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The Power of Weakness
My wife and daughters enjoy reality TV shows in which contestants sing and dance in front of judges, attempting to win a prize. Like most competitive endeavors on TV now, from golf to the Olympics, the program includes a brief personal story about each contestant, so you can get to know the competitors a bit. This generally includes a statement by the competitor, in which he/she will explain why they think they should win.
Do they say, “I’ve worked really hard at this, and I hope that my hard work will be adequate to win this competition?” No. They engage in competitive victimhood and self-sacrifice: “So my Mom overdosed when I was 13 and one of her sister’s boyfriends started beating me up so I lived under an overpass and sold my body to make money to buy insulin for my baby brother while I practiced my singing by volunteering in the local children’s hospital and singing to the babies in the NICU. Gosh, I love those kids.” The singing competition matters, but the self-sacrifice rivalry is where the most vicious competition happens. It may seem odd, competing at being non-competitive, but this is how you gain the upper hand in modern America.
During the George W. Bush administration, I heard a quote from Osama bin Laden: “In a horse race, people will tend to back the stronger horse.” I didn’t understand. I had been so immersed in American culture for so long, that I didn’t think that his statement made any sense. We have taken rooting for the underdog to such heights that Democrats and black leaders view the lack of racism in modern America as a mortal threat to their power base. It’s gotten to the point that the suggestion that racism is not a serious problem is a racist statement. As your case for victimhood becomes less clear, you lose status and power in our society. The stronger you appear, the weaker you get.
Kids in school understand this reflexively: “Oh, so your Dad’s a doctor, huh?” Kid: “Well yeah, but he’s never home and we had to move when he got transferred and my grandmother died of cancer and I smoke pot and listen to rap music and I have a tattoo and I wear ratty clothes and my family doesn’t understand me because I’m a rebel and I hate the establishment and I’m different in exactly the same way as all the rest of my friends.”
We raise our children in a sheltered, nurturing environment in which real competition is either avoided or banned outright, and then we act surprised when they develop warm feelings for progressivism and socialism while they are at university being taught by people like Christine Blasey Ford.
Dr. Ford is a remarkable example of this phenomenon. As long as she wins the victimhood competition, she will win whatever else she wants. In fact, it is absolutely impossible to compete against her. Her supposed opposition, the Republicans, didn’t even try. They brought in a female surrogate to speak on their behalf, and she made no effort to directly challenge Dr. Ford’s claims. Because Dr. Ford had already won. There was nothing else to be done.
Like the Lord of the Rings, whoever can harness such unstoppable power can rule over anyone. It will work anywhere. Except in a nation of laws, which we once were. Our Judeo-Christian concern for the less fortunate has made the powerless all-powerful. So now anyone who wants power must first master the appearance of weakness.
The Democrat party, and leftism in general, offers a bit of this power of the powerless for everyone, even college professors and doctors’ kids – so long as they genuflect at the altar of progressivism. Even billionaires like Diane Feinstein can be accepted in polite society, as long as they profess to be liberal.
I don’t understand what people think Dr. Ford was risking by coming forward. What previous generations might have accomplished with guns drawn in the dark of night, she accomplished with over-sized glasses, a squeaky voice, and mussed up hair. She can have anything she wants now. Money, power, celebrity – it’s all hers for the taking. She won the victim Olympics.
This is not necessarily easy. One must master a degree of situational ethics that is difficult for many people. The rules are complex and easier to feel than to understand. For example, if she had said that she was the victim of Brett Kavanaugh stealing her lunch money, that would have been largely unhelpful, even if it were true. But claiming to be a victim of sexual assault will always work, whether it is true or not. All victims are not created equal.
And she may alienate herself from some on the right, but for a college professor from California, that is not terribly important. It is unlikely she has met an out-of-the-closet Republican in years. And some women may look askance at her poor-little-me performance, or her vicious attacks of someone she’s never met, but those women are unlikely to ever meet Dr. Ford in person.
This was not a gamble. There is no downside to her attack on Kavanaugh.
This is why we need a country of laws and not of men. When we disregard our own laws (and scheduled hearings, which were over when this was brought up), then everything becomes a battle of personalities, and we get…well…we get exactly this. This is why the politics of most countries are so ridiculous. And this is why American politics looks so ridiculous right now.
It all feeds the fire of progressivism. As we compete to appear more helpless, a strong central state makes more and more sense, to care for all these pathetic wards of the state. You’d have to be heartless to not want to care for all those helpless victims of the big nasty world. Independence is too much for these fools to handle. Government should take care of them.
Brett Kavanaugh is an admirable figure. Dr. Ford is a sympathetic figure. When we back the weaker horse, we get exactly what we deserve.
Watching the hearings last week, I thought to myself, “America is not going to be here forever.”
If we seek to maintain American greatness via competitive victimhood rather than a thoughtful debate of ideas, this just can’t go on. This has nothing to do with Brett Kavanaugh, or what he thinks about the Constitution. This is about cold, bloody power.
I’m not sure that Mr. Kavanaugh understands that.
But Dr. Ford most certainly does.
Published in General
Another brilliant post, @drbastiat, on some very important points that I, for one, had overlooked. Thank you!
I’ve read a lot of your stuff, Doc; this might be my favorite!
The only way to get that game to stop is for Republicans to quit being so sqeamish about playing it themselves. Otherwise there is no reason for it to stop.
I think this current wave of ‘me-ism’ is a direct result of LBJ’s Great Society. I also think the so called War on Poverty has worked out better than the Progs could have imagined in their wildest dreams. Why bust your hump when the idiot next door will do it for you and give you free food and a flat screen TV with cable to boot?
Doc B. (Who absolutely deserves the appellation.): Why does Judge Kavanaugh get referred to as “Mr.” and Ms. (researcher in Psychology/academic, who’s not practicing as a psychologist – and can’t refer to herself as such under CA law – merit “Dr.” Ford? Curious turn of phrase, that…Otherwise, great stuff.
This situation reminds me of Hoffer’s The True Believer. In the book, Hoffer notes that people who have failed to climb the established social hierarchy are the first in line to tear down that hierarchy and establish a new one that values traits they already possess.
In free market economies, the value at the top of the prevailing hierarchy is competence. Specifically, the amount of demand for your particular talents and skill sets. The needy and pathetic have no chance in such a world. The answer? Develop an alternate hierarchy with the top value being “victimhood”. Thus begins the surreal game of “fail your way to the top, the most pathetic wins.” The Hierarchy of Victimhood is now the standard measuring stick for all post-modern progressives.
Thanks Jim!
What a nice thing to say! Thanks Addiction!
I referred to her as Dr. Ford because that is how the media refers to her, and I wanted everyone to know who I was talking about.
I am not a fan of the American quirk of referring to PhD’s as “Dr.” I don’t think it’s because I’m a snooty doctor, although I suppose that may be part of it. But to me, a doctor is someone who cares for sick people, and a professor is someone who teaches and does research.
Interestingly, she’s apparently never been Dr. Ford. On the faculty directory and on her publications, she is listed as Dr. Blasey. I’m not sure why her handlers thought going by her married name would be helpful in this case…
You may be right about Kavanaugh. Perhaps I should have referred to him as Judge Kavanaugh rather than Mr. Kavanaugh in the article. If so, I apologize.
DocB, No apologies required. The use of titles to confer legitimacy upon one’s pronouncements is, indeed, irksome. :-) Prof. Ford would’ve been more accurate, certainly, since she doesn’t function in a clinical setting…
You are onto the exact premise of this book:
Workshop of the Second Self
“The year is 2030. The place is Centerville, a typical city.Clifton Pembroke is a young professional with a promising career in the field of “disability advocacy.” He helps people raise their disability profile-a single index that encompasses every variety of injustice and disadvantage that may befall an individual.Raising one’s disability profile can bring a host of benefits, including subsidies and preferential treatment. But some people are no longer satisfied with these benefits. They assert that their very birth was an injustice, that a fundamental travesty has occurred, that in fact they should have been a different person.They even know who that other person is, and they intend to receive their just compensation-by obtaining the legal right to seize the other’s identity.Clifton becomes entangled in ethical dilemmas that run to the core of what it means to be human. In choosing sides, he must make difficult, even dangerous decisions. In his search for answers, he gropes in the darkness until he meets the people who are building the workshop of the second self.”
I think that author may need to move up the date of his book. 2030? Heck, a lot of this is already happening.
Have you read the book? Is it worth reading?
Great post, Dr. B. Thank you!
One of the networks should bring back Queen for a Day. It was practically a Victim Sweepstakes.
@drbastiat – I have not read the book, it is on my list. And you are right about the dat- at some point I don’t need to read it, I can get the same story by just turning on the news.
A lot of people, though, are sick of the victimhood cult. Not only because they don’t want to portray themselves as one of its approved definition groups, but because of how everyone else has to pay for victimhood members, one way or another. Either in actual outlays of tax dollars, or in the devaluation of experience, training, competence, and hard work that the “outsiders” (who used to be valued citizens) still engage in.
Someone visiting this past weekend said that the Democrats always hated Judge Kavanaugh for his role in the Bush administration and work for Ken Starr. They also see him as a product of an “elite” background (as if many of them and even the accuser aren’t also?)
Let’s hope Michal Savage isn’t right about the new civil war’s Mason-Dixon line already being drawn.
I recall getting a chuckle out of my Dad when I was about 5 (early 1960s). We were watching a talent show on Grandma’s TV. The young man about to perform announced that he hoped he would win because he needed the money to help pay for his dad’s hospitalization. At that I said “he’s cheatin’!.”
In academia, “Professor” has much more prestige than “Dr.” At my current job, I’m a “Lecturer,” I’m not even an Adjunct Professor. Gotta distinguish between me and my betters. :-p
Thanks Ron!
A Professor is associated with a university and typically has a teaching appointment. The Dr. title is for anyone with a doctoral degree, even if they do not work at a university. I will note that people at my current employers, a university of distinction, tend to go by first names and have art or their kid’s drawings on the wall, while my previous less prestigious employer had lots of emphasis on titles and trophy walls.
You are probably right as to how it works nowadays, but when I was an undergrad in the 60s at a college where at most half of the professors had earned doctorates, Doctor was much more prestigious than Professor. Nowadays there is a surplus of earned doctorates, so in my own mind the prestige value has swapped positions. Maybe in everyone else’s mind, too.
Excellent analysis!
Dude, I only rose to T.A. (Latin & Mythology). Makes me almost embarrassed of myself.
Ain’t that the way it always seems to go?
Most places of higher learning require a doctorate these days. Even at community colleges. So yeah, I think it’s flipped.
The small Lutheran college I attended was about 10 years behind the others in adopting lousy educational philosophy trends, and it was probably about that far behind in the requiring of doctorates, too. But in that regard it represented an era that was rapidly passing.
I can’t resist a pedantic quibble on the specific point below, though:
The jumped up American colonial presumption of calling all medical school graduates “Doctor” has, unfortunately, spread to the point that it’s easy to forget the history.
In the mother country, there was a time when surgeons were were called “Mister.” After all, they were mere mechanics; originally mostly barbers, and physicians never let them forget it. “Physicians” were a subset of those called “Doctor” by virtue of his – for so it always was – having written and successfully defended a dissertation before a faculty of experts in the subject. (This class difference is probably the origin of the mutual disdain between physicians and surgeons.) For a long time there was no vocational medical degree; most medical education was by apprenticeship.
In more modern times, the entry level medical degree on a medical graduate’s sheepskin was not MD but MB – a Bachelor of Medicine. A BCh, Bachelor of Chirurgy (surgery) or in some cases MCh (when the surgical degree was considered a Masters degree; I believe this may have been the custom in Edinburgh, for instance) was awarded concomitantly. A medical school graduate would then be styled John Smith MB B(or M)Ch and properly referred to as “Mister.” By courtesy such lower class practitioners and passed journeymen might be known as “Doctor.”
If J. Smith, MB BCh were to go on to perform a piece of original medical research and successfully defend his dissertation, he would consequently be awarded a Doctorate in medicine – the MD degree – and properly be referred to as Doctor. Dr. Smith would subsequently refer to mere medical school graduates as “Mr.” If he had earned his MD at a really good school (Oxford or Cambridge, or I think places like Edinburgh or Heidelburg,) he would often rub peoples’ noses in it like this: J. Smith MB BCh MD (Oxon). Or (Cantab) or whatever else as the case might have been.
So I hate to break it to you. Christine Blasey Ford, having done the PhD thing has a pedant’s claim to being called “Doctor” even though the rituals she observed in her education are less rigorous than the demands of getting a PhD in physics at Stanford near where she lives. Or those of undergraduate medical education, let alone those of a tough residency program.
A mere medical school graduate such as yourself… it’s a colonial courtesy, Dr. Bastiat, but one we are all happy to extend.
Doc B, I saw this on the WSJ’s Opinion pages on 10/4/18, and thought it might be of interest.