Victimhood as a way of life

I wrote a song after the election in November. My group--a songwriters' workshop, though it does have some theraputic value--had given ourselves the assignment to write a song using the word rough. My song, which, in a burst of creativity, I titled "Rough," is a series of vignettes: A single mother without health insurance; Andrew Veal, who committed suicide at Ground Zero; a soldier in Iraq. After these stories, the refrain: "And you think you've got it rough." The bridge, though, is about the winners from that election:

You control the church, the TV
You control the courts and DC
You wear the flag like it's some kind of shield
You want the "gubmint" off your back
You want the spend without the tax
You want to play both hands of the deal

The song played on an idea I've been toying with for a while, that conservatives in this country cannot help but play the victim in every circumstance, despite the fact that they are most emphatically not victimized.

There is a long history of this, and it can be traced back through Reagan, Falwell's Moral [sic] Majority, Nixon's southern strategy, even back to the race-protecting origins of the KKK. Today we see it playing out everywhere, with a recent and egregious example being Tom DeLay's threat to exact revenge on parts of the judiciary that don't toe his line violate the "will of the people," never mind that the judiciary is already pretty well on his side at every level.

Chris Bowers at MyDD drew my attention to something last week that really served to drive this problem home. Christopher Hayes conceptualized the problem in a way that I never could, wrapped it up and put a bow on it and handed it to me like an unwanted gift: It's beautifully expressed, but a little part of me dies every time I read it. Now, as you read this excerpt, remember that ever other word out of conservatives' mouths these days has to do with how they are victimized, downtrodden, assualted, and defeated at every turn. This excerpt, though, is the reality:

Consider a baby born in 2005 to a conservative family anywhere in America—that is anywhere outside of a major city where the very particles in the air are liberal. How might this child become a progressive? Her first possible exposure to a progressive worldview would be through children’s media: books, videos and television shows. Conservatives patrol this border vigorously. Every several months or so, it seems James Dobson or Jerry Falwell is in high dudgeon railing against the perversions of some innocuous children’s television character, from Bert and Ernie to SpongeBob SquarePants. Most recently, conservatives targeted Buster the cartoon rabbit, whose visit in one episode of his PBS show to a lesbian couple in Vermont prompted an angry rebuke from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

Next, the child will likely attend public school, an institution conservatives have sought to control by taking over local school boards in order to introduce creationist textbooks, establish abstinence-only sex education and excise any lesson plans tolerant of homosexuality. And while activists seek to influence local curricula, right-wing think tanks advocate fully dismantling public education through vouchers and other ruses.

If our hypothetical student goes to college she will finally, for the first time, come face to face with a progressive worldview. Higher education stands as the only institution in American life today with a significant progressive presence. In classes, in clubs and in dorms, students are exposed to progressives and their views. [. . .]

Since college enrollment continues to climb, and the economy increasingly puts a premium on post-graduate degrees, this bodes well for Democrats. Conservatives realize this [flaw] in their armor, which explains why their attacks on higher education are so ardent. David Horowitz’s latest anti-university gimmick is Students for Academic Freedom, a Web site where disgruntled conservative undergrads can post complaints [. . .].

Absurd as this is, Horowitz remains a serious threat. Currently eight different state legislatures are considering the Horowitz-authored “Academic Bill of Rights,” which, unsurprisingly, would revoke academic freedom by making the government enforce some ill-defined “diversity.” (Critics have pointed out that, as the bill currently reads, it could become mandatory for the underrepresented political views of, say, al Qaeda to be more widely taught.) There are already numerous conservative influences on contemporary campuses: business schools, well-funded publications, economics departments and major corporations that partner with universities in research. With the attacks of Horowitz and others intensifying, we must defend the independent progressive character of American undergraduate education with every arrow in our quiver.

Let’s say, though, that our hypothetical youngster doesn’t go to college, and instead enters the workforce. If her job is unionized, she will immediately be exposed to progressive ideas about fairness and workplace democracy, but the odds are overwhelmingly against her holding a union job. Over the last 30 years, unionization has fallen from more than 35 percent to less than 12 percent of the workforce due to, among other things, a sustained attack by Republicans on the right to organize. From the instant the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935, the business class has recognized that unions are the most direct means by which working-class voters are brought into the left. Being in a union has an even more dramatic effect on voting behavior than college. Kerry won two-thirds of union members, and among working-class white voters, a group Kerry lost by 24 points, he won a majority of those in a union. [. . .]

Outside of school, work and friends, the only other real entry point for our hypothetical subject is the Internet and blogosphere. And while these are invaluable resources for people who have no other access to progressive ideas, they don’t ring your doorbell or leaflet your local supermarket. High-profile groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Sierra Club and People for the American Way don’t help much either. Though they fight tooth and nail for progressive causes, they are essentially self-contained, devoting little energy toward recruiting non-progressives.

This is chilling, absolutley chilling. And Hayes doesn't even get into the corporate media--which, to a one, support conservative politicians over liberal ones--or the conservative media's shaping of our national dialog (for an example, see this post on how Ward Churchill, an obscure fool, became such a national obsession).

And yet, victimhood has become such a way of life for them, they can't stop. Allow me to get provincial for a moment: Here in Wisconsin, conservatives a pushing the misaptly-named Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR. (See a pattern here? If a conservative promotes anything with the words "Bill of Rights" in the name, run away!) This despite the fact that Wisconsin's state and local taxes are lower as a percentage of personal income than 20 years ago, we have a world-class uiniversity system, top-notch public schools, an economy outpacing the rest of the Midwest and the national average, and Colorado is busy running away from TABOR as fast as they can. (I'd link all that, but it's Saturday, and I shouldn't have to work that hard.) Yet Wisconsin conservatives are so set in their "victim" ways, they feel somehow compelled to pass this crap legislation. And, because they have a nearly 2-1 margin in the state legislature (oh, but they're victims!), there's a good chance they'll do it, too.

What's the moral to this story? I don't know that there is one. How do you fight people who are already living in a culture of victimhood?