You advanced philosophers will know that the title comes from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin in Britland. Reginald Perrin was a middle manager at Sunshine Desserts, everlastingly 21 minutes late for work in the morning and bullied by his overbearing boss. Then there was the Major, and he was everlastingly reporting “a bit of a cock-up on the catering front.”
I think that with the Gaza 10/7 atrocities our liberal friends are experiencing a bit of a cock-up on the victim front.
Because it is clear, from august elite media like The New York Times and mostly peaceful insurrections in the Cannon Office Building and trouble brewing for the Labour Party in Britain, that the victim paradigm may be turning around and biting our lefty friends in the proverbial you-know-where.
See, now that the Jews have their own nation state the Palestinians have stepped into the pole position of victims du jour, and everybody who is anybody is advocating Justice for the Palestinians. And it’s become rather clear that Muslims — and Palestinians in particular — are aligning with left-leaning political parties like Labour in Britain and the Democrats in the US.
And so liberal Jews like Bari Weiss, cancelled from The New York Times and now running The Free Press, are wondering why they identified as Democrats for so long.
Actually, I understand. Politics is not really about Issues. It’s about where you belong: who your friends are, who your enemies are. And so people don’t change parties according to how the wind blows. They only change after — way after — the party they support has utterly betrayed them.
Item One: the workers. They had been wondering about the Democrats for years. But it took a Trump to get them to change. And anyway, it’s too late. The good old days of the Democrats supporting goodies for workers and unions is over. Anyway, Democrats bid for the votes of the workers by teaching them that the employers were the enemy. And that’s a lie.
Item Two: women. Now that the Democrats have moved on from feminism to transgenderism, women are feeling betrayed. Will women — single women — switch to the GOP? Probably not, because they are tied to the Democrat Party as their Daddy Party. Democrats bid for the votes of women for years by teaching them that the patriarchy was the enemy. And that’s a lie.
Item Three: Jews. Jews helped build the left, from Marx to Trotsky to the Frankfurt School to David Mamet’s New York City. Jews should have left the left half a century ago, and indeed, the “neoconservatives” of The Public Interest like Irving Kristol were Jews that started out as Communists. Democrats bid for Jewish votes for years by branding Republicans as anti-semites. And that’s a lie.
The fact is that playing the victim-card game needs a bit of finesse. But hey, that’s what politicians are good at: making sure that the different groups in their coalition only hear the message they are supposed to hear.
So when the kiddies at Harvard and elsewhere issue wokey pro-Palestinians screeds just as they have been carefully taught. Even Brandeis, a university founded by Jews during the Jewish quota era at the Ivies, a “resolution to condemn Hamas fails student senate”.
As Mao Zedong once said: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends?” But most of us don’t change sides until we have been thoroughly betrayed by those we thought were our friends.
Now I have believed for years that treating the lower classes like victims is a monstrous injustice. The lower classes are not victims: they just haven’t yet learned how to play the game in the market economy. The way to help them would be schools and culture that taught them how to do it. It is, I think, more than anything a transition from a family-oriented culture to a wider culture where you succeed by understanding the impersonal rules of the market economy. I was talking to my Greek friend today and he rehearsed how his Greek immigrant relatives in Portland, Oregon, couldn’t understand how he vaulted into the professional middle class by going to college and getting an engineering degree. To them life was about getting an opportunity from a relative.
The problem is, of course, that our liberal friends in the ruling class rule by posing as the allies of the oppressed, the victims. It’s a lie; they are not helping the victims. But, to give them credit, they really believe that they fight for the oppressed peoples against the white oppressors. And they teach the kiddies about that in K thru grad school thru DEI struggle sessions.
One by one, people stop believing that they are getting helped by our liberal and Democratic friends. It’s one thing to believe that you are a victim, as carefully taught by our liberal friends. It’s another thing to realize that our liberal friends have moved on from you, and don’t give a damn about you any more. Bit of a cock-up on the victim front.
Then it’s time to join the far-right racist-sexist-homophobes in the Republican Party. We don’t believe in no stinkin’ victims.