Victim Culture:The Celebration of Failure

Via Declination

When I was a child, I had dreams like any other, impossible goals and obnoxious ambitions. There was a time when I wished I were the Emperor of the Earth. Never let it be said that I think small. Then there were times I wished I could invent a time machine and travel back to the days of Christ to solve the deeper mysteries of Christianity. Childhood dreams are like that. There is no sense to them, but they had a magnificence, a purity our smaller and more realistic adult ambitions sometimes lack. Did you ever want to be an astronaut or an Olympic swimmer? Did you see yourself writing the next great Science Fiction novel or directing a Hollywood blockbuster?
One thing I did not want to be growing up, however, was a victim. At least, not at first. But when I left private school, near to being kicked out for atrocious behavior (I was not a terribly pleasant child), and wound up in public school, that’s what they taught. In seventh grade I got into a fight with this kid, a bully who I had been having trouble with for months. He threw the first punch, and everybody saw him do it. But when I stood, poised with a textbook over my head, prepared to smash it into the insolent little shit’s face, it was me who got the phone call home and barely avoided suspension.
Why? Because I didn’t look like the victim, irrespective of whether or not I actually was. Somehow, his tearful face made him the victim, and me the oppressor. Ironically, this turned me into an actual victim, for before this I had adhered to my father’s maxim of punch the bully in the nose and he’ll probably go away. After this, I learned that self defense was punished. The rest of middle school and much of high school was spent being the butt monkey of every bully and meathead jock around. I was a laughing stock, but at least I wasn’t being threatened with suspension or expulsion anymore.
It wasn’t long before I noticed this behavior everywhere. One thing I was good at was distance running, and I remember a day in which I was on fire. I can’t remember if it was sixth or seventh grade, but I blew through the mile in under 6 minutes, which was a pretty notable achievement for that age. I was more than a minute faster than the next guy behind me. But the PE teacher didn’t even care, or bother to notice the achievement. He was busy congratulating and urging on lazy kids for actually bothering to jog instead of walk.

We interrupt this regularly-scheduled victimhood article to inform you that Brianna Wu, transsexual, is a victim even though somebody handed her $200,000 out of the blue.

This was a talent that was wasted. I look back on this with sadness, because I was truly gifted in Cross Country and distance running. I could have gone somewhere with that ability, but the Cross Country coach spent his time focusing on the girl’s team, because that was the way the political winds were blowing in the public school system, and my motivation waned over the years, until I walked away from it completely.

Read the whole thing @ Declination