American Up!

02 May, 2008 by Melissa Clouthier

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Who wants to hear someone bitch about his (or her) life? No one except a highly compensated professional who is getting something out of the exchange. Otherwise, after a certain point, no one gives a flip about your sad sack life. Everyone has his story. Everyone has one.

That is not to say that past grievances don’t affect the present. They do. Our traumas and experiences shape who we are today, but they don’t have to define who we are or who we become in a bad way. That is to say, just because someone wronged us, we are not excused for holding on to our victim status and victimizing others. We choose now how life goes.

Oh, wah! Yesterday, I ruffled some men feathers when I suggested that men need to toughen up, “butch” up, man up. However you want to say it. I like real men. I am all for men being men. And I am all for women letting men be men and not diminishing them for their manliness. How in Sam Hill did my post get turned into some paean to turning back the clock to another generation when men were men and “women knew their place”? The post wasn’t about money. It wasn’t about women going back to the kitchen. It wasn’t about men being aggressive, abusive assholes and that’s what makes a man. It wasn’t about women being subservient haus fraus cranking out fifteen kids to prove their feminine worth. What the post was about is simply that I wondered if an unintended consequence of women in the work world was that men felt that their worth was diminished. I was posing a question, not saying that I believed that. And I do feel that men need to take pride in their career (and if, DJ, the career is staying home and caring for the kids and running the house, so be it). Have some self-respect, is all.

And let me make this plain: I recognize that women, and the feminist movement in particular, has made men wrong. From elementary school through to adult life, men are treated like stupid children. The aggressive, kick-butt nature of a man is diminished and mocked in our society. I don’t watch sitcoms for that reason. They are frigging insulting to both men and women. But the men are made to look like utter fools. It’s disrespectful.

Now, today, I was going to do a post going after the women who diminish men and feel entirely justified in doing so, but I think this issue transcends gender. These days, men and women, black and white, straight and gay, rich and poor seem to want to take on the mantle of victim status. So taking on the role of victim, the male commenters believe they would have great lives, if they weren’t ruined by the evil woman. Here’s the thing: It might well be true, but what purpose is served by becoming a cynical jackass who feels entitled to treat the next woman like all women are horrible. The complaining men don’t realize they’re proving my point about men needing to man up.

The Jeremiah Wright debacle has scraped the same victimhood scab off race relations. It is not enough now to have equal rights. Blacks are better. And yet, like the feminists, the preachers of hate, encourage the continued victim status while simultaneously aggrandizing themselves because being black or possessing ovaries is innately better.

And this is the point that GayPatriot was making and I agree:

Let me get this straight (excuse the insulting word, by the way). Gay activists are up in arms because NC Governor Mike Easley used the word “pansy.”

Well, God help us all. If Gay Americans don’t learn to get a tougher skin…their heads are going to be lopped off even easier than straight Americans when the Islamists are in power in Western Europe.

For all of the wailing from the Left over their claimed “non-issues” like flag-burning, wearing the flag on your chest, and supporting the troops — Pansygate makes the Gay Left look even more ridiculous and irrelevant than ever.

If Gay American activists were constantly up in arms about the worldwide threat to our community by an organized group of murderous Islamists, I might have more sympathy to those “completely offended” by Gov. Easley’s “pansy”.

I am not. Grow up, and get over the victimization mentality, folks.

It is absolutely disturbing that every class of Americans now views themselves as a victim to someone. And that victimhood entitles the victim to special rights, remember. I mean, that’s what this is all about.

The victim is perpetually above criticism, reproof, comment. The victim deserves to be coddled, cared for and supported. The victim is at the helpless whims of the big evil bogeyman, bogeywoman, bogey society, bogey government. But the most important thing of all: the victim cannot possibly be expected to change or take charge of his or her own life. And by claiming and maintaining victimhood, the person is safe. His or her life will never change. How can it? The only person who can make a person’s life better is himself. When he (or she) gives the power away to other people, the other gender, the government, etc. he gets the satisfaction of being able to blame ad infinutum someone else. That’s some hollow satisfaction.

The sick thing is, I’m afraid way to0 many American citizens are more interested in externalizing the responsibility and being able to blame and being a victim than are interesting in seeing themselves as powerful and agents for change in their own lives. It’s pathetic. And it’s un-American.

Where is that independent, conquering spirit? Where is that noble virtue? Where is that common decency? THAT is the American way. This philosophy plays out personally. Damn skippy that the personal is the political. There are still many, many strong-minded, hard-working, independent Americans who embrace the freedom and the responsibility that comes with it to make their lives look the way they want them.

A nation of victims won’t last long. And while wimpy Americans fuss and fight over their skin color, gonads and victim status, they ignore a true existential crisis. Maybe I shouldn’t have said we need to “man up”, maybe I should have kept it more general: We need to American up.

Cross-posted at Dr. Melissa Clouthier.