right have picked up on this mantra, which many have called the “manosphere.” In reality, the roots are far deeper, emanating from the Right’s need to reject the threat of communism by labeling it “red” or “pink,” hence “wussified” or feminine. Republicans, then, use the rhetoric of “men” while Democrats are “women.”
But, in reality, those slinging the snowflake allegations, as Amanda Hess wrote in June 2017 in New York Timesmagazine, “tend to seem pretty aggrieved themselves — hypersensitive to dissent or complication and nursing a healthy appetite for feeling oppressed.” What makes one a snowflake, supposedly? An inflated sense of self-importance, an inability to handle criticism, demand for respect, and a sense of victimhood supposedly disproportionate to reality. Sound familiar? That is Donald Trump embodied.
When he’s insulted, he melts down on Twitter, berating people in a fashion not dissimilar to a middle schooler. He is, supposedly, a victim of various attacks by individuals and institutions, most often the press, of course, but also Hollywood celebrities, Broadway stars, even a Gold Star mother. He is the victim of a “witch hunt” regarding collusion with the Russians in the 2016 election. Could any words betterdescribe victim status than “witch hunt?”
Trump won the election by owning and encouraging victim status. His squad was all too quick to buy the rhetoric that their jobs have been lost or are at risk to immigrants, that people from certain countries threaten our safety, that women levy false accusations to destroy men, and that rights for LGBT individuals threatens the sanctity of the “American family,” among other things. Even “Make America Great Again” presumes some great travesty befell the poor nation. Victims must be returned to a state of prominence!
Likewise, the notion that the Left is too soft to handle certain conversations and the minimizing of people feeling “triggered” is also in the Right’s playbook, albeit using different language and tactics. The continued efforts to criminalize nonviolent protest, for example, show that the Right is all too happy to shut down dialogue.
I believe that there is something to be said about overdoing victim status. That is a worthwhile conversation. But when the very real picture of the U.S. is one that is still tremendously racist, sexist, militaristic and unequal, it is deeply infuriating that negative labels prohibit real discussion and actual action.
—30—
Laura Finley, Ph.D., syndicated by PeaceVoice,teaches in the Barry University Department of Sociology & Criminology.
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Governor to visit site of Dollar Ridge Fire, host media scrum
What:
Utah Governor Gary R. Herbert will be traveling to Duchesne, Utah to visit the site of the Dollar Ridge Fire. Governor Herbert will visit the Incident Command Center before hosting a brief media scrum at the Duchesne High School Shelter Site.
When:
Tuesday, July 3, 2018 beginning at aprox. 9:30a.m. MDT
Notional timetable of events:
9:30am: Governor Herbert departs for Duchesne, Utah with Public Safety Commissioner Keith Squires via Utah National Guard Blackhawk Helicopter.
10:45am - 11:15am: Governor Herbert and delegation visit the Incident Command Center. No media access.
11:30am - 12:15pm: Governor Herbert travels to and visits Emergency Shelter at Duchesne High School.
12:15pm - 12:30pm: Governor Herbert hosts media scrum at Duchesne High School Emergency Shelter.
12:30pm: Governor Herbert and delegation depart for Salt Lake City, Utah.
Where:
Duchesne High School Emergency Shelter
155 West Main Street
Duchesne, Utah 84021
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3 Tips For Keeping Your
Moral Compass On Course
Are there useful moral lessons in the latest Barr vs. ABC or Trump vs. the world Tweets?
The news cycle is often rife with controversy involving public figures. And sometimes a fall from grace - from Hollywood to politics, the corporate boardroom, etc. - brings closer examination of the root causes. Dr. Christopher Gilbert, an international ethics expert, thinks such events and social media skirmishes reflect a lack of ethics that plague many levels of American society - but that they also provide an opportunity to strengthen our own moral pathway.
“The important issue isn’t in arguing over which schoolyard bully is the most unethical,” says Gilbert, author of There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing and senior consultant/speaker at NobleEdge Consulting (www.nobleedgeconsulting.com). “The roots of the problem are not only in misplaced, society-influenced priorities but in a widespread belief that ‘good’ people make the good decisions and ‘bad’ people make the unethical ones.
“We need to start a national conversation about what it means to do right in business and in life, despite the constant personal, social, economic, and other cultural and societal pressures to ignore what is right in favor of success. A growing awareness and practice of ethics is in essence also a profound transformation of our character, and it often comes as we navigate the most dramatic or challenging events of our lives.”
How do we overcome the pressures and temptations to flout ethical practices? Gilbert provides three tips to making good ethical decisions while holding ourselves and others accountable.
“Universal moral principles,” Gilbert says, “provide solid reference points for establishing values, behaviors and ethics that create trust. And, despite popular belief, they are attainable - we already have quite a few.”
About Christopher Gilbert, Ph.D.
Dr. Christopher Gilbert, the author of There’s No Right Way To Do the Wrong Thing, is an international ethics consultant and senior consultant/speaker at NobleEdge Consulting (www.nobleedgeconsulting.com). Having spent much of his career focused on the study of human moral development, Dr. Gilbert has over 30 years of experience in organizational development as a strategic facilitator and leadership and operations consultant. He has served an international clientele, including Fortune 1000 companies and government agencies in the U.S., Canada, Asia and Africa. Dr. Gilbert completed work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on a sustainable food-security program across four nations of sub-Saharan Africa, and he has been a professor of business ethics who taught at universities on four continents. He earned his doctorate in Organization, Management and Leadership Ethics at Capella University.
