The Politics of Victimization

[PDittie]

(Mel Gilles, who has worked for many years as an advocate for victims of domestic abuse, draws some parallels between her work and the reaction of many Democrats to the election. Following sampled from Mathew Gross' blog: http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html Apologies if duplicated.)

Watch Dan Rather apologize for not getting his facts straight, humiliated before the eyes of America, voluntarily undermining his credibility and career of over thirty years. Observe Donna Brazille squirm as she is ridiculed by Bay Buchanan, and pronounced irrelevant and nearly non-existent. Listen as Brazille and Nancy Pelosi and Senator Charles Schumer take to the airwaves saying that they have to go back to the drawing board and learn from their mistakes and try to be better, more likable, more appealing, have a stronger message, speak to morality. Watch them awkwardly quote the Bible, trying to speak the new language of America. Surf the blogs, and read the comments of dismayed, discombobulated, confused individuals trying to figure out what they did wrong. Hear the cacophony of voices, crying out, “Why did they beat me?”

And then ask anyone who has ever worked in a domestic violence shelter if they have heard this before.

They will tell you, every single day.

The answer is quite simple. They beat us because they are abusers. We can call it hate. We can call it fear. We can say it is unfair. But we are looped into the cycle of violence, and we need to start calling the dominating side what they are: abusive. And we need to recognize that we are the victims of verbal, mental, and even, in the case of Iraq, physical violence.

<snip>

We have a mandate to be as radical and liberal and steadfast as we need to be. The progressive beliefs and social justice we stand for, our core, must not be altered. We are 56 million strong. We are building from the bottom up. We are meeting on the net, in church basements, at work, in small groups, and right now, we are crying, because we are trying to break free and we don’t know how.

Any battered woman in America, any oppressed person around the globe who has defied her oppressor will tell you this: There is nothing wrong with you. You are in good company. You are safe. You are not alone. You are strong. You must change only one thing: stop responding to the abuser. Don’t let him dictate the terms or frame the debate (he’ll win, not because he’s right, but because force works). Sure, we can build a better grassroots campaign, cultivate and raise up better leaders, reform the election system to make it failproof, stick to our message, learn from the strategy of the other side. But we absolutely must dispense with the notion that we are weak, godless, cowardly, disorganized, crazy, too liberal, naive, amoral, “loose”, irrelevant, outmoded, stupid and soon to be extinct. We have the mandate of the world to back us, and the legacy of oppressed people throughout history.

More at the link:

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001041.html

[eleny]

1. One thing I feel compelled to do is to get some buttons and wear them

It may be a small thing, but I want to outwardly declare my disgust and name names. So, I'm going to design some buttons for my coat and also some bumper stickers to put in the back window of my car. Swap them out every week or so with new messages.

It has more to do with empowering myself in the face of the defeat. If they had to defeat Dems around the country by cheating, there's no honor in it. I feel badly about how things turned out but I refuse to become a professional political victim. I want to put an end to their gloat fest and in my own way be in their collective face.

Also, am carrying around printouts of army enlistment forms to hand to anyone who says a negative peep to me. They can be found here:
http://www.dior.whs.mil/forms/DD0004.pdf

[PDittie]

2. Yes I prefer actually 'survivor' to 'victim'

This from the Comments section of the link above:

The truth is that Bush did not win over a majority of citizens. He only won a majority of voters, those allowed to vote, those whose votes were counted.

We are not a minority. We, along with many Americans who stayed away from the polls or who were not permitted to vote or who did not have their votes counted (accurately), we are the majority.

The current and future administration will try to claim a mantel which is not theirs to claim. And we can refuse to recognize what they claim.

Despots are very dependent on a population which accepts the yoke of authority. Sadly, many fundamentalists yearn for authority. And our independence enrages both the supporters and the purveyors of despotism (abuse in your parlance).

It is our civic duty to stand up and find language, which accurately frames what is occurring at the highest levels of government as well as what the grassroots patriots stand for. Many of us are not wallowing in self-pity at all. We are standing up for what we believe.

[CBHagman]

3. "We are not a minority."

Amen to that. The punditocracy is already acting as though tens of millions of voters who voted for Kerry or another candidate simply don't exist. CNN's Candy Crowley is already sneering that Kerry didn't appeal to the public. The tens of millions of votes simply don't exist in her eyes or in the eyes of her fellow whores, simply because those votes don't fit her Gospel of George.