Never let anyone tell you that they don’t worship something. Most Americans worship the God of Abraham, through the Christian Bible, but a growing number of Americans have found a new god, which they call ‘Victimhood’.
Let me show you how silly this whole thing is. I was born with ‘male parts,’ but there is no reason for me not to self-identify as a gay transvestite woman. As a gay, transvestite woman, I can continue to look like a man, can continue to act like a man, and can even stay happily married to my wife. My wife would also be a victim, as she would be married to another woman, making her either bi-sexual, or a lesbian. Neither of us would have to make any changes to our lifestyles, but suddenly we could claim to be oppressed by the society around us, and demand preferential treatment. Furthermore, my wife, being an actual woman (and now bi-sexual) would only be a member of two victim groups. As a gay, transvestite woman (who is really a man), I would be a member of three.
For that matter, I find myself attracted not only to women who were born with woman parts, but also to the occasional man who was born with woman parts, and who still looks like a woman. It turns out that what someone self-identifies as makes no difference to what I am attracted to, and that’s probably true of everyone. Does that make us all bi, in today’s lexicon? If so, then there is no such thing as a ‘straight,’ white male. As for ‘cis-gendered,’ the term assumes a gender binary, making anyone who claims to be trans, or who supports those who are trans, a bigot. If there is no gender to act like, then there is no gender to identify as, and those who claim to be anything with regard to sexual preference, gender, or anything along those lines, are bigots. The entire LGBT community is, by their own rules, nothing more than a bunch of bigots. The cult of identity politics even has a uniform: whereas the KKK has it’s hoods, the cult of identity politics has it’s vagina hats.
Race is rapidly becoming an abstraction as well, with people self-identifying as whatever ethnicity they want to be. We all remember Rachel Dolezal, who self-identifies as an African American woman, and by now we all know that Elizabeth Warren self-identified at one point as a Native American. Meet this person who self-identifies as a Filipino woman. If being ‘white’ gives me ‘privilege’ and detracts from my net-worth, then I should self-identify as something else. Calling me ‘white’ is racist, calling me ‘straight’ is enforcing a fake gender binary, and calling me ‘male’ is sexist. On what grounds then can I be said to have ‘privilege’?
One cannot both claim that identity groups are the only thing that matters, while also believing that those groups are mere abstractions, and yet this is exactly what the Victimhood Worshipers believe.
Do you see how silly this all is?
There is only one thing stopping me from self-identifying as a gay, transvestite woman: I’m not stupid. But if I had been born into the cult of identity politics, I would worship victimhood, and would have to find a way to join the victimhood party. I even have a politically correct pickup line. I’m happily married, so I cannot use it, but if there are any single people out there who identify as whatever it is that picks up the other sex, try this on for size: “I could not help but notice you from the other side of the room. I don’t want to assume your gender, or your sexual preference, but whatever it is that you are into, that’s what I identify as.”
Why do I call this a religion? Because there is no evidence that the oppression claimed exists, and yet those in the cult of identity politics have absolute faith in this oppression. Indeed, they believe in little else. Undaunted by facts and logic, the victimhood worshiper tells us that “This is not about your truths. This is about my facts and my truths.” To the victimhood worshiper, facts and truths are subjective things revolving around how they feel. If they feel oppressed, then they are oppressed, the real world be damned.
When I say, ‘the real world be damned,’ I mean that literally. There are real-world consequences to this kind of perverted thinking, such as Oxford University giving more time for students to take math tests out of fears that otherwise men will do better than women. Very clearly, this suggests that, at least with regard to math, Oxford University believes men are smarter than women, and while Oxford University can’t come right out and say that, they can act upon it as a matter of policy, changing their standards in order to ensure that everyone gets the same score. Believers in identity politics will never admit that the low expectations they have for ‘oppressed groups’ represents a form of bigotry, but they will enact law after law, and policy after policy, that treat different people differently based on gender, sexual persuasion, ethnicity, and a host of other factors – even while claiming that these different factors do not really exist.
What do you call it when someone believes that the nature of the world around them is controlled by some force that is impossible to prove or quantify? When someone calls that force ‘God,’ we say that they are religious. Should we not also call it a religion when the answer is some sort of ‘privilege’? Does the cult of identity politics not give ‘privilege’ god-like powers? Someone might quibble that the cult of identity politics does not really worship privilege, since they want to do away with it. I’ll grant that. Privilege is not their god so much as their version of Satan. What they really worship is the state. To the cult of identity politics, if left free, different identity groups will struggle for power and control over one another until one group dominates, and all other groups fall into a caste system, with one group on the top that is all oppressive, one on the bottom that is all oppressed, and a series of groups between top and bottom, all with relative levels of oppression. The Victimhood God makes liberty the cause of oppression, and oppression by the state the cure.
The cult of identity politics even has a priesthood, comprised of the ‘intellectual and moral elite,’ who they would give power to step out of the privilege caste system, to oppress the top of the caste and elevate the bottom, squeezing society together until everyone is at the same plane, and then keeping society firmly under their boot heel such that no group ever has the freedom to oppress other groups again.
The most religious-like aspect of the cult of identity politics is the way victimhood becomes a badge of honor. The more oppressed someone is, the more worthy they are considered. As such, a person’s value is determined, not by the value they provide to society, but by the number of excuses they can come up with to avoid providing value. Imagine what a society would look like if everyone believed that the ability to do things that benefit society is sin, and anything preventing one from benefitting society is virtue. What would be produced under such an environment? What would we eat? Does the cult of identity politics have some version of Manna from Heaven that will magically materialize once everyone is a victim, and nobody is able to produce?
The cult of identity politics is not only a religion, but a particularly bad one – one I would not encourage the reader to join.
