I get extremely tired of listening to people try to paint themselves as victims. It seems like all political parties in this country routinely operate on this identity of victimhood. And if I may say so, it’s pathetic.

Have some of us been wronged? Certainly! Some of us have been abused. Some of us have been assaulted. Some of us have been robbed. Some of us have been unfairly denied opportunities. The list goes on and on. But there’s a huge difference between having been wronged and building an identity around it.

Am I the only one who finds it insufferable, having to listen to two people have one of those bizarre griping contests? You know the kind. The ones where each wants to prove they’ve had the harder life, they’ve suffered the most misfortune, etc. What are these people striving for? The world record in being a sad bastard?

And really, does anybody think it’s healthy for a person to dwell on what’s gone poorly in their life? What crackpot psychologist would recommend that school of thinking for their patients? It’s just pure mental self destruction.

But worst of all are the consequences of victimhood. Identifying as a victim leads to a sense of entitlement. It carries with it this mentality that others are somehow obligated to compensate us, that they somehow owe us. It also leads to learned helplessness and inaction. After all, if you dismiss yourself as powerless, you suddenly have no obligation to fix anything. You can take the easy road, coasting and waiting for a hero to come fix things.

It’s funny. I wrote out this maxim well before reading The Anatomy of Peace. That book gets into this very thing, about how we can label ourselves as a victim (or numerous other things) and trap ourselves in distorted thought patterns.

I think it’s high time for a heck of a lot of people to liberate themselves from the victim label, if only for their own good.