PERPETUAL VICTIMHOOD
by OPOVV, ©2014
(Aug. 17, 2014) — You have been invited to ride on the world’s tallest elevator. You have been asked to bring whatever you need for a couple of days’ stay. Food and lodging will be provided.
You arrive at the elevator door on time. The doors open and you walk in to an area reminiscent of an airport departure waiting area. You find a seat facing the window and settle down for a couple-of-hours’ ride up into the stratosphere.
“Ding! Ding!” You’ve arrived. The doors open and off you go to your assigned room. The floor of your room is clear, and below you is the United States, with the Atlantic Coast down one wall, the Pacific down another, and then Canada and Mexico down the remaining two walls. Unlike the space shuttle, your view of earth doesn’t move.
You see a powerful telescope in one corner of your room and point it down to Ferguson, MO. Some sort of commotion is taking place, so you decide to study the action.
You see a minority group acting irresponsibly. You see businesses burning and people taking items that they didn’t pay for. In every other place in the world it’s called “stealing,” but in the United States it’s called “looting,” as if “looting” didn’t violate the Ten Commandments.
You move the telescope around to different parts of the country and study a Vietnamese community, then a Korean, Irish, Italian, English, Polish, German and so on. You notice that in every ethnic community the assimilation of the American Dream is complete: the family unit is intact; they speak American English; there are few, if any, gangs; drug use is very low or non-existent. You zero in on what they watch on television and listen in on their music and learn that they are in agreement.
You then swing your telescope to Southside Chicago and learn that the family unit has been replaced by welfare, where the government is the head-of-household. You listen in and hear Ebonics spoken, not American English. You see what’s on their TV sets and listen to their music, which isn’t the same as the rest of America.
What you have just discovered is an American sub-culture that is, by choice and by design, separate from the rest of America. The barrier of a common language and common ethical standards bars the way for any meaningful minority advancement for this group. As long as the “work ethic” is synonymous with “selling out,” a la “Uncle Tom,” and speaking in a language that every American can comprehend is ridiculed, mindless riots and destructive behavior will continue to be the norm for a people who just won’t “get on board.”
Many of us have had jobs that we didn’t particularly like or commutes that we weren’t looking forward to, but we did it anyway. Many of us didn’t want to dress the part; we wanted to wear long hair and sneakers, for instance, but the company (or job) dress code prevented us from doing so. Many of us wanted to work and make money rather than stay in school and live poorly while others our age were well-off. Many of us just wanted to stay in bed all day and strum the guitar (me, for example) rather than leave and work our tails off. But we all bit the bullet because we were responsible and acted as grown-up, mature adults: we worked even if we didn’t like it.
Assimilation takes effort, but the reward is a stable society. With work comes rewards; with responsibility comes pride. Either this minority takes control of their own lives and turns their collective backs on the “Welfare and Entitlement Handout State,” or they’ll continually be at the back of the bus and live in a world of the “perpetual victim.”